1491 Into Ecuador, yet still in Gran Colombia.
1492 More guessing of ineptly given directions.
1493 High-class dendrostatuary.
1493 Such an awful cemetery.
1494 As before, nights worry-free anywhere.
1496 More defacing of public and private property by slogans.
1497 Otavalo:
     paraboriginal apparel, including necklaces of ... Czech glass beads.
1498 Roadblock checkpoints beyond counting.
1498 Sleeping at the Equator, after having slept at the Arctic Polar Circle.
1500 Bone-deep cold, right on the Equator.
1500 The Sun never follows the Equator.
1500 Those self-centered ovine brains in human skulls.
1501 Shall we ever find batteries for tape-recorders, not to be replaced every >>>>>30 or 60 minutes, oil and filter for engine, not to be replaced every >>>>>3,000 kilometers?
1502 Pleasant "high"way.
1503 Each country, a fief of a different foreign automaking overlord.
1503 Quito: clean, tranquil, book-aficionado, partial against its >>>>>Spanish-speaking brethern.
1504 The usual limitations in food fit for health.
1505 (1519) Fascinating mystery, duplicity, controversy, confusion, and >>>>>future, around claims of huge galleries and uncommon archaeology beneath >>>>>Ecuador (and, maybe, Peru).
1506 Too little of the bewitching Andean music.
1507 Why do so many glorious national anthems sound like pitiful operettas?
1507 Fast, efficient "trámite".
1508 The convenience of using an improper identification-card.
1508 Bad news: The Vespuccian consulate in Quito did not receive the vital >>>>>document expected in Bogotá.
1508 The expensive need to import a set of tires by air, and the meanders of >>>>>doint it.
1509 Color-coded banknotes.
1509 In almost all countries:
    insidious cultural disintegration by technological invasion - with >>>>>acquiescence of the national government.
1509 Too busy imitating glittering nonsense to use own sane judgment.
1510 The River of the Amazons was discovered starting from Quito.
1511 Keeping a worried eye on guerrilla in Peru.
1512 First direct attempt at slashing our pocket - without success.
1513 Between the incorrect equatorial line and the correct equatorial line.
1517 Underdevelopment and indignity of speedbreakers everywhere.
1518 A poetic weather is not a pleasant weather.
1518 Why is a figure with 3 angles a triangle, and with 6 angles, an hexagon?
1519 Franciscan convent broadminded enough to broadcast, in FM stereo, >>>>>diabolic music by Paganini (The Trill of the Devil) and dissolute music >>>>>by Strauss (Wine, Women and Songs).
1520 A little to the north of the Cave of the Tayos: were that archaeologist >>>>>and his assistant really attacked, 120 meters inside subterranean >>>>>corridors, by big-footed sasquaches?
1523 How is, exactly, C-14 dating?
1528 What is Potassium-40 dating?
1528 How is thermoluminescence dating?
1530 Surprise: two human skulls: 32,000 b.C., 26,000 b:C:
1531 Printing rollers, 1000 b.C.
1532 Surprise:
     coastal civilization, its unknown beginnings (5000 to 3000 b.C.), its >>>>>unexplained similarities with ancient Mexico and Japan.
1533 Maya-style figurines in Ecuador.
1533 Each interview is a counter-interview.
1533 Tremendous short-wave broadcasting:
     190 hours every 24 hours in 14 languages to 134 countries.
1534 Or is it "bouncing-wave" broadcasting?
1535 The cause of that drenched dry-season on our path passed through >>>>>Indonesia.
1537 Over-the-Andes petroleum-duct; a feat.
1538 A walking quasi-fossil of the "Colorado" paraborigines.
1541 The benefits of many altitudes at a low latitude.
1542 Personal safety also varies by altitude.
1542 Excellent band-playing.
1545 Fish-meal and fish-oil factory.
1548 Salango, with archaeological sequence, from pre-ceramic times to Spanish >>>>>invasion.
1549 "Shy" archaeology, indispensable for understanding of a society.
1552 Radiesthesia helps guide archaeological search.
1553 Workers, rather than receiving wages from the archaeological team, pay >>>>>the team a stipend for the privilege of being workers.
1555 Hundreds of crabs running on tiptoes.
1556 No road, no choice: on faith, along channels of mud up to the chassis, in >>>>>the gloominess of a jungle.
1558 No road, no choice: along the waves at ebbing tide.
1559 Gathering shrimp-eggs.
1560 Valdivia, archaeological site abandoned by archaeologists.
1561 The headaches of a village spread over an ancient cemetery.
1562 Skeletons in position of Asian lotus.
1565 The cruelty of cutting up live giant turtles.
1566 Pascual de Andagoya, precursor of Francisco Pizarro.
1567 Valdivia hair-style, very much Mikado-type.
1567 Figurine of a jovial Chinese.
1567 Was America really in contact with Asia when Europe was a peninsula of >>>>>barbarism?
1568 Seaside resort in the making:
     a wall of high-risers already effectively separates people from the sea.
1569 Altitude differential:
     9.5 vertical kilometers between Andes and the coastal Pacific.
1569 Real Alto, archaeological site in full excavation; 7 days (45 hours) of a >>>>>fascinating experience.
1577 The case of the human skull with a simian jaw.
1577 In the race between archaeologists and grave-robbers, grave-robbers >>>>>always win.
1579 The two most blissful lovers on Earch:
     two skeletons embraced for eternity; since about 5000 b.C.
