Not sure how to go forward, impossible to go back: Chronicle of the middle of nowhere.

Here’s a photo from the valley of the moon in Bolivia. You may want to click on it to enlarge, but I'm the little dark spot there perched like an owl up above this here gorge.

I have never seen a landscape anything like this, and neither had the original inhabitants of La Paz, so they turned it into a sacred place to worship the moon.

So there’s me lodged on a narrow “path” in this sacred valley. A fitting example of how things are regarding the research. Loosing my contact list was a major set back, and it is a painstaking task to try to reconnect with doctors in the rural Amazon, especially when telephone is sketchy and internet is non-existent.

Still, the positive response to the project from those back in Canada, and now the just received acceptance of a research paper for a major U.S. journal, prompts me to believe that you really can’t turn back, or switch the game plan in this sort of a situation.

Back in the apartment in Quito it sort of feels like I never left, and it certainly doesn’t feel strange to be back. 3 more weeks here in Quito with plans to head into the Amazon twice and the Andes twice as well. There’s no doubt that it will be life out of the backpack for the rest of the year, as it is now quite definite that duty calls back to Cuba before the holidays commence.

So yes, three more weeks of madness and adventure, then it’s back to Vancouver for a brief week before setting sail again to everyone's favourite socialist paradise. My inside connections tell me that El Comandante is doing very well and he is set to give his first public speech, since his tummy was tucked, on December 2. Hopefully I’ll see most of you in that time before I run down to Cuba and beyond. I’m sure that by then I’ll be in dire need of comfortable resting places, fine Vancouver food stuffs and hygienic services. Ahh, sweet sweet hygiene.