Richard's Travel Blog

As many of you know, coronavirus has greatly affected Ecuador. We haven’t gotten it, nor has anyone we know, despite the fact the rate of morbidity and mortality has been quite high. We have had to comply with the distancing rules, but that hasn’t inconvenienced us much. We’ve been able to work with the curfew, which was from 2 PM to 5 AM but is now 11 PM to 5 AM. Many businesses, restaurants, government offices, schools etc were closed, but those is opening up, for now. The buses are running again. Masks are still required outdoors, but that’s no big deal. They may have to shut things down again, as the public hospitals as maxed out, but how that works out remains to be seen.

The big deal for us is that while life is easier with the easing of restrictions, the consequences are severe for many if not most people. We’re okay because my income stream remains steady. We don’t need jobs or customers. We don’t have kids in school. so the schools being closed doesn’t affect us. And so on. What does affect us is the near collapse of the health care system. So far, our province is still barely above water in taking care of covid patients but many clinics, public and private, aren’t even open. Specialists in the public system, which we are in, are no seeing patients. Elective services are not happening. If you can get into the system for something, the wait and cancellations make it practically much more difficult than before

A looming problem is the social and economic problems already showing themselves. Most Ecuadorans are financially strapped and the economy is running at a fraction of it’s former pace. Ecuador was already in dire straights. Now, things are worse. It’s going to start being ugly around here. Desparation is palpable and isn’t going to get better soon, especially if they have to shut things down again. We don’t want to witness  violent protests like the ones we saw a few months ago when the government tried to cut subsidies on gas and gasoline. When it has to cut expenses even more, it could be even worse.

Myung has some nagging heath issues she was having a hard time being addressed even before coronavirus. Plus, we aren’t getting any younger. So, we talked about moving a couple of months ago and decided to make a move. That move is to Korea.

During the worst of the outbreak, no one was even allowed to cross provincial borders. Our province, Azuay, borders Guayas where Guayaquil is. You probably saw how bad it got there. Fortunately, the restrictions on movement worked and that didn’t happen here. Now we can leave Azuay, which means we can go to Guayaquil or Quito for international flights.

It’s long story about all the problems we had getting a flight. I’ll spare you. In the end, we got one that so far hasn’t been cancelled. We leave from Quito on Tuesday, July 21, insha allah.

Obviously, it isn’t so easy as before. All international arrivals in Korea must be quarantined for 14 days. The governement will just put you in a place for $100/day per person, or you can go to a plac that will have you. Myung arranged the latter in Gyeongju, where we plan to live. Without her, I would have had to just throw myself at mercy of the government. But she’s got it all engineered. Korea is really making sure they keep the lid on coronavirus. We will be met when we get through immigration, taken to the high speed train to Gyeongju, put in a special quarantine car, met in Gyeongju and transported to our airbnb place that accepted us. There we sit, our cellphone location monitored and visited by health department personnel. Fortunately, delivery of groceries and really about everything else is common in Korea, so there is no reason for us to have to break quarantine.

It’s with mixed feelings we leave Ecuador. If this hadn’t happened, we may have never left. There are plusses and minuses to leaving and going to Korea. The weather is better here. The beauty is all around, much of it within walking distance. I speak enough Spanish to get by. Life’s inexpensive. Up till now, the health care system was adequate. We have friends we’ll miss. We’ll miss our dog, which we found a nice home for. Korean is very difficult for me. And we had hoped for stability.

On the other hand, Korea has much to offer. Obviously, Korean is Myung’s native language, so that’s good for her. I’ll manage, but it’s going to be like when we lived in China. It’s politically stable. The health care is very good, and cheap because I am married to a Korean. It’ll be fun to be in a modern place where stuff works. Though the weather isn’t s perfect as here and the air isn’t as clean, we’ll be where there are seasons again. Including winter, brrr. Korea has changed wince we were there before. Many of the products I’m used to, like cheese, you couldn’t find are available now. There’s even a Costco about 20 kilometers away. Maybe I’ll even buy a car and we’ll live like other people in developed countries. What a concept! It’s been so long. Finally, Korean people are really nice. I’m looking forward to when we won’t have to wear masks and be able to see people smiling when they pass.

