In Libertad, we found a fridge/microwave combination for 300 bucks. I filed that in my brain but knew it would break me if I went ahead with the purchase. Then I took Julio to the mall, which he had also never been in. Later, we bought a mattress for the bed he had built me and tied it atop a yellow taxi. By the time the taxi arrived in El Tambo, in the twin dust clouds of 2 simultaneous street soccer games, Julio had made lifelong friends with the taxi driver, who, like Julio, was an obvious product of the campo.

      When I arrived back at Julio’s, everyone was sitting on the porch, as usual. I sat with them. Julio wanted me to give him the English words for various objects he pointed to. Then Julio's nieces wanted me to give them English phrases with which to emasculate Julio. After all had gone to bed, Julio and I stood outside and looked at stars, which were in full effect. I told him it felt strange to be unable to recognize the night sky overhead. Julio then shocked me by breaking out an almost accurate astronomy fact, saying, “No, the stars are far away. We all see the same ones.”

      I tried to explain that while there is truth to that, I am 45 degrees lower on the globe here than at home and thus the stars have shifted commensurately. Yes, some of the sky is the same that I see at home, but here it’s in the wrong place and thus, when I look at his sky I can find neither constellations nor tell direction. That was what I meant to say anyway, but it was too late in the night for intelligible Spanish, so I probably communicated nothing and succeeded only in demoralizing Julio’s rare stab at intellectual discourse.

      At the next stop, we met a woman named Cynthia, who heads the Fiesta Planning Committee and who decided she didn’t like my first name and is thus single-handedly responsible for why half the town is now addressing me by my middle name. I was invited to join the Fiesta Planning Committee on 2 separate future occasions. I accepted. I had no idea what a Fiesta Planning Committee could have going on at 10 pm on a Friday night, but it sounded like fun.

      As we were walking down the sand street away from the woman’s house in a murderous downpour of sunlight, Guido informed me that I had just agreed to be the guy at the upcoming Señorita Tambo beauty pageant that puts the ribbons on the contestants. I fixed him with an incredulous glare.

      “How do you feel about that,” he asked.

     I thought for a moment. After the strong impulse to beat Guido to pulp in the street passed, the image of me presenting the misshapen and dangerously inbred girls of an El Tambo beauty contest with ribbons seemed downright hysterical. I shrugged to Guido and said I didn’t know, “A beauty pageant? That’s a little comical.” He donned a very determined posture and assured me that no, it was normal. I squinted straight ahead at the white glare of the sand street and retorted in my head that what inbred towns do and call normal passes as a sort of dark amusement for the rest of us.

      I arrived alone back at the first woman’s house for lunch. I knew it was about to get ugly when I saw my cup being washed in the next room by splashing a bit of water in a used cup and making a quick swipe inside it with a bare hand. What followed was an extra large portion of truly revolting fishy-tasting substances scattered across rice and also compacted into a large ball in my soup. Luckily, my brain was on point that afternoon and I successfully blocked out the entire meal as I relocated it to my stomach. The woman and I sat at opposite ends of a large wooden table. I felt obliged to make light convo about the group she heads, but she deflected the first question and said I would find out all about it later. We ate in total silence for the rest of the meal. Let me take this opportunity to tell all of mankind that I can do without your hollow social gestures.

      After the meal, the woman pawned me off on her kids, ordered them to converse with me, and left. We tried for an excruciating spell to comply with the mandate before someone got the bright idea to just turn on the television. I’d like to take THIS opportunity to thank my counterpart for being 45 minutes late in returning even though he was only 3 houses away.

     Then we visited the town president at the casa communal and he loaded up my schedule with various meetings for the next week and a half. Then I went home.

     I was ready to get out of El Tambo for a spell at that point so I invited Ivan go internetting and shopping with me. Among a few other stops, I took Ivan on a whirlwind tour of the junk food aisle of “Hipermarket” and bought an astounding array of pure crap. Then for 10 minutes, I poured over the decision to buy a pack of expensive sliced cheese to go with crackers. Having decided I no longer cared that I might have been setting a bad example for Ivan, who could never have afforded such a binge himself, I threw the cheese in the cart and told him we were going to eat the whole damn pack of cheese in one sitting when we left the store and we were not going to be sorry.

     We arrived back in Santa Elena breathless and covered in crumbs. We got off the bus and I ordered 2 colas, before retiring to the park to hear live music and hide all my groceries in my backpack so critics of the Liriano family could not hiss about how the opportunists were milking the gringo when they saw us getting off the bus in El Tambo full of shopping bags.

