On Wednesday thru Saturday nights, from 6:30-10:00 pm, on the 2nd floor of La Vina Restaurant, at Luis Cordero 5-101 y Juan Jaramillo, the Jazz Society of Ecuador holds forth.
The group this evening is piano, drums, bass, and a tenor saxophonist who play mainstream jazz.
Having a restaurant downstairs, I can’t not take photos for Leigh
She is an artist, and artists like to see visions on walls as well as canvas. Both floors of this establishment are awash with art and it seems like a bohemian French cafe where crazy impressionist painters sipped absinthe and shattered old school standards,
The songs the band plays were written fifty years ago, or longer – ” Stella by Starlight “, ” Summertime, ” ” Night in Tunisia, ” ” Love Walked In. ”
They are played with reverence but played tonight with more rhythmic twists and subtle harmonic modulations than when they were new kids on the block. This is music I listened to while peers swooned over Elvis, Bo Didley, and Little Richard.
I never figured to hear live jazz in Cuenca, Ecuador.
The art on the walls is icing on the cake.
There are Christmas lights already being hung in Parque Calderon.
On balconies, in store front windows and living rooms, trees are dressed with lights, nativity scenes, tinsel, peppermint sticks and brightly colored Christmas ornaments.
This little parade, of two vehicles, is driving down a Cuenca thoroughfare and Santa, with his pink dressed assistant, is tossing candy to kids, adults, and spectators. Two elves take pictures with their cell phones and a cynic would swear that Christmas gets earlier and earlier each year and boys and girls are never nice enough to deserve treats.
Still, the Grinch is no where to be seen, busy plotting mischief for the more inopportune times.
This may be, after all, just a moving advertisement, but all enjoy the spectacle.
Watching a man with a white beard wearing a red suit and a red cap with a snowball on its end is infinitely more fun than filling orders, breaking out concrete or cooking soup for the lunch trade.
Tis the season to be jolly.
On a Carol tip, this event celebrates the integration of foreign ex-pats into the Ecuadorian community.
In a city leaning towards five hundred thousand there are estimates that twenty thousand Americans have relocated to Cuenca, not that many for Ecuadorians to be worried about. This event also celebrates foreign investment, transportation projects,and large business developments involving overseas partnerships.
The festivities take several hours to set up, several hours to accomplish, and several hours to break down. When the speeches are over there is food served. In Ecuador, pork is popular. and, this afternoon, chickens and cattle drink at the same bar and toast the pig for taking their sword.
Ex- pats bring money, know how, ideas to Cuenca but Ex-pats don’t always blend with Ecuadorian culture, language, or politics.
Americans must bend to meet Ecuadorians, but Ecuadorians know change is inescapable.
Their children have cell phones, surf the net, and live in a world turning into what their parents dread.
People and ideas have always migrated around our planet.
Smart countries are always concerned about the quality and quantity of those who cross their borders.
This morning Jose scampers up a coconut tree on the Island Academy grounds and separates coconuts from their necks.
They fall with a thud to the sand where he collects them, uses his machete to scalp them, then pours coconut water into plastic jugs that he sells for a couple of bucks a gallon. Under the authority of the Queen of England, the beaches, whatever washes up on the beaches, and whatever grows on them is fair game for the public. All he has to do is climb and get them. A competitor uses a twenty foot extension ladder to harvest nature’s crop but Jose climbs the old fashioned way.
When Jose climbs for his prize, he digs his feet into the coconut tree trunk and bows his legs. Then he extends his arms, holds on to the trunk, and pulls his legs up to his waist where he clamps them on the trunk again, extends his arms and hands, and repeats the process. His machete hangs on a rope tied to his belt loop. When he gets to the top of the tree he quickly cuts coconuts from their bunch with his machete.
He climbs down in reverse order, and, when he touches sand, he collects his coconuts and throws them over the fence onto the beach.
Business is brisk and a tourist from Ramon’s Village passes me with two gallon jugs, one in each hand. Coconut water is a health food favorite and reputed as some of the purest water on the planet.
Jose’s best scheme would be to train a monkey to do his job with a little knife in its mouth and a pirate bandana around his head.
All monkey’s should have to work for their coconuts.
As quick as Thanksgiving goes, Christmas is nipping at its heels.
The girls at Crazy Canuck’s, on a Friday afternoon, have opened cardboard boxes and are decorating.
Stockings hang over the liquor shelves, tinsel is hung around the bar’s ceiling, an upside down Christmas tree with blue lights gives us an upside down perspective, peppermint sticks are just out of arm’s reach. On Thanksgiving we give thanks, but on Christmas we pay homage, say our prayers, and put ourselves in our proper place.
I am getting the Christmas spirit.
When I see Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, he will be in speedos, have sunglasses, and have a beach girl on each arm.