Of course, there are so many details about all of this I could go into, but I don’t think they are too interesting. So I’m going to go ahead and post this. When (if?) we get there, I’ll have nothing much to do in our apartment for two weeks and will write about our plans for Gyeongju. After that, I can get out and take pictures, though we’ll be busy getting a place to live and getting settled. We’re back to having what we can carry. (Our stuff here is all sold or given away.)

So, as always and even more true now, be well all of you.

Hi again. Here’s that post about my little whale/boobie/sea lion watching trip to Machala.

The things the tour operator said would happen almost all happened. The only thing that didn’t happen was another boobie walk because it was low tide and the boat couldn’t get to the island. The poor operator had to improvise everything, though, and that is a long story almost worth telling. Suffice it to say, everything he arranged fell through and he had to arrange on the fly a different hotel, different places to eat, and a different boat.

I gotta show you the dopey boat we went two hours out to sea in.

The main reason I went was to whale watch. There were no great breachings, just a lot of backs and flukes. This is the only photo I got, such as it is.

The ride out to the islands where the whales and most of the sea lions and bobbies are was a couple of hours long. We were told that the littlest island, the one on the right above, is going to disappear in 10-15 years. The big island, below, will be there for quite a while.

No one lives on the island, but there is a shelter for researchers which doubles as habitat for multitudes of birds and sea lions.

Many of the sea lions came out to greet us.

So, it was a nice ride, anyway. On the way back, we stopped for lunch at a island right next to Machala for lunch. Nice, too, though the beach was not worth photographing.

The morning and early afternoon on the day we left, we went to an organic/sustainable finca (little farm) called Happy Fruit. This isn’t Southeast Asia, so it wasn’t a cannabis farm, despite the name. It was a very nice place, though, with the highest quality products.

And the lunch was scrumptious, in a nice setting.

Machala itself is an ordinary Ecuadorean city, even though it’s the fourth largest with 241,000 inhabitants. I saw nothing worth photographing. Here’s the central plaza and church.

With that, I’ll sign off for now. Hopefully, I won’t wait so many months before blogging again. Until then, be well, all of you.

Bill and me

Yes, it’s been forever since I last wrote a post. It’s been forever since Myung or I went anywhere, though, and our life is really pretty uneventful. We have our simple life. Routine works for us. I don’t regret in any way the effort it took to travel so many years, in so many ways. The rewards have been beyond what I could have hoped for. Indeed, 45 years ago when I took my first long backpacking journey, I had no idea what could be experienced. And, for sure, one thing I learned was the more you know, the more you don’t know, and that keeps my curiosity a bit intact. That said, neither of us is too inclined to do more than easy little trips now and then.

Something did happen. My brother, Bill, contacted me and said he wanted to come down. What a pleasant surprise! I’m, like, sure! Any time is good! Well, he came and visited us in Cuenca for a few days, then he and I went to San Cristobal Island, Galapagos for five days. We’ve had very different lives, to say the least, and this was the first time we’ve spent so much time together since he was a teenager and I was a kid.

I think the last time we spend some number of days together, just us, was when he was a counselor at a boys camp between Willits and Fort Bragg, California, back in the 60’s. I went up there (I don’t remember how) and I have some vague memories of the place and him showing me around. I forget what we did. Boy, have we changed since! He became a family man and, with his wife Rita, very successfully raised three daughters and was a successful lawyer. My life is long story which many of you know. Now we’re a couple of old guys, pretty much on cruise control at this point in our lives.

Our long histories, without being that close all these decades, made his visit all the better. I’m pretty familiar with Bill’s life, but he has little idea what the travel/living abroad part of my life has been like. I enjoyed the opportunity to give him a peek into it. Only so much is possible in the eight or nine days he was down here, but he got the overview. He saw where and how we live, got to be around Myung, and he and I went out to the Galapagos, just the two of us.

Enough text. Time for some pics.