     At the community bank meeting, after being introduced as the second coming of Christ who was going to fix everyone’s problems and make them beautiful and rich, I was given the floor without warning. I rose to my feet without a clue as to what the stone-faced audience was expecting me to do. I mumbled some banality about who I was and then sat down again red-faced and peeved. Soon afterward, Guido and I left the meeting. I’m not really sure for whose benefit introducing me was.

     Then we walked to a house where some of Guido’s relatives live who have the town’s only computer. I sat on the couch responding perfunctorily to everyone’s questions until I realized it wasn’t going to be a short visit. After a spell, they wanted me to fix a problem with their computer. This was a complete bust as:

A.) no one could shut up enough to let me think,
B.) I have no Spanish lexicon for things pertaining to computers and thus couldn’t navigate thru settings and help files,
C.) by the looks of things, someone had deleted a bunch of program files.

      Later on, I was sitting on my bed writing when assorted family members came to my room for my mattress. The bed Julio had been building was compete and was waiting in the room the family had been feverishly cleaning all day. We slowly moved all my stuff into the new room. Lots of extended family members had shown up and all were standing around chattering in excitement at the day’s big climax. My room filled up with twitching kids. I tried to teach them to juggle and we then poured out into the night to throw my Frisbee the length of the street for 1.5 hours.

     As the sun edged higher, the family annoyed me greatly, as it appears they have become obsessed with me. They can think of nothing else. Their lives are now centered around me. I suppose it’s my fault for always juggling or showing them pens that detect counterfeit bills or tools that collapse on themselves or machines that cut hair or radios that hear Canada. But never mind that, Even when I’m trying hard to ignore them and read or write, they still just sit in my room and stare at me or ask me what I’m doing when it’s obvious I’m just sitting stock-still reading a book. Kids come into my room directly off the street and climb up onto my bed to look at what I’m writing from 3 inches away. I finally broke the news to them that they don’t read English… but that of course was not the point. The point is that it’s different and so am I and I’m accessible and ain’t another thing going on in all of El Tambo.

     So today I needed to get away from all that so I went shopping in Libertad. At an internet place, I met a local that speaks English pretty well and was stoked to get an opportunity to use it. He runs some kind of local tourism thing and said we ought to get together to check out various points of interest. I exchanged info with him.

     Back in El Tambo, I went with the males of the family to watch El Tambo’s soccer team destroy nearby Prosperidad’s team. After the game, as we were leaving, a few girls flagged down Julio’s son and apparently asked some pretty direct questions about me, which I was told all about back at the house. When I laughed this off, Julio became very serious and told me that tonight, as I was slated to be ribbon guy at the big Señorita Tambo beauty pageant, it would be customary for me to dance with the “queen”. He said he knew I thought it was stupid, but that I couldn’t get out of doing it. I reminded him that they had sent me into a banking meeting completely unprepared and it had been a big problem and if now I was to be some kind of figure in what was going to be a new round of local stupidity, he had better tell me what to expect moment by moment if I was even going to show up.

      After dark, yet another parade shuffled around in the streets carrying an icon of Mary atop a float-like thing bolstered by 2 shoulder poles. The parade people were somber and the large explosive bottle rockets went up every few seconds from among them. The parade, coursing through the hard-packed sand streets of El Tambo looked like the funeral scene from the movie Tombstone.

      Just before the big Señorita Tambo event kicked off, I took an antihistamine for the out of control head cold that was laying waste to me. I knew antihistamines sometimes make people sleepy, but I figured an untreated head cold would’ve been worse. I then proceeded to fall asleep sitting upright in a plastic chair outside in front of a tienda. Julio woke me up and told me we should make our way over to the event. I told him to get busy explaining exactly what I was supposed to do. His mouth moved and sounds came out but none of it made any sense. His enunciation was that of Bob Dylan, as usual. I became irate and told him to TRY speaking properly and that I had studied Spanish and he knows how to speak Spanish and we could make this work. He then spoke extremely slowly, though totally without intelligible pronunciation. What I could make out in what he was saying seemed to contradict itself. I told him to forget it and just tell me what to do moment by moment as situations arose.

