A Near Death Experience and the Return of Esteban

  Quito, Ecuador
Friday, March 23, 2007

STEVE SAYS....

How do you like that title? I believe J.K. Rowling was considering it before she settled on ¨The Deathly Hallows¨ for her final Potter book. Actually, the catchy title is just to mask the fact that each blog is getting increasingly worse. It´s the M. Night Shyamalan strategy.

In all honestly this latest installment should be called, ¨Know Your Limitations.¨ Let me expand:

1) Comida: Who likes hamsters, or I guess in this case, guinea pigs? I´m sure many of you may have had one for a pet when you were a child or even own one now (I can´t believe I already used my Richard Gere joke). You might have named your childhood pal ¨Benny,¨ ¨Gnasher,¨or ¨Gidget,¨ all great names by the way. What I´m getting at is, well, I ate your lovable, fluffy friend today. He cost $16 US and came with a side of potatoes and avocadoes in a delicious cream sauce.

Pretty expensive sure, but In Ecuador, guinea pig or ¨cuy¨ is considered a delicacy. And to be safe, I ate it at a classy restaurant to make sure what I was getting wasn´t the dumpster delicacy known as ¨raton,¨ or rat. 

Guinea pig... a meal in itself

Even tastier in person

Taking a bite

A wave from the guinea pig

It even has teeth

Bye bye guinea pig

 





And this guinea pig was pretty damn tasty. It went down smooth, but unfortunately, something did not earlier in the week and for the previous 5 days I´ve been puking more than James Tone at an office Christmas party. From now on, I will watch what I eat.  

2) Bailar: The reason I ate the guinea pig is the same reason I agreed to join Sara for salsa lessons. 

Me: ¨I don´t want to eat that.¨
Sara: ¨It would be great on the blog.¨
Me: ¨Do you think it comes with ketchup?¨

Me: ¨I don´t know, dancing´s pretty fruity.¨
Sara: ¨Yeah, but you could write about it.¨
Me: ¨Ah fuck, could I do it in these shoes?¨

Ricky got laid in high school

So, in the midst of a severe stomach virus (Sara´s account may differ), one brave soul fought the elements (I believe there was a severe thunder storm that day) and trotted out like the tarnished legends before him (ie: Jerry Rice, Emmitt Smith) to strut his stuff. I would give it 110 percent, I would give it ¨the old college try,¨ I would once again transform into ¨Esteban.¨ And in a country where ¨Ricky Martin: Unplugged¨ is currently topping the charts, I would conquer the dance floors of Quito.

Actually, I would last about 15 minutes. And while I´m accustomed to ¨not lasting long,¨ this episode was particularly pathetic. No wonder I didn´t get laid in high school.

What can I say, you can´t change who you are....although I did try to channel Neil Salinis at one point. This was one time I did know my limitations, but it was unfortunately after I paid for the whole week.

R.I.P. Esteban.

3) Espanol: The reason I´ve been so desperate for material is that we´ve been in Quito for the past 2 weeks learning spanish. Actually, for Sara´s sake, if anyone from the CBC is reading this, we´ve been studying spanish non-stop for the past month with no plans to stop. Ahh, educational leave, brilliant, just brilliant. 

Anyway, before my lessons began I could speak spanish about as well as Tie Domi can speak English. There was a lot of grunting, it took a lot of time, but eventually my point got across, and luckily for me, unlike him I was not on television for any of this.   

But after just 2 weeks I´m proud to say my spanish has improved from Domi-level to the point where I´m receiving compliments like: ¨You speak spanish like The Terminator.¨

So I´m not great, but you can´t argue with progress.

The prom king and queen

And I owe it all to my teacher Isabel. While I know the ABC show ¨Ugly Betty¨ is based on a Colombian program of the same name, I had to double check to make sure I wasn´t on the set of the Ecuadorian version. But like all ugly people (myself included) she was a sweetheart of a person, although a tad gullible. Every day in our one-one class (grrrrr), I managed to slip in fake tidbits of info about Sara in espanol. Stuff like, ¨Sara kicks stray dogs,¨ ¨Sara was fired from her job for stealing,¨and my personal favourite, ¨Sara sniffs drugs.¨ Ha, that should get her back for trying to turn me into Patrick Swayze.

Needless to say, my spanish needs work, and my limitations are once again becoming a problem.

4) Rafting (no surprise, I have no idea how to write this is in spanish):  I had never gone white-water rafting before. I´ve never had the opportunity. And  I was sort of scared off after watching ¨The River Wild.¨ The kidnapping plotline was fine, I think it was the Meryl Streep´s shirt getting wet part that scarred my young mind. Who am I kidding, I´d take Glenn Close, nevermind Meryl.

Sorry, getting back on point... Last weekend Sara and I escaped Quito´s clutches and traveled 4 hours to Banos, a small community nestled between volcanoes and various hot-springs (Sidenote: Hot springs are awesome).

We arrived Friday night and immediately went to book our rafting trip, a trip Sara was, let´s say, a tad nervous about. When we walk into the place we overhear a conversation between the company´s employees and a young couple, Belinda (Australian) and Oliver (Hasselhoffian). 