We had a few days to take in some of the sites, though it rained for at least part of every day he was in Cuenca. We went on the free walking tour of El Centro. Bill took a lot of photos, and he sent many of them to me. Probably, he has photos of the cathedral, colonial buildings and all that, but I didn’t get those. You’ve seen all that stuff in my previous posts, anyway. (Can you believe we’ve been here one month short of five years?!) I did want to do with him the stuff that makes up our everyday life. So we walked along the Yanuncay River where Myung and I go all the time, often with Mandu….

… and at the brand newly renovated Mercado 12 de Abril. He took many photos there. There’s nothing like this in America, of course.

The guide on the walking tour took us to Mercado 10 de Agosto. Much of upstairs is a food court which, again, is a little different than you find in America. The carnitas are more in your face than in the States.

We went to the flower market.

So it went. I would have loved to have had him around for longer so that his stay wouldn’t have been like giving him a tour of the highlights, but he had things to do back in Stockton.

We decided to make a quick trip out to the Galapagos. So we picked one of the inhabited islands and did a few of the activities you can do in a few days. Basically, there are about a half dozen activities 95% of the tourists to San Cristobal do. Scuba diving is one. We didn’t do that. He isn’t licensed and I retired from diving after getting the bends in the Philippines that time.

The first thing we did, after getting off the plane and checking into a hotel, was take a guided walk to a place they call Frigate Bird Hill. The guide gave us a nature talk about animals, flora and fauna. It was a good place to start. 1) It only took a couple of hours and was informative, and 2) It’s the best view of the main town, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, and of the sunset.

Puerto Baqueriza Moreno from Frigate Bird Hill

Trail to the top of Frigate Bird Hil

View along the west side of San Cristobal Island

Frigate bird

Sunset on San Cristobal Island

The first whole day we were there, we took a day trip to nearby (a couple hours away) Isla Espanola, That was a good place to get your blue-footed boobie/sea lion/swimming iguana fix. I always like to see something new, no mean feat for someone who has seen it all, so to speak. I hadn’t seen boobies up close, swimming iguanas at all, or swam with friendly sea lions. The trip to Isla Espanola had it all.

I don’t have a camera to take into the ocean and Bill only had his iPhone camera (He took most of the pictures) so there are no pictures of snorkeling with the sea lions. Let me tell you, that was great. These sea lions are little, not like in the North Pacific. And they aren’t dangerous, like in the North Pacific. We snorkeled around and they swirled all around us, brushing up against us and looking in our eyes as if to say come on, let’s play, can’t you swim any better than that? It was great. Up on land, we got a guided tour of different kinds of boobies (blue-footed, red-footed and Nazca) and their nests….

Cute nursing sea lion pic

We have no photos of the iguanas swimming. You’ll just have to take my word for it; they do swim.

There was another little half day island walk and snorkel trip. Then we just chilled out. We had fun eating seafood several times, bought t-shirts and all that. Then it was time for Bill to go home. Too bad. I hope he comes again.

Otherwise, I guess I’ll see him again the next time I get to Northern California. Who knows when that may be. I have no need to go, nor plans right now. Maybe in a year or so. I spent almost $40K on my rentals in the last year and am trying to recover.

So, that’s it for now. I took a little group tour to the coast last weekend. I’ll blog about that shortly.

Until then, be well all of you.

That is me being out of the sun on San Cristobal

When we moved, we left behind the old house owners’ dog, Luna. We got a new one, and a few people have asked me to post some pictures.

Mandu is Korean for dumpling, as in Wonton in Chinese, Potsticker in English, Momo in Tibetan, Ravioli in Italian, etc.. She’s six and a half months old now. She was about two months old when we got her at the public market.

It’s usually cool in Cuenca and inside our house. She used to love hanging out in my hoodie.

She’s very affectionate…

…and would chew us all the time if we let her, but we stopped that. Whew, her baby teeth were sharp!

Well, she’s still puppy-like and affectionate and likes to hang out with me, but she’s no little girl anymore. Climbing up on my neck is out. She weights 12+ kilos now. Oh, and she got spayed three days ago.

She’s going to be a good dog. Already she’s not totally rambunctious, though she is big ol’ tomboy for sure.