     We stood outside the Señorita Tambo event place, which was a large cement basketball-like court with a makeshift chain-link fence erected around it. It was obvious from where we stood that too many people were trying to run the show and that in effect, no one really knew what was going on. A man with a clipboard came running up and told me that right now I and some woman were supposed to go together to the center of the court and choose a winner from among 3 girls who were already standing there. I was told I was simply choosing the “prettiest.” That’s messed up. I’m supposed to tell someone they’re not as pretty as the person they’re standing next to? Not only that, but with a crowd listening? What kind of person wants to openly compete to be declared the prettiest anyway? I disagree with every bit of this. This is the wrong direction y’all.

     I made Julio come with me to the center of the court just to ensure nothing went awry with someone springing last minute unintelligible instructions on me and running off. As the 3 of us (Julio, the woman and I) approached the girls, they tried to turn on the charm. The woman and I cast our respective scrutinizes and conversed in the most theatric of shady manners through Julio. Then we retracted to one side and watched each girl walk in a big square pattern across the court like it were some kind of catwalk. It was terrible. They tried so hard to amp their beauty. Not in the eyes of this beholder, chicas, not in these 20/20’s. You were beautiful before this stupid contest. Be your damn selves. Who sold you all this crap? Who told you it takes all this to be good enough? This gringo begs to differ.

     I selected the morena, naturally. I probably would’ve chosen the morena even if she hadn’t been the “prettiest”, just to show El Tambo what time it is. While the morena was receiving some kind of ribbon or flower or trophy or some kind of stupidity, Julio and I retreated to one corner of the cement court. I was scheduled to place a ribbon on each of the 5 girls who had one I different categories, but as usual, the plans changed and no one told us. Julio and I were glad to see another guy doing that task. We let our guards down. About 5 minutes later, my name came over the loud speaker. I turned to Julio “What now, damnit!? Julio, what!?” He didn’t answer; he just motioned for me to follow.

     We walked up to the 5 winners. Behind them were gifts on a table. Julio indicated a gift and then a girl. I handed her the gift, a picture was taken of that, and I began to walk away. The announcer guy boomed through the speakers, “Oh no! You forgot the kiss! Give her a BIG kiss!” I automatically complied. About 50 girls in the crowd let rip with shrill squeals, as if it were a boy band concert. I looked at Julio. He was about to break out laughing. I was stone faced, and- you guessed it- irate. That did it. I was outta there. The dance was soon to begin and there was about 100 girls strategizing on how to approach me. No way in hell I was about to stand around dumbly at ground zero for 10 megatons of competition and EcuaImprudence.

      Out of the blue an older gentleman touched my elbow and invited Julio and I to his table “for a beer”. A beer? Yeah, ok. That’s harmless enough. One beer and I’m outti. When the one beer split 3 ways was emptied, the old man exclaimed that we should all dance. I said no. The deal was for beer. Julio and the man plus a few women at the table left to the dance floor. A woman at the table invited me to dance. I told her no. Not “No, thank you”- just “no”. Everyone returned to the table a few seconds later as each dance number was extremely short, lest the practitioners begin making eye contact, smiling or enjoying themselves. I cannot imagine why these people are obsessed with such a ridiculous activity as EcuaDancing.

     Various people at the table then began pestering me to dance. I was not going to open that can of worms and get myself trapped there. Up to a point, I deflected the table’s unwanted impositions softly. Then I just told Julio we were leaving. We rose. The guy said, “I don’t want you to ‘feel bad’. Just stay a moment longer.” I consented as he poured more beer and sent for another. As our cups were emptied, the table led another charge to the dance floor. When they returned, I was again harassed to EcuaDance. I know they didn’t mean to grate my very, very last nerve- it’s just how people are here- but I had had enough. I told Julio again that we were leaving. We rose and left mid beer. Julio was likely put off by my rudeness. Neither he nor I spoke on the walk home.

      After the game, while I was panting and having a heart attack in the backyard from overexertion, I wandered out into the acres of dry chaparral behind Julio’s house, just to see what was out there. The soccer kids soon caught up with me and gave me their tour of the campo. They knew surprisingly much. It was like an episode of little rascals with all these miniature people saying preposterously adult-like things. When Ivan was again free, we grabbed a bus to Olón.

