flying into quito is supposed to be dangerous.....a two mile strip (only one...yes todd) and right in the middle of the city and right in the middle of the two mountain ranges.......i've been lucky enough to utilize the airport 4 times last week and will use it again next week! there was an iberia flight that landed in the ditch at the end of it, and also took out some radar system, so flights are irregular (depending on whether or not companies WANT to fly in or not)....and also due to visibility.....jessica's plane came in the other day only to turn back to guayaquil...i had a flight cancelled......and this morning coming in from cuenca......got to see the plane at the end of the runway! it's definitely convenient, though, this whole airport in the middle of the city thing.....but in a few years the airport will be moving to the valley below, which will make a 15 min. trip to the airport an hour or more trip.....(although they say it's very turbulent air in the valley!)

taking a bus up here in the mountains takes too long (flights are generally 30-45 min. anywhere in the country, but car trips to the same places will take 8-12 hrs!?)......and not necessarily safer either....along with the typical crosses indicating some fatal accident, you also find blue hearts painted all over the roads.....hmmm......

you can see me, mark & valeria very happy to return safely to quito!

cuenca! a beautiful city to the southern part of the country - still in the same mountain range.....it's a 10hr. bus ride from quito OR a 30min. flight....we opted for the flight, but our flight did not leave ontime, so we missed all of our meetings....we ended up just going for dinner, then to sleep in the beautiful restored colonial hotel...then an amazing breakfast, then back to quito....

we found this menagerie of fake and real farm animals......the calf seems to be a real stuffed toy.....

i lived in cuenca in the summer of 1990 in this old house in the colonial side - we went to see it, and now it is a german bar & cafe called wunderbar - the best caipiroska i have had in ecuador so far!

then ate chifles in the street from this very cute paper bag....

there are also these chinese dollar stores ALL over ecuador now......hmmm.......

you can see valeria here in the park taking pics, too....she is my boss? and also ana maria's best friend.......etcetcetc.....

and you see mark here also, the consultant from germany....we are having a nice breakfast at the hotel before we take off again for quito!

today, saturday, all day.....charles & i went around quito with jazz visiting his projects.....one, the new coca cola headquarters - a very nice locally constructed green bldg. and the latest phase of el recreo, which will be the largest shopping center in ecuador.........coca cola! "lucha por tus suenhos!" someone's been drinking pepsi on the job????? coca cola has definitely been doing it's job here......you often see people walking in the streets drinking out of 2 litre bottles of coke...

so, when i left new york....sadly i had to leave a few thousand pounds of crap in storage......including most of my rocks & shells & sticks.....

and in these two months here, i have only made it down to the coast once! anyway, am managing to create a new collection of rocks......just rinsing them off in this great sink in the servant's area (ummmm...we don't have one) it's a shallow concrete basin with this grid and a series of holes on one side where equal amounts of water shoot out so clothes can be pounded and washed by hand.....i think the clothes get super clean, but they also lose half their fibers this way.....

this morning i was late 1/2 an hour for my first meeting...then i was late 2 hrs (really 1 hr...because i told them i would be late one hour) to my next one.......yesterday i was late 45 minutes for my one meeting.....it's hard to figure out, really, since people are anywhere from 10 min. late to an hour.......i was kicking myself a bit today, though...as i don't want to get too comfortable doing this....aghhh!!!!!






anyway, so the first meeting today was in the colonial core, working on a museum foundation project. we've been meeting for two months already, and are just about getting it together to organize this thing. the man we are working with is an amazing artist, Estuardo Maldonado......

he also has an interesting story....he's in his 70s now, and he had been living in rome for about 50 years, just returning to ecuador 10 years ago? he has one of the largest ecuadorian precolumbian archaeological collections, as well as a collection of his own artworks.

he is from a small town near quito, but was kicked out of the house by his father when he was 14 yrs. old.....for wanting to become an artist....he left for guayaquil on the coast, earned a scholarship to study in an art school there, then.....won a prize in rome, went there and stayed....married an italian woman...then proceeded to create his life's work....painting, then mostly sculpture in stone and then studying the hyper-cube - and working with steel......

all the while, collecting ecuadorian archaeological pieces as they became available to the market (upset that everything was leaving ecuador in that manner)......and then 50 years later returns to ecuador with 6containers worth of artwork.....and is now donating it to the country as patrimony!

anyway, so this is one of the things jazz, ana maria, and i are working on.....the meeting today was with a govt. official, trying to figure out how to deal with this piece of property to create a house museum - before the other museum project we are figuring out (that's the architecture studio i took over from ana maria.....to propose a site and building ideas for an international competition)!

anyway....so then i was late for the second meeting.......

oh, and estuardo has some beautiful staircases....! there were some other amazing details with all the different thicknesses of the adobe walls......