Hasta luego

Hi y’all. It’s been a while again, but again there hasn’t been too much to talk about. We did move to a new place, and I was going to blog about that whole story but I’m glad I didn’t That’s behind us.

In brief, what happened when we returned from California and why we moved is the owners completely remodeled our house while we were gone. They just went on in, moved walls and added a bathroom, as well as paint, which is what they asked if they could do and I said okay. Myung and I felt our space was invaded. In fact, if we had a written contract they would not have been allowed to do that. So, withing a few days we moved. We had packed up most of our stuff to give them room to paint, so moving was a breeze. Luckily, we found a place right away. It’s okay. We might get another when our one year lease is up. It’s definitely nicer than the last place, and bigger with two bedrooms and a good kitchen. It’s a hundred dollars a month more, but still cheap by US standards and fair by Cuenca standards.

It was sad to leave the owners’ dog we got attached to, but we got a new one and we like her. They couldn’t be more different, but we like our new one, too. I will post some photos in my next post which I’ll do after this one.

For a lot of people, moving to a new place is a big deal, but we’ve been so mobile over the years, this was like going to the next town and staying in the next hostel, so I’ll just move onto the trip we took to Florida for two weeks, just returning last Saturday.

Myung’s computer was dying, so that gave us a reason to go shop in Miami. Coincidentally, it died completely on the day before we left. As I’ve mentioned before, many things are so expensive in Ecuador that if you have enough things to buy it’s worth going to the States to buy it there. The computer I bought for Myung was $370 on Amazon (which doesn’t deliver to Ecuador) but would cost double here. Our round trip air tickets from Guayaquil, plus a couple of night’s stay in Guayaquil, plus $24 round trip on the van from Cuenca to Guayaquil was was about a thousand bucks. So if we stocked up on stuff and did some discretionary shopping, we could and did come out ahead. And we got to be tourists in South Florida.

Whew, Myung can shop! She searched bargains for days. It’s fun for her. I got a couple of t-shirts, not counting the free Miami Marlins jerseys we got when we went to a ballgame. We also stocked up on Korean foods which are even more than double price here, if you can find it at all. I don’t have pictures (which by the way were taken on Myung’s new camera, as hers also happened to die just before we left) because malls are malls, Whole Foods and Trader Joes are what they are, and the Asian markets ain’t near what they are in the Bay Area. But shopping was a lot of why we went and it’s what we did for several days, probably over half the time we were there.

This text is getting so long, it’s time for a photo to break up the action at least.  How about the first picture taken with the new camera?

In my opinion, the beaches in and around Miami are not that interesting. For us, it was worth one picture, and that’s not even worth posting. There is a beach in the keys, Bahia Hondo, which got billed in 1995 as best beach in America. Are you kidding? Here are pics. It’s not even in the top 500. What are they thinking? No features out in the water, so-so beach itself on one side. Sheesh.

We stayed in a cheap hotel with kitchenette on Marathon Key and did pretty much nothing. Sunset pictures? Blah. Here’s one.

Marathon and the rest of the keys were hit hard by Hurricane Irma last year. There used to be a lot of mangroves along the east side of the island. A lot of them were trashed. Here’s what it looks like at the end of the street we stayed on.

It’s not too bad in the other direction but, then again, the keys ain’t no Malaysia as far as beach and mangroves go.

The main thing to do out there, of course, is going to Key West. I was there once in 1966 when I was 14 years old. My memories are few and dim. I’m sure it wasn’t so touristy.

Hard Rock Cafe

If you want to party, get good food for a price or buy a t-shirt, Key West is fine.

One thing I remember pretty well from when I was there as a teenager was going deep sea fishing with my dad. I’m thinking we got a boat from what’s now called the Historic Charter Boat dock. Now going out is about $250, so we didn’t do that. We did go on a little reef fishing boat with about 10 other people. It was like going to the kiddie fishing pond. We dropped lines about 5 feet down and caught lots of little fishies, 37 of which were over 12 inches long and therefore keepers. I caught about 10 of them, I guess because I still have the knack from fishing my whole child and teen years. Myung got kinda seasick and mostly laid low. We took six of them back to the motel. We grilled three in foil on each of the next two nights.

