Antonio + Joanne, True Love

Mosaics on the patio of Gaudi's Casa Batllo

Barcelona airport, El Prat, was easy to navigate, and finding the the train into Passig de Gracia train/metro station in the middle of Barcelona was quick; not a lot of drama finding the hotel.  The nasty surprise when I got there was the ... and I'm being generous...spartan room at Somnio Hostel (251 Diputacio, 2nd floor).

The location was excellent, near public transportation, shopping and restaurants in a good part of Barcelona close to everything. The staff couldn't have been nicer or more helpful. However, I discovered very quickly that there are dozens of hotels in this area that cost just a little more money and offer a lot more.

At $108, this stay was WAY overpriced. This is basically a hostel, and I've stayed in other hostels that offered much more for less money.The room, about 12-foot square, consisted of a double bed and four white, featureless walls.  A couple of hangers on the door sufficed as a closet. The shower was so small an average-sized man couldn't turn around—and I paid for a room with a bathtub. A lot was lost in translation, and Booking.com got flamed for this one.

Casa Batllo at night

Since I arrived at 9AM, I immediately walked around and took in a few Antonio Gaudi properties—one of my main interests in Barcelona, along with my love for the book “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which is set in the old city just south of my hostel. The wait to enter La Pedrera (known locally as “the quarry” for it’s blocky gray presence), an apartment house famed for it’s rooftop sculpture garden, was more than an hour, so I took a tour of Casa Batllo (BAT yo), once a private home for a weatlthy Barcelona family. The house burst with Gaudi's ornate natural themes of ocean life, dragons, curves. What an inspiration!

Gaudi was not formally trained as an architect, and built everything using plumb lines and models; his works will live forever because of their incredible whimsy mixed with practicality. Everything, down to the shape of the door handles, was carefully thought out and handcrafted. Genius! 

The multimedia presentation on the top floor was mind-blowing. There were no credits given, but what a beautiful tribute to an amazing design--the video is projected on top of a five-foot-tall model of the house. See it at Vimeo.

Roof of Casa Batllo

Gaudi's deep Catholic faith was evident in the crosses he placed here and there on the property, and the small family chapel off the main sitting room. 

That evening, I walked the length of beautifully lit Passig de Gracia, admiring the graceful buildings and ironwork. Barcelona is one beautiful city; even the sidewalks are beautiful.

Sitting room ceiling and light fixture

The servants quarters on the top floor were light and airy

The sidewalks of Barcelona; great to look at, hell on suitcase wheels

Getting There was Half - Fun

Christ parachuting to earth in Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral.
There were times when I would have opted for this mode of escape myself...

My dear neighbor John actually volunteered to give me a ride to the airporter at 4:45am, and while waiting for the airport bus I struck up a conversation with an attractive man who was off to Greece to visit his entertainer girlfriend and a fascinating, intelligent and charismatic older woman--we all decided to meet at Denny’s on our return for a grand slam breakfast.

The flight from SFO to Newark was an exercise in compression. We flew in United's new 737s, which, if it can be believed, are even tighter than the old crates we flew in before. I got jammed in the middle between a former geologist who was on his way to Stuttgart to research a book he was writing about Porsche motorcars and a young woman who slept the entire way.

A four-hour layover in Newark, but I was lucky this time—I got all my flights, though those first- and business-class seats that were available in the first few months of my travel are a distant dream. United has tightened up considerably, and the flights now are booked to the max; I consider myself fortunate that a few undesirable seats remain for employees and folks like me.

Sunday August 4 – Gay Christmas and the Other Side of Stand-by

Photo courtesy of Joe Shao--you'll recognize
these guys from the video (http://vimeo.com/71997462)

The radio advertised “Gay Christmas”, referring to the LGBT Pride Parade taking place today. All along Robson, Deman and Davie streets, rainbow flags flapped, storefronts were decorated with rainbow stripes (even Safeway!), pedestrian walkways were multi-striped, and people of every orientation dressed up a little or a lot. The Parade is a very big deal in Vancouver, especially in the West End. Viewers were gathering by 8AM; people had reserved tables near the street in cafes. And I was going to miss most of it.

