Happy Christmas from Guayaquil, Ecuador!

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11th December 2008:

Ok I´ll be honest with you. "Despite the hype" re. music deals you might have heard of, (of course it sounds better than it really is!!) we have had a pretty bad week since leaving Los Angeles. A cup can be half full or half empty they say, so I will start with the half empty version of our story mostly cut and pasted from emails I have sent, sorry!

Wed 3rd December:

We are here in Ecuador at last but the last 72 hours have been pretty bad. Our 10 hour journey from LA toGuayaquil turned into a 40 hour marathon of chaos due to a flight cancelletion, missed connections etc.We queued and queued and queued, (flight check in, bus to hotel, hotel check in etc etc..).Then when we arive finally at the airport in Guayaquil I am told to urgently call my mum. And she gave me the news that a few hours earrlier our house in Wick Road had been burgled. They smashed in the back door while the house was empty and took laptops,phones and cameras etc.. We were a bit shell-shocked in our exhausted state at the airport but immediately I had to make various phone calls etc
Poor Pilar and Sania are now frightened to live in the house I think. It seems they lost laptops, phones and cameras but I don´t know if we lost anything yet. I know my musical equipment and computer is still there...

Friday 5th December

Anyway, it´s Friday and we left Carlos´s house on Monday night and I don´t know where the week went. Bit of a nightmare journey but we stayed in a hotel by the airport 1 night and then another hotel in Costa Rica because of missed connection. It was not too bad except for long queuing and having to lug 5 suitcases,3 heavy hand luggage, a guitar, a pram a car seat and Sofia everywhere (we had to take all our luggage to the hotel and back in Costa Rica before catching another flight next morning).
The cup was half full for a while:
The one good bit was the surreal flight..Sofia was great, the air stewards were fantastic bringing Sofia things before everyone else and the atmosphere on the plane was like a party - everyone wanted to forget the delay and get quite drunk it seemed. A large group of middle-aged to elderly Iranian Americans were mixing with various groups of American students and latin americans going home including 3 who were being deported. All the seat belt signs were ignored despite some scary turbulence as people were queuing in the passage way to get another drink. One Iranian passenger went down the aisle of the entire plane offering her homemade biscuits to every single passenger...The bar ran out of alcohol,beer, rum,vodka and whiskey which according to the air hostess had never ever happened in her 4 years working there... So that was nice between the bits of bad news...
Anyway we are fine here - Sofia is happy, playing and arguing with 3 year old jean carlo who is another cousin of Katty or Maria Jose i cant remember...Viviana is also very content to be here of course...We are healthy and alive so a burglary does not matter quite so much really...

I have my own office - they had a computer installed just for me which was so helpful and thoughtful... I´ve been working on it a lot (too much really) but I am trying to get my music to do something - I have made an online distribution agreement witha California based label-distributor and quite a bit of interest from other leads I receive becuase I have subscribed to a special music industry contacts magazine(all by email). One company is interested in trying to sell to film and tv on my behalf which is good but still means nothing until it actually happens... and I am meeting up with people in the next few days to try and start playing here too.

Thursday 11th December

Sofia has been ill, two days of fever followed by 2 days of strange red spots all over her body followed by another day or two of not eating or sleeping properly and the associated grumpiness. Much of Guayaquil is crazier, noisier and more polluted than ever, we both feel that the traffic is even worse especially in the industrial area we live in. And Guillermo,Vivi´s dad, is older, more attached to his puppy dog it sometimes seems ,than to his wife whose energy he consumes. So coupled with some insomnia, we have been feeling a little disappointed by our first week here. I suppose a 40 hour journey, burglary news and Sofia´s illness is not a good combination. Overall, the atmosphere and events have been suffocating.
But wait the cup is half full and filling up!
It seems we did not lose much or anything at our house in Bristol, hopefully just a damaged door. Tony and then Pete have been very helpful in Bristol, fixing the door and the shower too. We are very grateful to them. We are all reasonably healthy, Sofia is getting better.I have had the luxury time and an office space with a computer to promote my music. And at least some people seem to like it even if it is just a small start-up label that is distributing and promoting.
And soon we will breathe some fresh but warm sea air and splash in the warm Pacific Ocean.