We had about three days left in Miami before we left. Besides more shopping, we went to a couple of areas of the Everglades. It’s pretty nice out there. It reminded me of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, without the hippos, elephants and crocs. We did see one baby alligator in the area down by Homestead, south of Miami.

It’s totally pretty there.

Myung especially wanted to see a big alligator, so we went to the Miccosukee tribal cultural center and alligator show.

The cultural part was actually pretty interesting, especially how they avoided getting frog marched off to Oklahoma with the Cherokees by joining with the Seminoles for some to successfully be able to remain in Florida.

That’s about it. What else I got… How about this lizard in Marathon? Myung’s a good photographer.

That really is about it now. If it looks like I didn’t think much of my experience in South Florida, it’s because I didn’t. We went mostly for shopping. For that, it was great.

So, be well, all of you.

We went somewhere again! Woo hoo! This time, Myung and I went to California. Just two days later, she went to Korea for a couple of weeks to follow up on her post-thyroidectomy and to get worked up for headaches she gets. She passed her thyroid stuff and is doing better on the headaches. Then she came back through SFO and we spent a couple of weeks in the Bay Area and Stockton. She visited her friends and family there but took zero pictures.

I hung out in the East Bay while she was gone, seeing the people I know and going to my old haunts, at least the ones that still exist. That’s been fun every time (well, maybe not the time I got sick and did time in the hospital back in 2007) and it was again. There’s not much to say about it. I did just about everything on my checklist.

When Myung returned from Korea, we went down to the coastal mountains between Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz on the coast. We stayed at a nice airbnb between Felton and Ben Lomond. You’d have to be from the area to know that area. It was Myung’s first time. There are a few coastal redwood parks there, the most famous of which is Big Basin which was the first California State Park. We chilled out and looked at the trees. We have exactly four photos. I might as well show them all. there are a couple of waterfall pictures , but they aren’t good enough to post.

Santa Cruz is close by, so close in fact that Felton and Ben Lomond are basically suburbs of it. Yow! 50 years ago when I first went there, that area was remote, with only a couple of narrow highways into it. Anyway, I took Myung to Santa Cruz. It’s grown up too, of course. 50+ years ago, it was all about surfers. Now it’s many things ‘cuz it’s big, but it has the feel of where to go if you were a surfer or hippie back in the day. There are a lot of Silicon Valley types there, too. Many even commute, which takes about an hour, more during the rush.

The nicest part is along the shoreline. It’s typical of the Northern California coast north of Big Sur. What a nice place to be able to stroll if you live there.

Ice plant flowers all year. It’s invasive, I don’t know where from, but most people like it.

After a few days there we headed back to the Bay Area. Myung has been on Route 1 between Monterrey/Santa Cruz and San Francisco before. It’s strawberry season.

Strawberry farm on the coast with the ocean in the background

We went directly to my niece’s home in San Francisco and had lunch with her sister, Elaine, who came down from near Portland where she lives. Elaine had never met Myung, and had come down mostly just to get to know her a little. With that lunch, the Friday afternoon drive from SF out to Stockton (ugh, the traffic), and the next couple of days in Stockton, she got the chance.

Stockton was good. My brother Bill and his wife Rita still live there. That’s good.Visiting with them and seeing friends of mine there were on the checklist. Nothing exciting, unless you count going to Costco. There’s nothing resembling that in Cuenca, though there is a kind of poor man’s Costco in Guayaquil.

Clockwise from lower left: Myung, my niece Elaine, my sister-in-law Rita, my brother Bill, and me

So, that was about that for our trip. From Stockton, we went back to the East Bay, did some more shopping for things you can’t get back home, go on a plane, and here we are.

There’s a whole long story about what happened while we were gone, but I’ll save it for next time. Until then, be well, all of you.

My life’s so sedentary now that it hardly seems right to call this “Richard’s Travel Blog”. Myung and I are just retired people, like thousands here in Cuenca, living the simple life with our daily routines. If you don’t go anywhere, how can this be a travel blog? I could have morphed it into a kind of Facebook page, but I don’t even use Facebook and I didn’t want to get started down that road.