In Olón, I told Ivan that Lonne and Sally live in a group home for kids. Ivan knew the place. We headed to some kind of catholic compound known as the Sanctuario, a building perched precariously on a cliff’s edge. The view from, and the architecture of, the Sanctuario were sublime. I shuffled around with my mouth hanging open saying “Es RIDICULO!” every 30 seconds. We stopped a number of people to inquire about Lonne and Sally’s whereabouts. No one had ever heard of them. It was a mystery. There, high above the western edge of South America, awash in a steady pacific breeze, we accepted that there was no Lonne and Sally here and we had no idea what had become of them.

      Ivan and I then went to nearby Montañita. Ever since I had arrived here in the peninsula, locals had been referring to Montañita as a town full of gringo hippies getting stoned on a regular basis. I had assumed there was a lot of exaggeration in these tales as locals are prone to overreact to any gringo anomalies. But, uh…. nope, it’s true. These are no spin-offs or shoddy counterfeits of hippydom, as is everything else in Ecuador a shoddy counterfeit. These were the real deal. There were even Rastafarian yogis on the beach. I have no idea where all the gringos there are from.

      Ivan and I wandered the streets just watching all the activity. We ate in a restaurant and then walked on the beach. In the tide pools at the far end of the beach we found all kinds of sea slugs, urchins, shrimps, fish, crabs and other mystifying life forms. We played in the tide pools like kids for a very long time. Then we headed over to where the waves were slamming into the rocky shoreline to watch the powerful collisions at close range and also to scamper away producing shrill sounds when the really big waves would threaten to drench us in airborne foams. It was a great time. I’ve been to many beaches around the world and this was still an exceptionally interesting one which pinned the needle of my amuse-o-meter on the far right. I know it was a day Ivan won’t soon forget.

It was getting late. 6 ish. The light was beginning to fade and we had a long ride home to contend with. Even so, we were in no hurry to leave. We traversed the beach slowly, waving at people we didn’t know just to see what would happen. It was evident that the evening hours in Montañita see greater activity, as things on the beach and in town were visibly beginning to pick up.

      We slowly hiked up the sloping street to the main road where we would catch our bus. The street was alive with ebullient conversation. Nearing the top of the street, a window flew open on an idling bus heading in the opposite direction of home that had stopped to pick up passengers. Sally’s head and wildly waving arm blasted out through the opening.

      “Treeeeeeeeeeent!!!!” she called at length.

      “La Vieja!” I exclaimed, smacking Ivan in the shoulder. We made animal noises and danced around laughing and flapping our arms at her as the bus pulled away. 50 feet later the bus came to an abrupt halt. As it pulled away again, Sally emerged from a cloud of diesel exhaust, beaming. We all squawked our mutual disbeliefs. It turns out she and Lonne were not living at the Sanctuario, but rather beyond Olón and off on a side road. Sally had been shopping in Libertad all day- my neck o’ the woods. Ivan and I decided to go back with her to see their place, but vacillated and recanted when we realized we didn’t know when the last bus home was. A bus heading home rolled past us 30 feet and then stopped. Ivan said we were not getting on any busses until Sally had gotten on hers. About 5 minutes later, Sally’s next bus came. She drew us a map to her house in the roadside dirt and then climbed aboard her bus. Our bus was still waiting 30 feet behind us. We got on and took our seats in the back, just as the bus was pulling away. It was the last bus leaving Montañita for the night.

      In the car, the vet, who speaks English because the peace corps taught him to do so some 30 years ago, wanted to know all the details of life in El Tambo and if my health was good and if I was having any trouble. He said he didn’t want me to have a bad time and end up leaving 3 months down the road. We made 2 house calls to the homes of some rich people (EcuaRich) who had dogs in need of injections and/or check ups. After that, we headed back. As we approached El Tambo, the vet asked if I wanted to go home to rest first or ride with him directly to Ancon. I looked at my watch. I was feeling even sicker now than before but my watch showed that it was exactly the time I was supposed to be in church with the kids. I told him to keep driving.

      On the way to Ancon, we passed the woman we were going there to see heading in the opposite direction in her Volkswagen. For that reason, we took the extended tour of the town. We first stopped at the cliffs I had seen before. I asked the vet, as I ask everyone, “Is it dangerous to swim here?” Everyone else I ask says it IS dangerous but can only offer me flimsy and contradictory reasons for why. I suspect they are just fearful of the ocean. It’s important for me to know whether I live 15 minutes or 90 minutes from the nearest safe beach with high surf. If Ancon is in fact NOT an especially dangerous beach, then my life gets a whole lot more convenient. The vet, too, said it was dangerous, but offered only a flimsy reason for why. I told him it doesn’t look at all dangerous. He then said it was only dangerous because it gets deep fast as you move away from the shore. “Is it dangerous over there?” I asked, pointing at a distant section of beach where the waves were beginning to break far from shore (meaning the ocean floor has a gentle decline)

      “Yes” he replied without looking.