Tuesday 23rd December

Nearly 2 weeks have passed and Christmas "locura" (mayhem and madness) is upon us. 2 hours ago my friend Giff arrived to join our little Roll-Montero party here in Guayaquil. Not quite as dramatic as his last entrance in 2001 on New Years Eve (a few days beforeVivi and I got married on a beach here) when his taxi had to dodge through fireworks, firecrackers and hundreds of burning and exploding New Year effigies.Christmas and New Year is certainly different here. But some things are in common: The crazy traffic and multitudes of people cramming into the city centre in Christmas present buying frenzy! The main difference here is that the intense sun is frying you from above, the car and bus fumes seem to hover in the air and the hustle and bustle and traffic noise here is at double British volume.
But it´s been a good week typified by last weekend.
Friday was why I like Guayaquil despite its terrible and widespread "warzone" chaos and ugly mess. Through a musician friend I managed to get a meeting organised with the events coordinator of the Central Bank (equivalent to the Bank of England!). I strolled in the main entrance of the Central Bank of Ecuador, past the machine-gun toting guards, slightly concerned that I was 2 minutes late and that my clothes were not elegant enough to impress. I knocked on a couple of glass doors on the wrong floor asking for a person no-one seemed to have heard of and eventually found an office with somone waiting in it but with no sign of the person with whom I was to have a meeting. Eventually a secretary turns up and tells me that he is tied up and to come back at 12 o´clock "ish". In the next hour, to kill time and search for more possible music work, I go to the main river-front promenade or "malecon", walk into two exclusive member only yacht clubs, as well as the management of the shopping centre that organises events there and have 3 unscheduled meetings with the appropriate managers. I return to the Central Bank and run into the secretary before I get to the right office and she tells me that my meeting has to be changed to 3 pm. I taxi home, taxi back into town at 3pm and meet him finally. The events co-ordinator of the Central Bank was unshaven, wearing jeans, trainers and a ruffled casual shirt. He slouched on an armchair in a bare and slightly shabby office and we conversed for an hour or so about music, our lives in Guayaquil and the events that the Central Bank have sponsored before amongst other things. All in all a very interesting and gregarious person, he is in fact Argentinian married to a Guayaquileña. After I confirmed that I like salsa he invited me to the Central Bank Staff Christmas party that night where a16 piece salsa he described as the best in the country were going to play.
So later that night Viviana, her friend Priscilla and me walk into the side entrance of the Central Bank of Ecuador past a security guard who didn´t even ask who we were, take a lift up to the 3rd floor and with a salsa band in full swing are beckoned straight onto the dance floor by my Argentinian friend Jorge the Events Coordinator following our quick introductions. While he retired to the bar we were dancing away to a salsa classic amongst a crowd of Central Bank workers and Managers. Quite surreal! We then discovered that it was a free bar but the only drinks on offer were wine and whiskey. Several quadruple whiskeys later, the band was still playing and we were amongst the last people there when someone approached me and asked "do you remember me?" I recognised her face but couldn´t place her. "Marybel" she said, "I was in your class at the British Council and you helped me find an English course at Isca school in Exeter." In my bleary state I remembered that 11 years earlier the British Council had a contract with the Central Bank and I taught several of their staff. I was a bit lost for words, surprise, nostalgia and whiskey playing their part, but as I had another meeting arranged on Monday with Jorge and a musician Marybel suggested that I come and say hello to my ex students on Monday too.
Saturday was a terrible, terrible hangover but we had to go out again for Priscilla´s birthday. I drank water as my stomach was rumbling but we were sat outside "The Manantial" bar one of my favourite old haunts near where the Bristish Council used to be so the nostalgia trip continued. We wondered what had become of the cheeky and cheerful children that used to sell roses in the street there, brother and sister Marlon and Esther were two of our favourites we used to buy them lemonades and I remember giving a necklace to them before I finally left, they´d be around 18 - 20 years old now. What a different life they must have had in the last 11 years...
Monday´s meeting at the Central Bank was similarly bizarre. Both Jorge and Freddy, my musician friend, were predictably late so I took the time to visit the office of my ex student Marybel who has obviously done well and has a management position, she in turn took me to visit Grace another ex student who took a few moments to recognise me but then was genuinely shocked, we chatted for about half an hour about various ex students and teachers in the middle of an open plan office in the Cental Bank with their colleagues grinning at our gossip news. Grace, a very beautiful 40-something single mother, seemed most interested to hear that my unmarried friend Giff was arriving soon!
Finally, I get to see Jorge and Freddy who would speak for about 1 minute about the specifics needed for making an event proposal and then for10 minutes on politics, religion, philosophy etc.. 1 minute on the proposal and another10 minutes or so on the status of women in Greek, Roman and early Christian society, Buddhism, Christianity again, the current and past mayors of Guayaquil, regionlism, present and past presidents of Ecuador, the world and Ecuador´s economy etc...etc.... Over an hour later, after a meeting that could have taken 5 minutes, I was told that I had to go away and write a specific budgeted proposal and return it by 4 pm that same day. Taxi home, 2 hours on the computer, taxi back in, signed proposal and delivered to the secretary at about 4.30pm. If it happens, this event will be a big, well-paid gig at a prestige venue and all it took was a couple of farcical meetings with a couple of good blokes in the Central Bank of Ecuador. All this could only happen in Guayquil!
Sofia is happy now she´s got used to the heat and new surroundings. Her Spanish is developing quickly and her answers are getting cheekier, we just don´t know where she gets it from! Viviana is obviously pleased to be spending a Christmas with her mum and dad after so many years.