What’s been up for the last year? Well, if you read previous posts, nothing much has changed. We live in the same place, we do this and that around town, the dog in fine, Myung’s garden is fine, Myung is basically over the weirdness she experienced getting her Synthroid dosage right after her thyroidectomy for thyroid cancer, and I’m about 3 years out on my prostate cancer and all tests are good on that front.

Like all people who have been through several life changes during their long lives, I feel like my past lives are behind me. For me, my travelling life is a past life, not that I couldn’t do it again and Cuenca would become a past life. If I did do it again, I doubt I would be setting out feeling like much of my life is ahead of me and all options are on the table. It would be for a finite time, probably, and be more of a trip. I think there is a good chance I will just stay here in Cuenca. I’m fine here.

Our only significant trip out of town since the last post was a couple of weeks in Medellin. We got a little stir crazy and went there for two weeks. People said it was good so we just went.

Medellin is more and more becoming a major expat city, ever since the drug trafficking scene has mellowed out. Shoot, Pablo Escobar’s mansion is a tourist stop now. (We didn’t go there.) It has a lot of the things many expats like. It’s quite modern compared to anywhere in Ecuador. You can buy things you can’t buy here, or at least cost a fortune here. Things work. (What a concept) The roads, streets and public transportation are very good. The restaurants are good. Colombian food is good. The weather is “eternal spring”, and the smog is not too bad. I can totally see why it’s popular, though I like quiet, clean, slow Cuenca. Also, when I say the food is good in Medellin, it’s important to note that the farmers markets like here barely exist there. Medellin, like most developed cities, is a supermarket kind of place, with American type supermarkets where most people get their food. At this point, that alone would stop me from living there. It’s also not “cute”. Cuenca is cute, with it’s brick and cobblestone streets, old architecture and old ways. Medellin is “big city” all the way.

What did we do? We rented an airbnb-like apartment in a 16 story high rise (no 16 story buildings in Cuenca). We made probably most of out meals there, but went out a lot ‘cuz it’s good. We went out looking at whatever. There isn’t really a lot to see there, even though it’s old and has 2.4 million people. We took some pictures.

Here’s the city as it looks from our apartment windows.

View to the west from our living room window

View to the north from out bedroom window

View to the northeast from out bedroom window

I said we went out looking at whatever. Going places is easy in Medellin. Besides many buses, there is a tram system, a overhead light rail system and a gondola system for going up the hillsides. All of it is integrated, easy to use and cheap. The gondolas have greatly improved the lives of poorer people who live in the poorer neighborhoods up the hillsides. They used to have poor services and bad winding streets without bus service so they couldn’t get to a good job. Now the people near this great public transportation aren’t isolated from opportunity.

One area even has escalators.

Escaleras

That area has much wall art and is a tourist destination.

Want pictures of food?

Paella

Big steak kabob, salmon and salad

There is a central square. It ain’t much. The cathedral is homely.

Colombia’s most famous artist was Fernando Butero. You saw some of his work in my first post from Colombia back in 2014. There are sculptures of his in the plaza.

That’s going to be it for Medellin. We spent time in the great parks, but don’t have pictures. You’ll have to take my word for that.

We’re going to California from April 12 to May 9. From April 14 to April 28 Myung is going to Korea, then she’ll rejoin me. Another break in the “action” here in the span of 4 months. Wow. I’ll blog again after that.

Until then, be well all of you.

I left off with Mendocino. From there, most of our time was spent looking at redwoods and other nature, and hanging out at a very comfortable airbnb home in Crescent City

There are several Redwood State and National Parks between Mendocino and Crescent City. We spent one day driving the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods and walking among the giants there. There are even three redwoods I know of in NW California which you can drive through. I know. Tacky tourist stuff. But Myung’s never seen anything like trees of this size. For those who don’t know, this tree is alive and well. They don’t live to be 3000 years old for nothing.

I don’t know how much you can say about walks in the forest. I’ll just post some of the better pictures. A couple are from Humboldt and the others are from the Jedediah Smith redwoods near Crescent City.

