No spoilers

Just watch this video without looking at the title on Youtube. It's great.

Miami

Judging from the 100 yards of it I saw in Terminal D, Miami is a seriously bilingual town. I had lunch and a malaria pill in a Cuban-style restaurant, with decent food and diet maté soda! Lots of very fast Spanish being spoken, both in the restaurant and in the terminal. Of course, we are going to Quito, but it seems like everyone takes it for granted.

I didn't have too much trouble understanding what I heard, which is encouraging, considering I've never taken Spanish and I'm going to a country where I'll need it (although they call it castilleno). I reviewed my travel Spanish on the trip here, so maybe that helped.

Shopping list

Sandals - must have ankle strap so they don't fall off during wet landings
Wetsuit - needed for snorkeling. A "shorty" will do.
Prescriptions: Malaria, seasickness, dysentery.
Camera memory
Shorts
Flora of Ecuador

Ecuador and the Galápagos!

It's Friday, my last day of work before heading to Ecuador for two weeks, including 5 days in the Amazonian rainforest on the Rio Napo, and then 8 days on a cruise through the Galápagos islands.

Of course, I'm not working at the moment -- I have an appointment to see a "Travel Medicine" clinic this morning. This trip came together so fast that there wasn't time to prepare for the health hazards weeks ahead. (Fortunately I already have a passport.) But I'll go and ask some questions anyway, and see what medicines make sense to take along.

Then I'll head in to work to wrap up a few things before I go.

On the Oregon Trail

Ok, not really -- it’s just I-5 from the Bay Area up to Ashland. The iPhone told us it was 92 in Redding as we went through, and we sweated through as best we could. The kids were cheerful enough and we listened to the iPod in alphabetical order starting in the Bs -- you get some strange mixes that way.

Hazy smoke in the air over much of the drive from about Shasta to the Oregon border.