Why Rudolph’s nose is red is another bar story.
When I travel light I look for a laundry first thing.
Down the street, from Chez Caribe, is my dirty clothes salvation.
Kenny owns and operates the J and J Laundry and works long hours- six days a week. You take your clothes, drop them off ,and Kenny, or one of his staff, wash, dry, put them in a plastic bag, and have them ready when you return to pick them up later in your vacation day. As soon as one machine empties, it is filled with more clothes to be cleaned, not quickly, but eventually. Island time is slower than watch time.
Kenny has been up and running for a year and bought the business from a previous owner who was tired of doing dirty socks. Along with the laundry business came Karaoke equipment. This means Kenny takes care of your dirty clothes and the island’s dirty singing.
This morning I pick up my clean clothes and go home feeling better about the world.
Belize is almost behind me and Ecuador is peeking its head around the bend in time’s river, moving its right forefinger and inviting me to visit and sit a spell.
My stay here has been wonderful. I am well suited for island life where there is no zoning and a million dollar beachfront home shares the same vista with a drunk fisherman sleeping under a rowboat.
Doing laundry is hardly newsworthy, but skip it and things start to smell bad.
There is always plenty to write about when you drop your standards and accept life as it comes to you.
Thanksgiving dinner falls into my lap.
In the middle of a Walkaholics ramble, our group is invited by the owner of the Sandbar to a free annual Thanksgiving dinner at her bar and grill. It is something she likes cooking for and an appreciation to loyal customers.
This is a full blown extravaganza with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, dressing, salad. bread and desserts. The company is cordial and the mood is celebratory.
Last year my Thanksgiving was celebrated in Uruguay with a slice of pizza and a beer. It is hard at this moment to know where Thanksgiving will find me next year.
This week turkey’s have been in hiding.
Surviving dinner when you are the main course is a gift from God.
Alcoholics can’t walk by a bar without going in. Ministers can’t hear church bells without reaching for their Sermon. Firemen change clothes at the smell of smoke. Construction workers can’t avoid a construction zone.
This has been a year of house rehabilitation so it was impossible for me not to grab a paint brush and lend a hand.
The Legends Bar and Grill renovation, on the north side, is in progress. Opening day is December 1, 2015. Painting is the same down here as up north. You keep your eye on the edge, cut a straight line, don’t let paint drip, keep the brush moving, clean up if you make a mess.
The big push today is to prime wood trim upstairs in the bar, install galvanized metal sheets on the kitchen ceiling, and move a huge defunct cooler out of the kitchen, through two doorways, and onto the front porch where it will be picked up later and used in some way by the group of seven men who move it out.
When the group of men arrive there is much measuring, grunting, re- positioning, and evaluating. A few times the task looks impossible but if someone got it into the bar it can be taken out.
Jack’s sign is posted in the kitchen, beside a good cooler, and reminds him on a hot day, with both fans blowing and orders buzzing around his head like angry mosquitoes, that a craftsman is never far from his philosophy.
Evenings, if you get bored, you can play pool at the Average Joe Bar down the street from Chez Carib, next to the Caribbean Fuels gas station in San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye, Belize.
Pool is a good game to know how to play, and, like riding a bicycle, you get rusty in your skills but you don’t forget how. In a new place it is a way to find friends, meet and make new friends, or keep the friends who already know how to put up with you.
This evening the game is eight ball and, since there are six people who want to play, we partner up. Four of us play and then the winning pair of each game keeps the table and plays the pair that sat out.
Jack and Kristi and Greg and Mark were here when I dropped in. Walter and I make a team this particular game though I’ve never met him before.
I start well but lose ground.
This night there are good shots, bad shots, some erudite comments, and chatter.
Beer and good shots do not have a good relationship, but beer lets you think you are better than your shots prove you are.
Golf carts are in, in San Pedro Town.
Some of the carts are old; others are new. New ones cost from nine to fifteen thousand U.S. dollars depending on what they have under their seat, and, while the carts aren’t complicated mechanically, mechanic shops around town are busy. Unpaved roads and cobblestone streets play hell with front ends and suspensions.
Rabbit’s cart was loaned to him by a female friend going back to the states for a month. On the way to the airport it broke down and they had to get a taxi and she missed her flight. Her mechanic towed it to his shop and when Rabbit picks it up it still doesn’t seem right. When you push the gas pedal the cart hesitates before engaging in gear.
” It’s a solenoid under the gas pedal, ” Rabbit says, and, not being a mechanic, I can’t say that isn’t the problem .
When you ride in a golf cart here, you have arrived. Knowing they are an expense, and continual problems, you are still glad to have one.
When you got wheels, women find more to recommend you
Bicycles beat walking and golf carts trump bicycles.
If this baby breaks down again, you can bet his woman friend is going to pay the bill and we are going to drink all the beer.
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