#2778, Monday, January 10, '22: A lot of catch-up

Reverend Ken's Travel Blog

Post 2778

- 12 years and 10 days since I started this blog -

Disembarking from Flight 1255, Fort Lauderdale to Guayaquil, Ecuador, the entire passenger manifest has to wait like cargo ships in the Port of LA, while previously-arrived passengers from other flights are processed. One flight at a time. The wait is about an hour, but the reward is a quick-and-easy 90-day tourist visa, after a little more than three minutes of Q&A.

Winter Travel Journal
(written Jan 8-10, 2022)

Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 11 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent. 

While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for the occasional food shot when I've eaten something interesting. And that's where we find ourselves now.

I must apologize for being so out-of-touch, and not writing for the last five weeks. No excuses, but an explanation: Until four days ago, I was visiting people, and spending all my time with them. Not that I didn't have time to write (I make time), but two aspects deterred me. One, almost anything I wrote about would have had to include the people I was visiting, and I restrict myself to telling my own story, and only my own, here. It's respect for privacy and the intimacy of these relationships.

And, a lot of what I did didn't inspire me to write. If anything seemed noteworthy during this period, you found out from an Instagram/Facebook post.

Admittedly, this is a change in policy. When I last traveled, two winters ago, I wrote something every other day, more or less. In California, a bit less. I never write these in Florida. 

That being said, I'm going to look back at some of the highlights of California, the trip to Cuenca, Ecuador, and my first days here. 
I flew down to Daytona Beach December 1. I spent my time there exclusively at my BFFs Marco and Sophie - these are the people who sheltered me for eleven weeks when I came back from Ecuador in February, 2020. I was supposed to leave them in March, and they let me stay until May. That may have saved my life.

Florida is surf-fishing, beach-walking, sunset watching, and great food. Marco is a pro cook, having run the kitchen at a show bar in Provincetown a while back. He is also the King of the Beach, and catches more than anyone else there. He calls himself the Freak on the Beach. So it's a diet of fresh fish for dinner, and that can't be beat.

The fishing dock at Wilbur By the Sea. It overlooks the Halifax River (Wilbur is on a narrow peninsula south of Daytona Beach. On one side is the Atlantic, and the Halifax is on the other, three blocks away).

I was there for two weeks. It was a great time. Then, December 16, I drive down to Fort Lauderdale and fly out to LA. Nothing eventful happened, but... the plane's departure was an hour-and-a-half late. (Cue ominous music soundtrack).

Thankfully, the flight was smooth. Alex met me at the airport - a big favor, because LAX is a one-hour-plus drive in traffic from Alex's place in Sherman Oaks. Up until now, and for decades, I picked up my car at the airport, but when I was looking at car rentals, back in May, they had become prohibitively expensive. I found a deal, only it wasn't at the airport, so I saved a little and picked it up the next day.

I'm not going to go into any detail, but I got ripped off big-time, ultimately to the tune of about $900, by that rental agency, and ended up having to rent a car from a different company. If you ask, I'll tell you - but I'd rather try to forget it. Even writing about it now, I need to calm down.

The other thing about LA was that it was (cue the music from "The Lady Is A Tramp" - if you don't know the song, by Sinatra, you now have homework) cold and rainy. Alex said he had never seen such relentlessly bad weather. And I'm not talking sprinkles. Streets were flooded. And I had to buy a jacket, I wasn't ready for temperatures in the 40s.

But the trip was fantastic, because it's all about spending time with my son, and that is pure joy to me. We get along together so well. He has a lot of exciting stuff going on, not the least of which is a wonderful new girlfriend and a new job, that started the day I left. He knows me, what I like, and I know how to not turn his life upside down. We play nicely together.

Alex, Katie and I at Malibu Seafood, a great place to watch the sunset, and get really good seafood - my favorite fish tacos anywhere. This is the only place I've been to on every single trip to LA.

Alex and Katie, sunset at Malibu

Sunset at Malibu.

At LACMA. They had these pretty little photo setups, and I had to get one with Alex (Katie wasn't there this time).

Alex and Katie at LACMA.

Sunset at LACMA.

We did a lot together.  And, because he knows what I like, a lot of it was planned around food. He loves turning me on to his favorite places. Things I do in LA that I don't do at home: Go to the movies! In LA, some theaters show movies with subtitles! This is great for me! My biggest problem with going to movies these days is due to my hearing disability: My hearing aids do a good job, and are great coupled with my iPhone, but the don't do anything for my tinnitus. We saw the new Spider-man movie, and I think it may be the best super-hero movie I've ever seen. We also saw the new Matrix movie on its opening day. I'd suggest you give that one a pass. Alex and I both thought it was a stain on the franchise's legacy. 

In all my trips to LA, this was the first one I didn't get to connect with any of my East Coast transplant friends - two are gone, two were sick. So it goes.