Wednesday 24th December

Today is Christmas Eve and we are going to Vicenta´s house, (Katty´s mum, = Viviana´s brother´s mother-in-law!) It´s in a rough and tumble area in a rough and tumble city but apparnetly that´s where the best parties are so it should be fun! New Years Eve is hopefully going to be spent by the beach where amongst the fires and fireworks we can breathe the sea air and splash in the warm water at midnight if it feels right.
Happy Christmas and Happy New Year from us all!
Nick,Vivi and Sofia

Friday 26th December:

(Photosto follow soon)
Christmas Day was unusual in the heat! But Sofia loved opening her presents and delighted in them all; books, chairs and a desk and some maracas! And although we are weary from the crazy party we went to on Christmas Eve (see below), it was a very pleasant relaxing day. In the evening we went to the old area of Las Peñas and walked up the steps of Sanat Ana (an extension of the pleasantly refurbished Malecon). The river breeze was refreshing, with the hubub of people doing the same thing and the sounds of salsa pouring out of the bars as we climbed the steps we were kept nicely awake. Sofia had been excited all day and collapsed asleep on my shoulder only to come alive again an hour later; it was nearly midnight!

On the way home we passed a street where they specialise in making and selling "año viejos", paper mache effigies filled with firecrackers which they burn on New Years´Eve. The whole street was lined with hundreds and hundreds of colourful small medium and large paper mache characters, some of them politicians such as the mayor and the president, some cartoon charaters such as Hulk, Transformers and Bart Simpson and some horror characters such as Chuckie and many more besides. The biggest año viejos were like works of art standing 3 metres high. We had already bought a little "Barney" for Sofia which we are worried she has become too attached to and will freak out when we burn it and it explodes into pieces. They do New Year very well here with endless fires, firecrackers and fireworks; we are looking forward to it!

Christmas Eve was fun! Again very different to what we have experienced before. This is what my firend Giff had to say about it:

Giff´s "Christmas in Guayaquil" description!

Our friend Giff is visiting us from the UK - this is what he wrote about our Christmas Eve here in Guayaquil:
"The whole Christmas thing (my first outside Blighty) was a riot here. Just about recovered myself now. Probably like Brasil, the night of the 24th is the Big One: because there are only 6 of us staying at Vivi´s parents´, they decided to up the ante and pile over to a friend´s house in a more run-down part of town where the action is a bit more fruity (loose translation there!). We were greeted by a group of cheeky kids from the party who had spilled outside to lob firecrackers at passing cars, screaming with delight when they managed to get the ignite-throw-wait-bang process just right. Sofia, Nick and Vivi´s lovely 2-year-old, had been warned about the "bim bam boom" and took it all in her stride, eyes wide with excitement.

Our hostess Vicenta works in Vivi´s parents´ garage, a wonderful, formidably charming 50-something who somehow had managed to pour her amply buxom self into a skimpy black bodysuit for the evening. She tamed and then charmed all the children there with games and presents, the firecracker hurlers now obediently sat open-mouthed before her while she skilfully conducted a singalong-for-presents spectacle for the proud mums and dads. Cute factor (and artful discipline) to the max!

Vicenta then moved on to the adults and increasingly unselfconscious teenagers with the help of a small team of lovely family members who plied us all with drinks, a huge meal and yet more drinks. This was a truely South American welcome: warm and genuine and well-lubricated with booze, dancing and good company. Vicenta continued to flit around us, a voluptuous black bee attending to our drinks and returning to dance with with her guests. At one point, between dancing with me and refilling our glasses, her heaving bosom threatened to spill out of the bodysuit and engulf me. A wonderful way to die, I whispered to Vivi sitting beside me.

The celebrations and salsa, bachata and reggaeton continued and at one point I remember Cossack dancing to a mixture of applause and total bewilderment. The encore was all too much for my aging (!) self, jet-lagged, "alegre" and beyond recovery, I was ushered into a bedroom (whose bed was already full of lightweights like me and under-fives like Sofia) to sleep off the journey and excesses of a fantastic night. Nick and Vivi danced and laughed until 4am, when even they had to admit defeat and we woke Sofia and Vivi´s parents to be driven back home, the bachata and reggaeton echoing behind us."

Will post some photos and hopefullyvideo to accompany this after New Years Eve...The next blog will be from the beach...Salinas and Ballenita, here´s some preview photos..!

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Photos

Sofia ,Jean Carlo & Vicenta
Hanging out in the Lubricadora Montero...

Jean-Carlo & Sofia in the patio
Strange love-hate games have continued since day one!

Giff and Vicenta getting down on it!
Giff arrived on the 23rd and on the 24th loosened up at Vicenta´s surreal party!

"Año Viejos" for sale
A mile of streets with hundreds and hundreds of paper mache effigies for sale ready to be stuffedwith firecrackers and burned on New Years Eve!