Maker's Mark, My Sister, and a Man Named Greg

(Note, I've added links in this story...the highlighted blue words. Clicking on these might be especially useful for those travelers visiting Canoa.)

It isn't what is sounds like. I just liked the alliteration of the title, and, well, what's not to like in the picture? Entonces (so), my sister, Megan, was down here visiting us last month from Washington D.C., and there is a bit of a story to go along with the bottle of Maker's Mark bourbon she brought down with her.

As I've mentioned before, Ecuador has a great selection of consumer items from most parts of the world. But when it comes to making a list of items that are missing, somehow, things like Guiness, Sierra Nevada, Maker's Mark Bourbon and the such get elevated much higher than lunchables and squeeze cheese. God, look what happened to Erin and I when our friend Brett's brother came down with a sixer of Sierra Nevada....we had one sip each...


Or, look at the bliss dripping from our eyes as we discover a brand new microbrewery in Quito with my sister...

So, suffice it to say, lots of us are willing to negotiate heavily when it comes to obtaining items which are simply impossible to obtain here in Ecuador. Which brings us to our friend Greg in the beach town of Canoa. We first met Greg back in Christmas with Andrew Clinkingbeard. Greg the "le-rougue-neck" Gilliam is a good-ole Kentucky boy with a passion for three things, his gorgeous family, Maker's Mark, and Paragliding. Coincidently, Megan's mantra for Ecuador was "All I wanna' do is fly like a condor." I put eight and five together, and quickly called Greg.

I think the conversation went something like this:

Me "Hey Greg, my sister is coming down and want's to fly"

Greg "Yeah man, we cun prolly do that"

Me "Yeah, I thought so, listen she's going to bring down some Mak-"

Greg "Maker's Mark!" "Shit man, why didn't you say, what does she need? Can I send a car to pick her up? Do you need a place to stay? we'll fly as much as she wants to. How soon can she get here? What time? Don't worry about a thing, I'll take care of it all....."

So, it was settled, Megan was on her way to bond with the condors. And, actually, Greg is such a top notch individual, he would have said the same things whether I mentioned the Maker's or not...

Arriving in Canoa is a bit of a chore, and so we chose to simplify and expedite things by skipping the 9 hour bus portion of the trip in favor of a thirty minute flight. Problem was, our (Aerogal) plane was delayed in Columbia for the entire day....typical South American travel whining. We weren't the only ones complaining though, and by the afternoon we were in route, with free beers, free lunch, and free Grand Marnier in hand. For travelers reading this blog, I've since learned Icaro is the ONLY way to fly in Ecuador.

We managed to find our baggage carrier and fight off the throngs of crowds around the massive Manta, Ecuador airport terminal....

...and by the next day Megan was off soaring with the Condors (actually, I think she was with Pelicans, but who's counting?) Megan had my camera in the air, and I had hers on the ground, I'll post the pics from her camera later. The first picture is of where she took off from....



I was proud of my sister as I watched her up in the air; she didn't think twice about it, and in paragliding you pretty much just jump off a cliff! I think I was more nervous watching her than she was doing it. Landing back on the beach near Canoa, Megan, Erin and I proceded to engulf ourselves in the beach life of Canoa: sunsets, cold beers on the beach, fresh fruit juice (watermellon (sandia) and blackberry (mora)), shrimp, shrimp, spicy shrimp!, beach bars with Perception kayaks!?! and of course, eggs benedict at the Coco Loco.

Oh, and did I mention it was Carnival?...........




Yeah, that's another story, but suffice it to say that Greg discovered that you can throw a water-balloon into the car of and onto the lap of a cop during carnival and NOT get in trouble over it.

We had many more adventures with my sister, which I'll need to write about in another posting soon. The lesson for today though: bring Maker's Mark and you'll go far :)


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