ALTAMONT ENTERPRISE FEATURE ARTICLE

View east from the deck of my mother's house in Berne, June 2009

Proposals on the Albany Hilltowns web site to encourage folks to visit the hill towns as a means to preserve the farmlands and the scenic beauty, and at the same time boosting the local economy, are the subject of The Altamont Enterprise  Feature Story for the week of December 24, 2009. Barb Husek tells me the front page article in weekly the Altamont Enterprise, by Zack Simone, also includes several nice photographs, and that the editor wrote a "glowing editorial" about our efforts, (Barb's words). My copy won't arrive here in Oaxaca, Mexico for another week. 

View south from the deck of my mother's house in Berne, June 2009

This Christmas season Albany Hilltowns is celebrating its first anniversary! It was only a year ago that the first few pages of my site went online. There are now 2063 pages, "and growing daily." The main page is viewed over 1000 times a month, and that rate is also increasing steadily.

View west from the rear deck of my mother's house. Shows the Pine Grove cemetery, June 2009

ALBANY HILLTOWNS BLOG

(Click on title above to go to new blog)

Not having enough to keep me busy I have created a new blog for Albany Hilltowns. My thinking is that this way people can subscribe, and I will only be sending out updates on Albany Hilltowns genealogy and history to those who have an interest in that subject.... Take a look and subscribe.

OTAVALO, ECUADOR

We are in Otavalo, Ecuador in the Andes where we are have taken a bungalow for four nights at Ali Shungu Mountain Lodge. The bungalow has two bedrooms, a huge living room, and a kitchen. The views are incredible. It is 10 minutes from town at the end of a dirt road that some taxis refuse to go. Click on a picture to enlarge.

View from our window at Ali Shungu Mountain Lodge, Otavalo, Ecuador

Zoom lens

Living room in our bungalow

Morning view of the valley from the road to our lodge

At the animal market in Otavalo this morning.

The vegetable market

Textile market in Otavalo, Ecuador

Here is a link to more photos I just posted on Picassa.

100_0831.jpg (JPEG Image, 600x800 pixels)

Our dear friend, Bill "de la Luz" Pandolf has retired to Tlacolatalpan, Mexico, where he has a delightful guest house, Casa de la Luz. He is does consulting on lighting which is why he called "Bill of the Lights." He is also a spectacular photographer. And his village is a wonderful place to take photographs.

Ecuador - first week

Picasa Web Albums - Harold

Ed just uploaded to my Picasa Web Album photos taken the first week of our trip to Ecuador. The first night we spent in the capital city of Quito in the San Francisco, a colonial hotel in a room that not only had no view, it had no windows! The next day we flew to Cuenca at about 8000 ft elevation. It has a beautiful colonial downtown that has been spoiled with way too many modern buildings. We stayed first in the Hotel Crespo, a lovely hotel that looked out over the main river running though the city. Actually it is more like a very swift flowing creek, and is fed by melting glaciers in the nearby Andes. After three nights there we moved to a condo owned by a friend who just left that morning for two weeks in Germany.