In June, 1996, I spent a week in Ecuador, where I was technical advisor to an online journalism project. The Synergos Institute, which arranges corporate sponsorship programs for anti-poverty efforts in Third World, sent two college seniors to Quito on a two-month Internship program with Fundacion Esquel, which plays a similar role with anti-poverty organizations in Ecuador. Microsoft Network/Kids provided equipment (laptops and digital cameras) in exchange for the rights to publish the interns' journals and hold weekly chat sessions.
My job was to get them wired up to meet MSN's objectives. It took four days of meetings and three Web seminars, but we got the interns connected via EcuaNet with a couple of days left over to play tourist. Heading north on the Pan American Highway, this was our first stop; about 45 minutes out from Quito. There's actually a much bigger site called "Media del Mundo" with a visitor's center and museum some kilometers to the west where the Equator is at it's highest elevation, but we liked this "Under Construction" site better. In this picture, my left foot is in the Northern Hemisphere.
We stayed in the central highlands of Ecuador, where the weather is like Spring all year round. Tourism in Ecuador is a good bargin. The landscape is fantastic -- Tropical vegetation in the dry thin air (Quito is 9600 feet above sea level) and snow covered Volcanos soaring up into the sky. The people are honest, friendly and laid back (nobody gets too excited at this altitude,) yet, also, conservative with regard to race, religion and class.
Jeff Adelman took the picture with one of my cheap, Fuji disposable cameras. I used up five of them; had them developed and put on a Kodak PhotoCD. Great results! The photo above was imported from the CD into Photoshop to adjust the color balance and improve the contrast, then saved as a "high quality" JPEG.
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