We really, and I mean really, don’t do hard traveling anymore. In the old days, this trip would have been luxurious and super easy. Now, we just plunk down when we want. Crescent City and the environs, and our airbnb place and the hosts were so nice, we just asked them if we could stay several extra days. No one else had booked with them, so we just stayed there till four days before returning to Cuenca.

For Myung, our airbnb place was the best ever. The hosts were Chinese, only three years in the States. I must say I liked them a lot but could talk much because of their limited English and my nonexistent Chinese. Myung, however, felt right at home. They made us feel at home, too. Plus, we had two big rooms to sleep and hang out in, when we weren’t socializing in the kitchen or hanging out in the huge living room and enjoying the view of their lovely 16 acre property. It really was sweet. Here we are, having dinner together.

That picture was actually taken by their 8 year old boy. Pretty good, eh?

I had never spent any time to speak of in Crescent City. It’s still little and quiet. The supermax prison a few miles north of the city (and about a half mile from our airbnb place) has no effect on the city’s aesthetics. There’s nothing very photo worthy right in town. There’s a city beach, an old lighthouse and a rocky shoreline directly on the west side of town.

I’ve got a few other pictures worth looking at. North of those rocks in the last picture and west of where we stayed is an area called Tolowa Dunes State Park. There aren’t any dunes, really, but sandy grasslands, some hilly areas and a driftwood strewn beach. It’s not exactly remote, but you can pretty much have the place to yourselves.

Then it was time to get back. Myung wanted to go to a Chinese medical clinic in Oakland for a couple of health issues. That place closes at 5 on Saturdays, so we bolted all the way down from Crescent City on that last Saturday. Sunday-Wednesday was shopping and saying goodbye. Wednesday night we took the red-eye to Quito. Thursday we spent an interminable day doing nothing in the wifi-less Quito airport, then took a 7 PM flight to Cuenca. Here we are.

I’ll blog later about all the changes the owners made around here while we were gone. It’s like a new place.

So, that’s about it for now. It might be a while before I get up to the States again, or do anything real exciting. We’re already practically back to our normal life. Until later, be well, all of you.

Banana slug. They can grow up to about a foot long.

We’re baaaack. Myung and I just got back from our six week trip. I spent the whole time in California, while Myung spent a couple of those weeks in Korea. It was a combination getting some stuff done, shopping and visiting friends and family. We pretty much got it all done, then it was time to come home. I ran out of money, anyway. The business and shopping parts aren’t worth relating. Business is business. Shopping was for things we can’t get in Ecuador or are prohibitively expensive. Visiting friends and family was nice, but there isn’t much to say about that. As I think about what to put in this post, I’m thinking it’s going to be mostly pictorial and commentary about what seemed fun and/or  might be interesting, especially to someone who isn’t familiar with Northern California.

As soon as I started thinking about going, I started thinking about having some of the food that isn’t here or is better there. I thought about the restaurants I used to like, and looking forward to eating there again. Our first airbnb place was in Berkeley. Right nearby is a well-known establishment called Brennan’s. We ate our first dinner there and had their famous Fred Flintsone-sized bronto turkey leg and fixin’s. Yeah, I really used to like these, and they’re still good.

We did a lot of eating out. “Sardine Can” is a heckuva name for a restaurant.

As always, food is always on our minds, especially Myung’s. She bought foodstuffs from Korea. Fortunately, most of the Asian things she wanted to bring back is available in Oakland’s Chinatown. There are many Chinese stores there and farmer’s markets are increasingly popular all around the East Bay. Oakland’s are great, with high quality at good prices, especially at the Friday market in Chinatown.

Oh, it’s very Chinese there. But I saw this old busker at another, more yuppie market the next day. I’m told he goes to all of them.

Myung went to Korea for business, shopping and family and friends for two weeks just four days after we got there. I spent the time visiting and having alone time. I took exactly zero pictures, but it was good. Myung took a few photos. Here’s one of her friends.

And here’s one of picturesque places in Korea. Korea is full of lovely settings like this. As you may know, we spent about 9 months there between 2008 and 2010. For a lot of great photos and my thoughts from that time, you can type “Korea” in the search box right above “Archives”.

