Thursday, July 31, 2008

hitting the road

I'm happy to announce that I'm heading to Ecuador this fall for six weeks. The trip feels official today because 1) I've signed a contract with Lonely Planet guidebooks to write two chapters of the country's guidebook and 2) I just booked my plane ticket.

As my first foreign assignment for Lonely Planet, I've been noticing telling reactions from the people I tell about the adventure. They range from, "I'll start saving the ransom money for the Colombian drug runners," to "I hate you. How can I get that kind of job?"

I'm sure I'll experience an equal range of emotions while I'm there, but of course, I consider the trip an amazing opportunity. Otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. Right now, I'm diving into my two regions, both of which I visited four years ago, as much as one can do from a desk.

I was particularly taken with this impressive piece of reportage in Vanity Fair about Texaco's sordid history in Ecuador (think about the publication's legal department picking over the text). When I spent a few days in the cloud forests outside of Quito, I saw the famous pipeline that pumps crude through the rain forest, across many mountains and to the ocean. It's still pumping, and for a good portion of my trip, I'll be in the jungle, where oil has ruled the local landscape since 1972.

On a lighter note, I'm already thinking about the food. Ecuador is not a country known for its cuisine, but it does have regional impressive specialties, as Calvin Trillin remembers in The New Yorker.