Somewhat in compensation, one of my childhood friends and his wife, who now live in Albuquerque, NM, visited LA for the first time for a long weekend while I was here. We had a great day at LACMA (Los Angeles Country Museum of Art), a slightly disappointing outing at a Oaxacan restaurant (the mole was too sweet), and a great breakfast on their last day. But, as with Alex, it's all about the company, and that made it all good.

I think I'm not going to talk (much) about leaving LA for Ecuador. It was a mess. It became ridiculously expensive, as I ended up buying a last-minute ticket on JetBlue when American canceled my flight and couldn't get me to my Fort Lauderdale to Guayaquil flight on time.

We'll pick it up in Guayaquil, where I arrived at 11:30pm (EST). I had a hotel room near the airport, the room was perfect, but, tired and jet-lagged as I was, I tossed and turned all night, getting little sleep. For the second night in a row.

Next morning I got a van for the four-hour-plus drive to Cuenca (it used to be three, but I had heard the road was closed due to mud and rock slides).

I was excited about the van ride for a couple of reasons. First, I have done exactly zero exploring of Ecuador outside of Cuenca, which is 8400' up in the Andes, which is in a valley surrounded on all sides by Andean peaks. I was looking forward to the scenery.

Second, quite a few of the Americans I met suggested that driving from the coast into the Andes would help acclimate me to the altitude, which is typically a four- or five-day process.

I sadly report that I was disappointed on both counts. Going up the mountains, we encountered nothing but thick fog. It was, in fact, quite terrifying. I was sitting in the front seat of the van, hoping to get some views and photo opportunities, and there were times I could not see the road. I was comforted by the fact that the driver had driven this route probably thousands of times, and in fact, he was flawless. It turns out, they had cleared the old route, and once we started to descend into the Azuay valley (Cuenca), it turned beautiful, but all the scenery turned out to be on the driver's side. No photos.

So, the trip took about three-and-a-half hours, and I was in Cuenca 'way too early to check in, but the kind host, who was still readying the studio apartment where I'll be living for the next sixty days allowed me to drop off my bags, and I went for a walk-about on a beautiful warm day. That's when I found out I wasn't acclimated to the altitude by the drive.

The first thing that hit me was the typical altitude-caused lack of stamina. I walked two blocks, to Parque Calderón (aka Central Park), and was desperate to sit down on one of the benches (admittedly, my goal in the first place - there's no better spot for people-watching in Cuenca, and it is beautiful). 

I took the mandatory "I'm here!" selfie. After about a half-hour of indolence, I got restless, and walked on, aimlessly, That's when symptom two of altitude maladaption set in. For the first time in about six months, I had knee pain, well, the knees were the worst of it, but I could feel all my joints.

Oh, well, this is the way it was last time. I know in four days or so I'll be fine. I got back to my AirBnB, where I was right on time to get into my studio apartment. 

My little studio in Cuenca Center.

And that was all she wrote for day one. However, I sadly report that I got no sleep - according to my Fitbit, just 3/4 of an hour. This is also a symptom of altitude sickness. But, jeez, I'm working on short sleep of the last couple of days as it is.

Next day, I made contact with my friend Marty, a guitarist from San Francisco, who was the very first person I met in Cuenca. I arranged to go to his apartment, only two blocks from my studio, for a little conversation and, since I'd brought along my Steinberger XL2-TT bass, some jamming.

The dude lives six flights up, which is damn near tragic, until you see his view (he has a nice, big balcony with an amazing view of the 'New Cathedral', the three-domed symbol of Cuenca.

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (aka, the New Cathedral).

I grabbed this pic, and, after some interesting conversation we got down to jamming. Then he announced it was time to see the amazing light show that happened at sunset. He wasn't kidding.

That was pretty much it for day two in Cuenca, although I did reconnect with one of my favorite restaurants that night.

But I had another night with nearly no sleep, and I just took the next day off. I committed to either finding some pot (as a sleep-aid, of course) or getting some sleeping pills rather than spend another sleepless night. Last time I was here, I was able to cop my second day in, but that good gentleman has disappeared, no working phone or Facebook account.

That next day, feeling a bit better, although starting off tired, I set off to get some weed. It took about fifteen minutes. I couldn't be more grateful.

Food Comment

Salmon scramble with home fries and artisinal multigrain bread. My first breakfast in Cuenca. 

Encocado, an Ecuadorian seafood dish of sea bass and vegetables in a coconut cream sauce, here with the addition of shrimp, thanks to the manager's suggestion that I could have it that way, no extra charge. Sofy Glocal, one of my favorites from the last visit, now in a much nicer location, is just the shizz.

I think this is actually a shrimp encocado, but it was just called sautéed shrimp with mushrooms. Anyway, real good. From Café Azul, in San Sebastion Park.

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