Ecuador travel survival guide: What to bring on a trip to Vilcabamba, Loja or Quito

(NaturalNews) Traveling in Ecuador can be very rewarding: It’s one of the most beautiful destinations in all the Americas, and there are some truly fascinating things to explore there. I spent most of my time in Southern Ecuador, near Loja and Vilcabamba (the Valley of Longevity), but I also traveled around Quito and Guayaquil, too. In these travels, I learned some important travel tips that I’m sharing here. If you plan to visit Ecuador, take these to heart: They’ll save you all sorts of frustration once you get there. Watch those numbers When you buy items at local shops, it’s not unusual for them to add up the purchase total on a slip of paper. (Ecuadorian merchants are much better at math than North American workers, most of whom have forgotten how to add…) When you see the total, you might be shocked to discover that things seem more expensive than they should. Well, here’s why: Ecuadorians write the number “1″ to look like a “7″. Yep: What looks to you and me like a seven is actually a one in Ecuador. Their sevens have a cross-mark on them to distinguish them from ones. So if you think your grocery bill total came to $75.70, the truth is that it’s probably just $15.10. Carry a flashlight everywhere Ecuador doesn’t have a lot of street lights. At night, it gets dark. Sometimes really dark. So always carry a flashlight with you wherever you go. I always carried a head-worn flashlight. It was the easiest to carry and use. In a pinch, you can buy one of these in Ecuador, but they’re less expensive to buy in the USA first, before you go. (I don’t know the pricing in Canada, Europe or elsewhere, but it’s probably cheaper to buy it first.) I also found it handy to always carry a pocket tool with a simple knife. The best I found is the Skeletool by Leatherman. Here’s a link to it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Leatherman-830850-Skeletool-CX-Multitool/dp/B000XU43IC I’ve also seen these for sale at Target stores in the USA. Learn how merchants describe prices If something costs you two dollars and fifty cents, that’s described to you as, “Dos con cincuenta.” That’s “two with fifty.” They don’t say “two dollars and fifty cents.” They just say “Two with fifty.” Merchants will often not bother with demanding every single cent. If the total is $2.52, and you give them $2.50, that’s usually enough. Likewise they will sometimes give you back slightly less change. If they owe you $1.03 in change, they might just give you a buck. You should be okay with that. It works both ways. Small bills Even in a major Ecuadorian city like Quito, it’s difficult to break a $50 or $100. Outside the cities, it’s impossible. In rural areas, you’ll even have trouble breaking a $20. Or if you do manage to find some merchant who will take your $20, it usually works like this: You ask them if they can break a $20 for your small purchase. They say yes, they can break it. So you hand them your $20. Then they run out of their shop and disappear for ten minutes. What they’re doing is running around the street trying to find someone who has change for your $20. A few minutes later, they finally reappear with your change. So yes, many local merchants can break a $20 for you, but only if you’re willing to wait while they canvass the town looking for change. To avoid this, always carry $5 and $1 bills. That’s the real currency in Ecuador: Small bills! Taxis Taxi drivers are some of the nicest people in Ecuador. I’ve spent many hours chatting with them during various trips. In Vilcabamba, go with the taxis that look like white pickup trucks. Many of those drivers speak some English, too! It’s good to tip taxi drivers a bit. If your ride is $2, give them an extra 50 cents. If you take a longer trip to a different city, and your ride is $25, it doesn’t hurt to give them $28. They really appreciate the tips, and what I learned is that the next time you need a taxi, they show up right away. I generally tip from 10% – 20%. Taxi drivers are usually fairly honest in Ecuador, except beware of taxis in Guayaquil, which is a city that has higher crime rates than anywhere else in the country. Don’t just jump into any taxi you see. You might get taken for a ride there. But in Vilcabamba and Loja, taxis are almost universally safe and polite. Keep your personal belongings safe While most Ecuadorians are honest, hard-working people, there are a small number who make a living lifting valuable objects off foreigners. This is especially prevalent at the airports, where a friendly-looking business man in a suit might offer to help you with your luggage and then covertly walk away with your laptop (it’s true; it happened to a friend of mine). Laptop theft is so common in Ecuador now that I know an attorney in Loja who won’t even