By the time night fell, I was irate as hell at the pace, the leadership, and basically everything about the trip. I just wanted to stare out the window at the stars and be left alone. This was apparently more than could be accommodated. Had I been a rattlesnake, the shaking of my bon bon would have sounded like a crate of ball jars falling into hell. I had to keep wiping away the black liquid wrath that kept oozing from one nostril with stealthy sweeps of the back of my hand. A dog’s head hovered in my window and coaxed me in forceful whispers to kill everyone in the car and dismember them. Alright, maybe I was a tad fatigued and cranky, but at least no one died. And that’s the story I’m sticking to.

     Our new 10-dollar hotel rooms were the bomb. We settled in with raised eyebrows and wise ass remarks and then loaded up to go eat. My sub-amoebic driver/top dog of the trip, Roberto, decided he did not need to follow the other car containing 70% of our group (and 100% of the entertainment) to the same restaurant. When the car stopped, the question mark above my head turned into a jet stream of hellfire and the dog’s head, a swarm of flies with goat’s faces and I twitched down the street in a random direction without a word to my companions. I had no plan. “Keep walking and you won't spend the rest of your life in jail” I thought.

      Our first destination of the day was yet another in a long painful line of “integrated farm” visits. I don’t care to waste a minute of my life discussing the details, except to say that you haven’t lived until you’ve had a nutty assed toucan bouncing all around you screaming to other imaginary toucans. Oh yeah, and I also scaled a horse almost before its owner had finished asking if anyone wanted to ride it. The horse then waited until we had trotted out of yelling distance to decide it neither understood Spanish, English nor the heels I repeatedly jabbed into its ribs. Then, sensing my gringodom, the horse cocked its head and froze me with its giant glossy eye. There it held me until a girl could walk up the path a few minutes later to rescue me. Then we went to 2 small- hell, insignificant- indigenous chicken projects that were not outstanding in any way except that their proprietors seemed none too thrilled to have us there and also that our fearless (or rather hapless) leader, the 8th morbid curiosity of the world, the human ostrich Roberto asked the longest, most pathological series of pointless questions any of us had ever seen. Only driver number 2 was able to talk Roberto down from the cosmos and get the group headed in the direction of lunch.

      Roberto, driver number 1, again stranded me away from the rest of the young gringos by again ignoring their existence and going his own way. Again I plunged into a strange town without a word or destination in mind and again I happened across the other group exactly as if I had followed a homing beacon. My anger had me catatonic. I refused to step foot in Roberto’s car for the rest of the trip. I’m wiping the rest of the day and Roberto’s consistently embarrassing and infuriating behaviour permanently from my memory. Later that night I ate pizza. Yeah, thought you should know.

      In response to a question on measures the operation could be taking to ensure that the species it farms don’t find their way into local waterways, the German launched into one of the most outstanding improvisational whirlwinds of philosophical tirade I have ever heard. When the man ended by saying “But did you come here to hear a lecture on politics or learn fish farming?”, I and several others turned slowly to each other, vibrating in religious ecstasy, and rasped “politics.”

      A fish farm (again, tilapia) and the sexual assault of goats filled the remaining hours of the day before lunch. We hooked up with a Peace Corps health volunteer from D.C. that happened to live in the area. He pointed out some ancient Inca petroglyphs carved in a stone, so it wasn’t a total loss.

      After lunch, we wasted the afternoon hours listening to an arrogant Japanese chump who spoke excellent Spanish (yet his L’s were still R’s!) gassing on and on about the most elementary como-se-dice-defecation about organic gardening. After that, we raced back to the hotel to see if the Spain vs. Ecuador soccer game was still on. Word here has it that the 2 teams have never played each other. Sadly, the game ended the same way the first centuries of Ecuador began- with Spain knocking its ass up and down the green expanse almost completely without a substantial resistance.

      When I arrived in San Miguel, EcuaMom was swaying in her porch hammock with a semi-vacant expression on her face. She asked me about the trip. I told her the Oriente was bonitisimo, but the guy who looks like an ostrich ruined everything. She knows of Robert and laughed until she coughed. I told her “Yeah, everyone is mad at-” “At the ostrich?” she chirped, sending herself again into hysterics.

      As I was giving myself the customary post-trip self-haircut, Grace stopped by. We talked about the possibility of going into Santo Domingo and decided we should. Grace announced she was going home to get ready so we could catch the last bus at 6:30pm. I agreed and then noticed that was only 12 minutes in the future and my haircut was still unfinished, to say nothing of the shower I would need. I cut my hair at lightning speed and then dashed into the shower. I shaved and sudsed simultaneously. I heard Grace return and yell that we had no time for showers. I rinsed off by flailing in the cascade of rainwater and then leapt out into my room. I launched everything inside my backpack into the air and redeposited a few select items for the journey. I ran out of the house and into the street where Grace was waiting. She told me that we had missed the 6:30 bus, but that my neighbour had told her there would be one more.

      Then Grace suggested we ought to share a beer while we waited for the next bus. I ordered a bottle from EcuaDad through the tienda window next to me. Just as he pried the cap off, the next bus appeared up the street. EcuaDad shrugged and told me just to remember to bring the bottle back later. With a nod, I spun around and climbed aboard the bus Grace had flagged down, beer in hand. Grace and I passed it back and forth as the bus sped down the road. Then I realized I had never paid EcuaDad for the beer and must have been dashing for the bus while he was standing there with his hand out.