My flight left at 3:14PM, so Joe gave me a ride to the airport ($20 to cover gas and time—not bad, as it would have been $12 by public transportation). 

The saving grace--a terrific collection of
Disney character toys in the Vancouver airport

I got there at 1PM, and the nightmare began. I had noticed flights that day were overbooked, but it didn’t occur to me that this might be a warning sign. When the gate opened for boarding a half-hour before take-off, I asked the airline rep about my chances for getting on—he told me, “not likely. I’ve had one stand-by here since 6AM. We routinely overbook here in Vancouver”. Not good news. In fact, they had to ask a paying customer to get off the plane for the next flight (he got a $400 certificate, so he didn’t suffer too much). Long story short, I was there for 9 ½ hours before I caught the last flight to San Francisco; the only reason I got on was because the flight was delayed 3 ½ hours and people who had to make connections out of SFO took other flights. The overbooking of Vancouver flights was a royal pain, but the delay was all SFO’s fault, as they’re only letting one international flight land at a time since the Asiana Airlines disaster a month ago (a pilot filled me in on this detail).

I got in at 12:45AM, and SFO was completely shut down. My only way of getting home was by taxi, and the fare was $120. I had exactly $46. I thought, “hey, the airporter will run in only 4 hours; I can wait it out”. I queried a couple of cab drivers whether they would consider my $46 for the fare and got turned down. As I was pacing around the baggage pick-up doors, a cabbie pulled into the end of the line (there were 30 cabs waiting, and no flights were landing…go figure). He yelled, “Where you going?”. I told him, and the amount of money I had on me. “I’ll do it,” he said, “but I can’t pick you up here—they’ll get mad (meaning the 30 cabs ahead of him). So I met him upstairs, and all I can say is, I’m glad there’s no traffic on the road at 2:30AM. Basically, he used the white line on the road as a guidance tool.

“Some people ask me how I can stand to work all night,” he said. “Coffee and cocaine. Just kidding.” As we neared my house, I mentioned that it was across from a well-known quick stop. “If it’s open, I’ll get myself a beverage,” he said.  It wasn’t, he didn’t, and I made it home at 3:30AM, all in one piece. I wish my driver the best of luck, and slightly more prudence. And I will never fly out of Vancouver again, Donald and Mickey be damned.

See the video: http://vimeo.com/71997462.

Last Day/Puerto Ayora

We awoke to beautiful dawn light illuminating the little town of Puerto Ayora, on the south end of Is. Santa Cruz. We said our farewells to the crew, and after a short panga ride to the dock, made our way through town to the Darwin Research Center. The center is concerned with keeping the varied species of land tortoises and iguanas from extinction; that's already happened on five of the archipelago's islands. You may have read about "Lonesome George", the last of his kind on one of the northern islands. Though he was brought to the Center and presented with a number of attractive female tortoises, he simply wasn't interested (the locals joke that he was gay. Or maybe it wasn't a joke). He died in 2012. One of the problems of attempting to interbreed animals from different islands is sterility in the offspring; even if the breeding "takes" with live young, the animals often die when they reach mating age, or they are unable to successfully reproduce. Though the islands don't seem that far apart physically, apparently the specialization that Charles Darwin noted has lasting effects.

A two-year old

The Darwin Center is a pleasant park that provides walkways threading through the grounds; we passed tortoises that were only a few inches in length to massive oldsters (they can live to be around 100 years). El Diablo, in spite of his unimpressive appearance, is the Center's champion. He mates with every female presented to him, usually successfully. What a guy!

El Diablo is very tired

We waited in town for a bus that took us through the lush, green highlands to the north part of the island; from there, a short ferry ride brought us back to Baltra and the airport. I met up once again with my Israeli friend, who stayed in Puerto Ayora the week--she had an adventure too, a mini-romance. It's a charming little town, and I could see coming directly here from Quito in the future. I suppose we both found what we were looking for.

Santa Cruz uplands

The flight back was uneventful, except for the risky choice of eating the salad served on the flight--by the time we touched down, I knew I had made a mistake. Fortunately, my armada of drugs including lomotil, tetracycline, pepto bismol tabs, and pro-biotics made for a short stint of bathroom sprints. What's traveling in South America without a little turista?

