Remembering Tena and other thoughts of the day

About an eight hour drive east from Quito lies the mighty capital city of the Napo Province, Tena (population 20 000). To reach it, you have to find the unpaved highway down from the Andes at Baeza, or arrive from Baños de Agua Santa on a highway which makes for an even bumpier ride. In Ecuador, you only stop to wonder whether you took a wrong turn when the road leads straight into someone's backyard! When you arrive to the road carousel with the huge statue of a naked Indian in the middle, you've found it.

Where we stayed in the jungle was very close to Tena, and so we ended up eating out there some times, because the closer village of Archidona offered nothing except an interestingly painted church and a drunkard taking the longest pee I have ever witnessed infront of it. Once again, it was Lonely Planet to the rescue with its catchy descriptions of the places to eat. Interested in how such a town in the middle of nowhere looked, I took a little walk around and some pictures of signs which you can see in this entry.

What I remember best about Tena, which, by the way, sounds like it could very well be the name of a city in Finland, is the main pedestrian bridge which you could actually feel bouncing beneath your feet as you crossed the river, shops selling everything from chewing gum to spare parts of lamps (these shops hardly exist anymore in the cities - they are essential for the survival of the population and store absolutely anything you need) and this ice cream vendor, who was probably running for the title of sexiest man in the jungle.

The colour on our cheeks (and Mirela's hair)is, by the way, from a sort of fruit you pop open to reveal the liquidy dye it carries inside. It would make a nice and exotic alternative to the lipstick high school students here love painting all over the other students' faces on Valentine's day!

I was experimenting with the Family History demo again today when I came across some 14th cousin 58 times remove or other called Florance Valentine, and realised she was born on the 14th of February! In a way it surprised me that Valentine's day already existed in the 19th century, but when I looked it up on the internet I found out the history of this celebration of "love and fertility" dates back to ancient times. It's scary to imagine what would happen now if it would only have been a celebration of fertility back then.

Here are some thoughts I had during this day: First of all, I really can't stand the look of long nails. If well taken care of, they can look fine on women, but on men I can only tolerate it if you're a guitarist (I'm glad I thought of that ;). Second of all, I remember pondering the essence of motion sickness. I used to always feel sick in cars and buses when I was small, but now that I'm older I have no difficulty reading in cars. I understand there are such bad cases of motion sickness that a flying somewhere can be torture for somebody. This must be really awful, but does it really mean there has to be a sick bag in every seat pocket in every airplane? I just can't imagine being sick in an airplane, even though I just sat through eight hours of heavy winds over the Atlantic.

I also found entertainment in the price list of Globetel, an international call operator I used today for making two phone calls abroad. If people nowadays wonder at how flight prices don't make sense anymore, they should check how much they are paying for international phone calls. Did you know that calling New Zealand on Globetel costs exactly the same as calling Slovakia, which is a member of the European Union, and that a phone call to neighbouring Tallinn is more expensive than calling Hawaii? The most expensive places to call from Finland are the Cook Islands! The cheapest flight I found on the internet from Helsinki to Rarotonga International Airport cost over 4000 euro and involved stops in London, Los Angeles and Tahiti (the flight from Los Angeles to Tahiti alone takes 9 hours). Suddenly Quito seems right next door!

Of course this got me searching the web for more, and I came upon the official website (www.cook-islands.com), where I found some very interesting information and statistics, including the schedule of the bus which circles the main island in less than an hour.