One of the things we did before going on a road trip up the coast was go to the last San Francisco Giants game of the regular season. As you may also know, I’m a huge San Francisco Giants baseball fan.  The Giants had to win to clinch a wild card playoff spot. They won, but went on to lose in the next round.

I wasn’t only huge fan. This lady beside me was pretty enthusiastic.

Here’s a random shot from the most popular trail in Tilden Park, part of the 120,000 acre (488 sq. km) East Bay Regional Parks. That’s the Golden Gate bridge out there across the bay.

So, up the coast, north of San Francisco, we went. It gets real nice, real fast. It’s such a beautiful coastline, one of the best in the world. I’m not just saying that. I’ve seen a lot of coasts. There are spots, but this coast goes one and on. Most readers of this blog are quite familiar with the sites.

There are plenty of coastal photos coming up. I need to keep this post from getting interminable.

No blog about north of San Francisco would be complete without a picture of the Napa wine country.

There are many cute towns all along the way…

… but the cutest one is Mendocino. If it looks familiar to you, it’s because it used for many TV shows and movies. It’s a lot different than when I first went up there forty-some years ago. The buildings are still there and they haven’t messed with the shoreline, but it’s become like a theme park. There is little small town feel to it now. Plus, it’s gentrified and everything is expensive. Oh well, it’s still a nice place.

In the old days, you didn’t see all these expensive cars. You could also get lunch for under $15. Now the cheapest sandwich to go, off this main street, is $9.

You still can’t beat  the setting. Again, the coastline goes on and on like this. these next three places are within a couple hundred meters from that main street downtown.

Staying overnight in one of the inns in town is prohibitively expensive for us, so we stayed in a cabin in the forest. That was really mellow. Here’s the road to it.

Here’s the place.

There was even wifi out in the chairs near the big house where the owner of the cabin lives.

A short walk from the cabin through the trees brings you to Big River, which comes out in Mendocino.

We stayed there three nights.

Going up the coast, before you get to Mendocino, there’s Fort Ross State Park. Fort Ross was a Russian settlement and trading post when Russia had a presence along the coast. They pulled out of Fort Ross in 1827 and eventually all of North America when they sold Alaska to the US in 1867, but the buildings here remained. Obviously, it’s totally restored, but you get a glimpse of how they lived.

I’ve always found that place interesting.

Anyway, that part of California inland is pretty dense trees for the most part. You get the idea from the Big River picture. There really aren’t many roads through there, even. The more north you go, the more forested it becomes. Finally, you get to the Humboldt Redwood State and National Forests.

Y’know, this post is getting too long. I need to break it up. I’m going to publish it up to here and do more later. See ya.

It’s been awhile, again. I’ve finished my radiation and all went well. I barely had any side effects and feel normal except for the hormonal changes due to the androgen deprivation injections. I’m pretty used to them now. No big deal.

I’m going to celebrate life by going to N. California with Myung from Sept 16-Oct 18. We’ll be there together till Sept 11. Then Myung is going to Korea till Sept 26. When she gets back, we’re going on a little road trip up the coast for a while. We’ll be doing some shopping for things that cost a fortune in Ecuador, taking care of some business, and visiting people during the rest of the time we’re here. While she’s in Korea, I don’t think I’ll be too busy. I’m really looking forward to getting out of Dodge.

It’s not like we haven’t had the time to get out of town. We’ve just been content to stay around here. As I’ve said many times, we’re a little jaded, having seen so much of the world, and got so burned out traveling all those years that we’re fine being homebodies.

Myung is a little busy two to four days a week. She’s been selling Korean food by advertising once a week on the local internet bulletin board for gringos, GringoPost. Her business is actually kind of taking off. Her prices are lower and the quality is better than from the Asian restaurants in Cuenca. Word is spreading fast. Soon, she’s going to have to get a bigger kitchen and/or some help besides what little I’m qualified to do.

Unless you want to look at pictures of sushi and the dog, I find only two pics taken in the last two months. One is up a street downtown toward the domes of the cathedral. the other is of the domes, which Myung took one day from a usually closed courtyard beside the cathedral was open.

I’m going to fire this off. We’ll see some of you when we get to California.

Be well, all of you.