Once at the airport, I was unable to check into my next-day flights, so I took one of the airport cabs (these are marked on the side with a picture of an airplane) to my destination, the Galapagos Natural Life Hostel, which graciously gave me a free night for booking with Galapagos Last Minute. I expected it to be...a hostel. And it was. I didn't stay in the house proper, but in back, in one of the concrete block buildings that are single dwellings. Cold shower and TP-free toilet aside, it was a good overnight. I got to watch "Jennifer's Body", an old humor/horror/teenage angst DVD in English--what's not to like?

Painted on a Puerto Ayora wall...

At 4AM, my iPhone blasted out "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" as it had every morning (though usually it was at 6AM). I wandered out only to find no taxi waiting. Whoops. Again, I got lucky--the man who had booked my trip was staying at the hostel that night, visiting his mother; he woke up, turned the lights on, and called a taxi for me. Muchas Gracias again, Rodrigo! The cab driver had a religious program on the radio, and I listened to the silky voiced announcer expounding on "La luz marveloso" all the way to the airport. The "Migration" line was huge, and I was glad I gave it two hours. After one more luggage check, I took a seat in the waiting room; I was sweating it: only one flight a day from Quito to Houston, but I made it! In Houston, the thing I feared all along happened: I got bumped, and had to wait five hours for a plane to SFO. As is usual with anxiety, when the thing you fear most happens, you are relieved. I was pretty exhausted when we got into San Francisco (I had been either in an airport or some sort of moving vehicle for nearly 17 hours at that point), but the first of my adventures was a great success, and I felt elated. I even over-tipped the cab driver (I must have been tired).

Next: INDIA!

Galapagos Arrival

Thank COPU (that's Central Operating Principle of the Universe, for those in the know) for the kindness of strangers. First, I got the same cab driver as on the way in--a nice fellow, and above all, a helluva driver who got me to the airport on time in spite of morning traffic and lumbering buses that had all the speed of brontosauri at an herbal lunch counter. Then the fun really began...
 

Baltra airport

Ecuador has an elaborate system for just about everything, including getting foreigners from Quito to Baltra in the Galapagos, coupled with a near-total lack of information in English and among the airport personnel. I wandered around and around the small national airport, asking this person and that, getting different answers--often because of the language barrier and my nearly absent espanol. I ended up in the quite long TAME airline queue. Fortunately, a young man came to the line at the same time, and he spoke excellent English, thanks to six months in Chicago (I think every American that travels beyond US borders has thought, "why does everyone else in the world speak at least two languages except us?"). He went up to the front of the line with my info sheet and got the lowdown. I was to go to an unmarked door inside the terminal nearby. They then directed me to go outside. I immediately went to the wrong door, and was directed to another outside door. Finally, that was the right one! After that, back to inside door number 1, paid my $10, and was sent back to the TAME airline line, where my gallant young friend had held a place for me. Then he was delayed at the gate for some reason, a cell phone to his ear and a worried look on his face. I hope it turned out all right for him.

A sign at the Baltra airport

In the terminal, the flight was late, and TAME personnel kept disappearing. I ended up talking to an Israeli doctor, a woman who was also traveling alone, and together we managed to figure out which gate the flight was leaving from. She came enroute from Spain, couldn't land in Quito because of the torrential rains last night (the weather in Quito can manifest all four seasons in a day). Her flight ended up going to Quayaquil on the coast, enduring a six-hour layover, then flying into Quito; here she was, wandering around the same waiting room as me. The joys of travel; it's a way to test yourself, that's for sure.

Interesting note about the money: Ecuador uses American dollars as their currency; for change, they give you Sacajawea dollars, which I haven't seen in the US in years. They're highly valued here. Fun fact: Ecuador is named for the equator, which evenly divides the country and the city of Quito. 

The intense blue tint is from the blue shades on the dock

Reps from the yate Fragata picked us up at the airport in Baltra--I thought Baltra was a town, but it's a military installation. All together, we are three young couples, three older couples, a young single girl, and yours truly--an international assortment, from Holland, Switzerland, Canada, French Canada, and America. A jolting bus ride from the military installation brought us to the boat. Before we boarded, we got a taste of what the Galapagos is famous for--a sleeping marine iguana kept guard outside the boat launch and a sassy sea lion posed magnificently for pictures on a bench.

