Traveling: 4

I didn’t mean to do this and I’m not doing it, not exactly, because photographer52 asked. But as it turns out, from my dry dusty dull apartment, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ecuador.

When I woke up, on my first day, it was immediately clear how to turn the lights on and how turn the air conditioning off. I wish I had known the night before. I froze in the dark just over the edge of the end of the world. In the morning light, I wandered around. I had a card that I had arranged so that it would be easy to make phone calls. I wanted to call somebody back home and tell them I was alive. But the card didn’t work. Not anywhere. And besides that, even without the card, it was very difficult making an international phone call. And because it was difficult, it became really important to me.

I took a taxi to the airport. I figured if anybody had a phone by which I could call Canada, it would be the airport. I called home for 4 minutes. They were relieved I was alive. I was cut off in the middle of my Javier story although I tried to tell it fast. I didn’t take a cab after leaving the airport. I wandered around for a bit. I sorted out which way north was and felt better. It was hot. There were lizards in the trees and on the sidewalk.

By a map I had bought at the airport I found the address of the school that didn’t hire me. They were impressed I had come anyway but no, there weren’t any jobs. But perhaps, yes, perhaps within a week they could find a spot for me. The school director gave me his home phone number and told me to call in a few days. As I walked around the school I ran into a few teachers. An earnest excitable girl told me to get the hell out of Guayaquil. She told me that Guayaquil was very dangerous. That there were gangs that robbed you. That almost every teacher she knew had been robbed at least once. She told me to hightail it to Quito. I didn’t quite know what to make of her.

I made my way back toward the hotel. The hotel was near a famous park which was quite easy to spot on the map. I never did find the water. There was water very near by but I never did discover it. For lunch I went to a restaurant and ordered a hamburger, mostly because I was sure I knew how to say that. Along with my hamburger, they served me a small bowl with something vegetative that tasted terribly spicy. Still, I ate the whole thing. I don’t remember how I discovered it, but it became clear that this was garnish, not unlike relish, and you weren’t meant after all to leave an empty bowl. Oh well.

When I got back to the hotel room, it was too hot. I had turned the air conditioning off. That wasn’t smart. I also, not surprisingly, had developed quite a stomach ache. I took some Pepto Bismol. In the golden heat, I too a nap on top of the sheets.

That night I went to a bar nearby. The bar was just the way it should have been. Cool on the inside. The grotto was filled with revelers and drinkers all to a mixed up track of Salsa and Ricky Martin. I met a fellow who knew a little English who lived in Guayaquil. His name was Homer. Over a couple of cervezas, he told me more about the sleeper gang. They would put you in a sleeper hold and rob you of everything, even your clothes if they thought you had nice clothes. They’d probably take your clothes, he added.

Guayaquil, except for the terror, was everything I was expecting. Hot. Debauched. People smoking and drinking and dancing and pissing in the streets. Old sunburned buildings peeling. Everybody was really easy to talk to. The next day, after waiting out a hangover, I made a list of schools in Guayaquil. It was a Saturday. There wasn’t so much I could do until Monday.

At lunch on Saturday, I was in a darkened café watching Twister with subtitles, at lunch, a boy asked to bum a cigarette and invited himself to sit down with me. His name was Joffre and it was his seventeenth birthday. I wasn’t convinced he was seventeen. And I wasn’t convinced it was his birthday but still I bought him a beer. I thought perhaps he was grifting the gringo, but I didn’t particularly care. It was nicer than eating alone. We spoke almost entirely in Spanish. He told me, “Aqui es peligroso.” Very peligroso. He described to me how his brother had been in a few fights. He told me too, how his mother was sick and his father was gone. But mostly how dangerous Guayaquil was.

That night, my third night, I retired reasonably early, by midnight anyway. My ass was still revolting, or my stomach anyway. I lie awake in my bed that Saturday night listening to the dancers on the first floor. There was a dance club in the hotel. And even though I was in the dark and even though I was alone it was magnificent laying there in my bed, far away from everything, and listening to the dance.

I can’t say when I came to my decision but before lunch on Sunday, my third day, I was on a bus with my suitcases going to Quito. I suppose that I had decided that if even the natives were convinced that Guayaquil was dangerous that I should do the smart thing and get the hell out of there. By 6 or 7 pm, I had found a hotel in the colder, darker, quieter Quito. And by 8 pm, I had been mugged and stabbed.

SS