1580 The foundations of the oldest house known in America:
     8,000 years old; Vega  Culture.
1581 One requisite for communicating with all those archaeologists since >>>>>Salango: to speak English.
1585 Pre-Columbian cosmetic dentistry.
1585 Crossing the mysterious footsteps of Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín >>>>>in the city of the cacique Guayas and his wife Quil.
1586 The Cave of the Tayos according to Juan Móricz.
1592 Is that circle, high in the Andes, a patch of sterile ground or a >>>>>flying-saucer landing-spot?
1595 Hatún Cañar - Inca Pirca, pre-Inca and Inca archaeological site.
1598 The politics of switching from selenolatry to heliolatry.
1600 An anthropological research that degenerated into delusion.
1605 Landívar Museum: private, minuscule, delicate.
1606 Grave problem: still no news at the Vespuccian consulate in Quito about >>>>>our vital document missing since Bogotá.
1607 Local radio: mostly waste of time; switch to short waves.
1608 Inca Huainá Cápac and his sons, the Carolus Magnus and his sons, of >>>>>South America.
1609 Bewitching autochthonous music relegated like leper; cult of international >>>>>vulgarity.
1609 Into the Ecuadorian Amazonia.
1612 Religious services where there is a lack of professional priest: return >>>>>to the first Christians.
1613 The Shuar, then and now. (Jíbaros never existed.)
1614 Head-shrinking, then and now.
1623 Ecuador of the Ecuadorians, double the size of the Ecuador of everybody >>>>>else.
1624 Worries: 
     •the tires expected by air, untraceable, and ours, on these roads, flaking >>>>>>away by the day;
     •the Vespuccian document, untraceable.
1624 Adventures in telephone calls.
1624 Why 30 to 60 minutes waiting for each (long-distance) phone>connection?
1624 Some roads, only on maps, not in reality.
1625 "Panamerican Highway", pure and simple myth since beginning of >>>>>Expedition.
1625 Ears "plugged" by aerotitis, by steep descent from 3,500 meters to >>>>>150 meters.
1626 Strange coexistence of refined grammar with vandalism and stupidity.
1627 Worries: several items must be fixed or checked on the vehicle.
1627 Delights that caged hens and roosters know not.
1628 Back up to 3,800 meters; no more tillage.
1629 Near the Chimborazo Mountain, the top of which, without being the highest >>>>>on Earth, is the farthest away from the center of Earth.
1630 Here fought Huáscar and Atahualpa.
1631 Do those two fabulous treasures hidden by the Tahuantinsuyuans from the >>>>>Spaniards really exist? (Areas of Sangay and Píllaro.)
1631 A village still in black mourning for the assassination of the last >>>>>dynastic Inca by the Spaniards.
1632 Latacunga, colonial site.
1632 A gallery of twelve giants between 4,800 meters and 6,300 meters.
1634 Total reconditioning of vehicle, from new axle up; very good shop.
1635 Again and again: police checkpoints, speedbreakers, streets changing from >>>>>"two way" to "wrong way" without warning, traffic officers degraded on >>>>>advertising stands, etc.
1638 A new notion: is everything European transplanted to a colony >>>>>"colonial"?
1638 Church with Moorish features.
1638 Church with gold, rubies, diamonds.
1639 Christian convent with pagan god (Neptune).
1640 Religious statue over the foundations of a pre-Columbian temple.
1641 Museum, iconoclastic enough to challenge the Bering Dogma.
1642 Archaeological collection, Ecuadorian in name but bewitchingly Asian and >>>>>otherwise exotic in looks.
1643 Tires by air, at last, six of them.
1644 If conceived for penumbra, in penumbra leave it.
1644 The latest and best weapon of Satan against God.
1645 The weird world of powerful short-wave antennas.
1653 Country of waterfalls by the hundreds, and of hydrangeas by the >>>>>thousands.
1654 The Huagranis, ghosts of themselves (Aucas never existed).
1657 What a jungle: more tourists than monkeys (kept prisoners on an island), >>>>>more guides than tourists.
1658 By far the most exotic study: the fair-skinned tourists.
1658 The feat of flowing 4,000 kilometers to the sea on only 400 meters of >>>>>decline.
1661 Logistical headaches, headaches, headaches.
1662 Equinoxes do not occur when they are fabled to.
1662 What about equidiurnoxes?
1663 Equinoctial line, equatorial line: two different things.
1666 Cochasqui, archaeological site.
1668 Pimampiro, archaeological site.
1668 Interesting geological cut.
1669 Not one in those twenty people knew that street, even half a block away.
1670 When simple tasks become adventures (the bad kind).
1672 Satisfying nature wherever the need arises.
1672 Because of that Vespuccian ineptitude and adamant unwillingness to >>>>>correct it, to Miami and back.
1673 The efficient and the inhumane, the humane and the deficient.
1676 From the Viceroyalty of New Granada into the Viceroyalty of El Perú.
1677 Lily-white shells cropping out of sediments high in the Andes.
1678 Another landslide, blocking the road.
1679 So much underdevelopment solvable without high technology or hard >>>>>currency.