carry a laptop bag anymore. He carries his laptop in an old backpack instead. Anything that looks valuable — a laptop bag, camera bag, and so on — should be disguised as something else. And please don’t make the mistake of putting your purse over the back of the chair you’re sitting on in a local restaurant. When you finish your dinner, that purse will be history. Also, here’s another trick: If you get on a bus to travel from city to city, the bus worker loading your bags might place your bag under your seat. You think it’s safe, right? But what you don’t know is that your bag was purposely put under your seat so that the zipper is facing the rear of the bus. Once you fall asleep, the person behind you will quietly unzip your bag and steal anything valuable. You won’t figure it out until you get to your hotel room and wonder, “Where my iPhone?” Ecuador is actually a very safe country to visit. There’s not much violent crime compared to other countries, but there is a fair amount of petty theft. So travel safely and keep your belongings hidden and close to your body. Learn some Spanish! The best thing you can bring to Ecuador is some Spanish language skills! Some people in Ecuador speak English, but by no means is this a common skill. You’ll need some Spanish to get around and enjoy yourself. If you’re an audio learner, I recommend the Pimsleur Spanish courses. If you’re a visual learner, I recommend Rosetta Stone . I’ve used both courses, and they both taught me a lot. Please try not to pronounce your Spanish like a total newbie gringo! It’s better to have a small vocabulary that you pronounce well than a huge vocabulary that nobody else can understand. Remember: If you aren’t rolling your R’s and softening your D’s, you aren’t pronouncing Spanish correctly. In Ecuador, the letter “V” is pronounced almost like a “B.” Enjoy your visit to Ecuador! Learn more about Ecuador Check out my related articles: Loja and Vilcabamba, Ecuador: Destinations for health-conscious people http://www.naturalnews.com/029064_Vilcabamba_Ecuador.html Top ten things to love about Vilcabamba Ecuador, the Valley of Longevity http://www.naturalnews.com/029005_Vilcabamba_Ecuador.html Adventure to Podocarpus National Forest near Vilcabamba, Ecuador http://www.naturalnews.com/028997_Podocarpus_Vilcabamba.html Amazing photos from Podocarpus http://www.naturalnews.com/phototours/podocarpus-vilcabamba-ecuador-tour/index.html Photos of the ranch where I built a food forest http://www.naturalnews.com/Valley-of-Longevity-Property.html Homes and land in Ecuador Vilcabamba Real Estate Company http://www.VREC.org Hacienda San Joaquin – The high-end gated community of homes near Vilcabamba http://www.VilcabambaHomes.com Or email us at vilcaland@gmail.com if you have questions about land or homes. We can help point you in the right direction.

Big Pharma executive murders 8-year-old son with Xanax and Ambien (opinion)

(NaturalNews) I’ve always said that Big Pharma executives were guilty of crimes against humanity. Now one of their wealthiest and most successful executives has been caught trying to pull off a murder-suicide in an upscale NY hotel. Gigi Jordan, who ran pharmaceutical companies selling pills to treat cancer, murdered her 8-year-old son by force-feeding him ground-up pharmaceuticals which included Xanax and Ambien. Let’s just stop right there for a moment and consider what this says about the pharmaceutical industry: Even its own executives know their drugs are toxic enough to commit murder. Jordan had been planning the murder-suicide for some time, it seems. She had left a suicide note in the hotel room, alongside thousands of pills scattered about the room. Jordan is reportedly worth $100 million — money she accumulated largely by selling toxic pills that harmed other people. Now, it seems, she chose to turn those pills on herself and her own family. Why is this not surprising? Big Pharma and the culture of death Certainly we can all feel compassion for the loss of life experienced by this little boy — a victim of growing up in a Big Pharma family where they live and die with patented chemical medications. But let’s look at the bigger issue here: Why is nobody really surprised that a wealthy executive who pushed dangerous pills for a living might end up killing her own son with some of those same chemicals? The reason nobody is really surprised is because deep down, we already know that Big Pharma executives are mentally insane . They earn their financial wealth at the expense of other peoples’ health. They push pills that harm people, that produce disturbing side effects and that even kill people. They oversee companies engaged in price fixing fraud, disease mongering, corruption and bribery. Big Pharma executives are the mob crime bosses of the 21st century , and beyond being guilty of crimes against