Couple: ¨We´ve been waiting 3 days for Class V rapids (this is the highest, most dangerous of the 5 classes), are you sure we´re going to be able to go?¨

Company: ¨No problem, I guarantee you´ll go tomorrow.¨

(Couple exits scene. Sara and a strikingly handsome gentleman enter the conversation)

Strikingly handsome gentleman: ¨Any chance we can do some Class III rafting tomorrow, my girlfriend´s a little scared and I think that´ll be enough.¨

Company: ¨It just so happens we have a Class III rafting trip going out tomorrow.¨

SHG: ¨With that last couple? (Heads nod)....¨Aren´t they doing Class V?¨ 

Company: ¨Ahh, Class IV actually, and because of the time of year, the river´s more like Class III. It´s the dry season, don´t worry.¨

I'm just mad because Geraldo nailed Sara

Might be a good time to mention it had rained for the past week. These guys have the crediblity of Geraldo. 

(SHG gives an unconvinced nod and considers walking out, when a lightbulb suddenly pops-up over his head. Knowing all that stands between him and a book deal is his girlfriend and a big wave, he somehow convinces her to go on the trip. He is strikingly handsome after all. More likely still, he used a pout and started to tear up).

So after yet another night of non-stop rain, we´re going rafting. But on the way, the van we´re in pulls off the road and a question is proposed by one of the guides.

¨Hey, do you want to jump off a bridge?¨ 

While I´ve been sky-diving and bungee jumping in New Zealand, this was a tad different. First of all, I´m in Ecuador. Secondly, I´ve had little warning or time to think about it, and lastly, the whole operation appeared to consist of a bridge, a canyon, and 2 guys with a rope.

So, the obvious answer was, ¨Yeah, I´ll jump.¨

C´mon, it was only $15, a virtual bargain.

So after getting strapped up, I step on to the bridge railing (making Muhammad Ali´s legs look steady by comparison) and receive this advice in broken english: ¨Dive far or it won´t be so good for (motioning towards balls).¨

"Shaky leg" Steve

Look at that form

Blurry but still cool

A bargain indeed. But I do it, my balls don´t get crushed, and it´s great. We continue towards the rapids.

After being trained on the finer points of rafting for all of 15 minutes, the head guide, Tito, inspires us with this speech: ¨Last night, much rain from mountains OK, water very fast OK, Class V OK, we may flip OK.¨ 

¨Ugh, OK.¨

daunting

And we´re off. And the river is friggin´fast. The trees are shaking as the rapids bang up against them. In the sky, suspicious looking black birds circle. Not vultures by any means, but ominous nonetheless. Not trying to paint too bold a picture or anything, but a butterfly was even struggling to raise itself out of the water before Oliver helped it aboard the raft with his paddle.

waves

Then about a half-hour into our trip, we approach a particularly dangerous rough patch. Tito starts shouting instuctions, ¨Ready ladies.....forward....forward faster chicos.¨ It´s like we´re battling for our lives when suddenly, a huge wave crashes against the raft.

Somebody´s knocked overboard, somebody´s in the water. To my surprise, it´s the strikingly handsome gentleman, it´s me, shit!

To this point, the scariest moment in my life had occured in a Newfoundland water park when I was 6 or 7. I was fearlessly jumping from inner tube to inner tube when I lost my footing, falling headfirst into one of them. And because I had a ridiculously fat head as a child, I was stuck. I was drowning. Struggling to get my Bob Mckenzie-like noggin out of that tube for what felt like a minute.

Now, 20 years later, I´m spitting up water, desperately trying to make my way back to the boat. I make it, but because my work-out regimen over the past 5 years has consisted of only walking and eating 2 desserts, I´m too much of a pussy to pull my fat ass up. After what felt like an eternity, I´m finally pulled in by a guide (I tipped him a whole $10 for saving my life when we returned to shore), but I´m flopping like a dying fish on the bottom of the raft when another wave hits. Someone else is out of the boat. Amazingly it´s not Sara -- she must have glued her ass to that thing -- it´s Belinda.

Shipwrecked

I drag myself up out of the fetal position and manage to pull Belinda out of the water (much like Scott Stapp pulled himself out of the water in that incredibly gay Creed video from a few years back), feeling like a hero until I remembered it was my fault she was in there in the first place.

We reach calmer waters and celebrate being alive by raising our paddles together in the air like beer glasses. But wait, we all didn´t make it. The butterfly´s floating upside down on the bottom of the boat. A guinea pig, Esteban and now a butterfly. ¨Noooooo, why is life so cruel?¨

It was worse than this, I swear!

The rest of us finish the day incident free. And by the end of it, Oliver and I feel like pros, stabbing our paddles at the oncoming waves like forks into helpless hamsters. And as we float to a stop near gorgeous waterfalls, even the ominous black birds are replaced by magnificent white ones.

We made it. Everything in tact, but my book deal. I wonder how Sara feels about diving with sharks in Venezuela or perhaps a visit to a tiger petting zoo in Brazil? Hmmmm.