When I say the descriptive "first class", what comes to mind? Chilled cocktails on the foredeck? An abundance of hot water any time the urge strikes to shower? This is not Fragata, a slightly careworn boat whose last refitting was a decade past. Not that the crew doesn't try--they definitely make up for the faded brightwork. Yacht life isn't quite what I expected--for one thing, the simple act of taking a pee is not at all simple. No paper can enter the sewage that is flushed into the open sea in the Galapagos--that means, wipe (or more realistically, dab) and dispose of the paper in a container next to the toilet. Poop? We won't even go there. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who did a little toilet diving the first day…

The boat took us to Sombrero Chino, a small island south of Is. Santiago, where we went for our first snorkel--the water sparkled with schools of silvery anchovies, and the reefs were populated with all manner of colorful fish: pastel pink and yellow parrotfish, yellow-tailed wrasses, a cobalt blue sea star and much more (the Galapagos video is ready! Check it out:  vimeo.com/joanneorionmiller). It was an excellent dive followed by a short walk among a few sea lions with adorable pups. The sun disappeared into a neon sunset. A few of us gathered on the Fragata's sun deck to watch the last of the golden light darken to shades of gray-blue.

 

I'm on my Way/Galapagos

 

This morning I fly from San Francisco to Houston, then Houston to Quito, Ecuador. My anxiety level was such last night that I woke up with a stomachache at 1:30AM, managed to doze until 2:30, then gave up and got up. The airporter didn't leave until 4:30AM, so I dealt with a cranky cat and assorted compulsive actions, like reboiling my eggs because I left them out (I ended up eating one and throwing the other away in the Houston airport. I just couldn't face another egg.). One real gift--and I recognized this with enormous gratitude as the universe watching out for me since I did ask for help--I remembered that the second half of my flight itinerary had a little "check in" button after it, and I had only checked into the first half, to Houston. I got up, turned on the computer (all the while accompanied by Ozzie's yowling over my strange behavior) and took another look. I got the confirm number and went to check it against the one I already had, only to discover that my passport was nowhere in my bag. I had laid it on top of the cabinet when I repacked, and I might have left it altogether. Disaster!

The first flight from SFO started out in the dark at 6:45 and I tried to sleep through the bad stomach with little luck. The gasses in the body expand with the canned air pressure in the cabin, and apparently I had plenty to expand; ginger ale helped. 






When I looked out the window, the dawn formed a thin red line on the horizon in front of us. The ground below was perfectly clear, a study in Chiarascuro; white snow and black trees, stitched together by a few thin roads. The wrinkled terrain looked like carelessly dropped velvet. 


That broadened into something extraordinary--a series of mountains and deep canyons, and a river so wide in places it was a tin foil-bright lake.
Considering we were 30,000 feet up, those were some mountains! It was exquisite in the sharp light of dawn. I took some shots out the plane window, though I doubt the pix will do justice. After a while, arrow-straight roads began to appear, so long and thin, you could have darned a giant's socks with them. Then further signs of human taming of the landscape...neat squares and circles connected by lines. I wonder what that wonder was:-)


***
During a very dull 4-hour layover in Houston, I met a friendly, studious-looking guy while waiting for the Quito flight. An Ecuadorian, a university teacher...he wanted to show me around, but he's working the only day I'll be in town. Hard to determine whether he was just friendly or hitting on me. Most likely the former. He wanted to give me his phone number--I had to let him know my phone doesn't work outside the US, much to my disgruntlement (It's one of the reasons I bought an iPhone, but only iPhone4 and above can take international SIM cards). We chatted about the recent election; he said most Ecuadorians like President Rafael Correa, but few know that he's shutting down a number of colleges in the country, and eliminating career tracks. I didn't know that education, even higher education, is free in Ecuador, at least for now. A recent article on RT asks, "Is Ecuador America's new enemy number one?"


***
We've begun our descent into Quito. It's a four-hour time difference (all together, counting the 2-hour difference in Houston). I've been in the air a total of 10 hours, plus a 4-hour layover. However, I made every flight. Another part of my adventure begins. I'm looking forward to seeing southern stars--another first.