humanity, they are mentally disturbed themselves. And why are they so mentally disturbed? Perhaps because they take their own medicine . They eat their own fraudulently-approved chemicals — the same chemicals they worked so hard to get approved by burying the truth about their side effects. The more they swallow, the more they become mentally imbalanced. The side effects they tried to hide from the world can’t hide from human physiology… I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Gigi Jordan was on antidepressant drugs (SSRIs) or other antipsychotics. The side effects of these drugs include committing violent acts against others. Murder-suicide has happened before under the influence of SSRIs. Remember the Columbine school shootings? That was a pharmaceutical-inspired mass murder. Remember comedian Phil Hartman? The reason he is no longer alive is because his wife was doped up on antidepressants (and other drugs) when she shot him twice in the head with a .38 caliber pistol, then fatally shot herself. Virtually every school shooting that has happened in the last twenty years has been linked in one way or another to psychiatric medications sold by pharmaceutical companies led by mentally deranged executives. These people are corporate criminals who pose a serious danger to not only their own families, but the public at large. If they can feed a fatal dose of medication chemicals to their own children , then what else are they capable of doing in the name of corporate profits? The truth is, these people just don’t value human life. They are criminally insane. They need to be arrested and prosecuted for their crimes before they murder yet more children. By the way, they don’t stop at killing just their own children: They want to murder your children, too by putting six-month-old infants on antidepressant drugs, or doping up your teenagers on drugs for ADHD, a completely fictitious, bogus “disease” that was invented solely to sell more drugs. Superfood executives don’t murder their children You don’t see the founders of superfood companies going berserk and murdering their own children. That’s because they have healthier brain function and they aren’t whacked out on pharmaceuticals all day long. People who eat superfoods are healthier, happier and experience far lower rates of chronic disease than people who depend on pharmaceuticals. The children of superfood families are happy, healthy, vibrant and highly intelligent. They are generally NOT vaccinated, and yet they get sick far less than other children who are routinely vaccinated. And you don’t find children of superfood families murdered with chemicals in $1,000-a-night hotel rooms, either. Superfoods create both mental and physical health. Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, destroy mental and physical health. They make you crazy. According to press reports, Gigi Jordan was found “…barely conscious, slumped on the floor, babbling incoherently…” Gee, maybe she just needed a few more antipsychotic drugs, huh? You would think that a wealthy pharmaceutical executive worth $100 million could afford all the drugs she ever wanted right? And she did: The room was littered with various pills. But what Gigi Jordan found out is what NaturalNews readers already know: Pharmaceuticals are largely a fraud . They don’t work. They don’t make you healthier. They don’t make you more sane. Even antidepressants have been clinically proven in multiple trials to work no better than placebo . Most of the positive effects from pharmaceuticals are due to the placebo effect! The pharmaceutical industry is nothing more than high-profit quackery. And yet the cost in human suffering is immense. People are dying every day from pharmaceuticals. Millions of people are suffering brain damage, liver damage, kidney damage and heart damage from medications, vaccines and chemotherapy. This is all being done in the name of corporate profits, not out of any real desire to end human suffering or improve health. I believe Gigi Jordan’s actions accurately portray the philosophies and insanities of pharmaceutical industry: Obscene selfishness, complete disrespect for human life and the treacherous application of their deadly chemical products. Gigi Jordan only killed her own child, but Big Pharma at large is trying to kill your children, too. Her murder-suicide speaks volumes about the mental state of Big Pharma executives across the industry, in my opinion. They are mentally unstable, greed-driven criminals who will murder children to serve their own selfish interests. Sources for this story include: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/rich_ma_kills_kid_in_slay_suicide_KKWqh10YyaLKzKOuglvL8I http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/02/06/2010-02-06_jude_was_only_joy_in_life_full_of_torment_letter.html