      After the coast, we drove around observing local architecture and then parked at a huge abandoned mansion that rich English oilmen had built in the 1920’s. All of Ancon had been built by the English because of the nearby discovery of oil.

      The mansion was fascinating, but in grave disrepair. The landscape plants the original owners had planted were still plodding onward and were of an impressive stature in their maturity. The termites had built massive nests inside the house. Locals had stolen doors and glass window panes. The mansion was essentially destroyed.

      We went back to the Vet’s hotel (he’s building a house in Ancon which is yet unfinished) to watch a soccer game on the lobby television. I was becoming slightly delirious from my escalating illness. I drifted off to sleep watching the game. I was not hungry, but had eaten nothing all day, so the vet insisted I try to eat something of lunch. I couldn’t, but the conversation at the table was all about traveling the continent of South America and the methods and costs thereof, so it was an interesting and profitable event nonetheless.

      After lunch we headed over to the woman’s house who wanted to talk to me about possibly starting English classes there in Ancon. Her son, a 13 year old, spoke amazingly good English. He had lived in the NYC/Jersey area for 5 months when he was 8 years old. He speaks with a tiny hesitance, but he’s otherwise fluent. The vet and I were impressed. “5 months?” the vet queried to no one in particular “He sure didn’t waste his time there!”

      I told the woman I could not give a definite answer on the English classes yet for another 6 weeks, but to the 13 year old, who I discovered boogie boards in the waves of Ancon, said I’d be in touch.

      I caught a bus back to El Tambo. The bus to El Tambo passes thru a pueblo called Prosperidad. In Prosperidad, I saw a flamboyant, semi-transvestite male wearing make up and a few items of women’s clothing, walking down the street with a few otherwise non-outstanding locals looking like they were all having a pretty good day. This surprised me as the po-dunk machista pueblos led me to believe they would never have tolerated such.

      I dragged my ailing ass thru the front door of my El Tambo homestead and told everyone I was very sick and going to bed and thus loitering in my room asking for all kinds of unimportant details about what I did today would not be prudent. Just the same, they came anyway. I deflected the first few waves of invaders by cutting them off mid question and telling them again that I was sick. Julio and Alex would not be so easily dispensed. They were genuinely worried. I told them I only needed a drink to take some aspirin and in time I would be fine. Julio asked if he should take me to a hospital. I said “No. Tiempo nomás!” a ridiculous application of a local colloquialism that caused us both to break up laughing.

      Since they weren’t going to leave anyway, I told them I had seen a man dressed like a woman in Prosperidad, just to get their take on it. Julio broke the news to me gently, “That was a homosexual.” I told him I knew that, I was just surprised that someone could be openly gay here in the campo.

      Alex leaned in with a big smile and said “Hay bastante en Prosperidad! (There are a bunch in Prosperidad)” and cast a finger to indicate the direction of all the gay guys. I asked why they live in Prosperidad, of all places. They didn’t know. Julio then introduced the Nature vs. Nurture debate and told me that while homosexuality is not accepted here in the campo, on a worldwide level it is considered normal. I was amused to see Julio dissertating on homosexuality and so this time did not remind him that I already knew all of this.

      When Julio stepped out of the room for a few minutes, my illness ratcheted up a few notches and I was racked with chills. I threw on a few layers, lowered my mosquito net, bundled up in my blankets and shook like a Chihuahua. Julio came back to tell me dinner was ready. I could barely speak. I told him I did not want food, just something to wash down pills. One by one, the family members trickled into my room to do everything except comply with this one simple request. They said I should wash down my pills with milk. The thought of nasty goat EcuaMilk made my stomach recoil. After much arguing with me, they reluctantly brought it, along with the warning that cola would “damage me further” and then they went up the street to visit Julio’s wife’s sister. I swilled my aspirin and fell asleep.

      No more than a half hour later, I woke up on fire. I threw off my blankets and my extra layers and still could not cool down. Then I realized I was 100% well. I walked around my room to verify that I was no longer sick. Not only was I no longer sick, but I was ravenously hungry as well. I had a box of strawberry rice crispies I had bought for just such an occasion, which I tore into. Never had an illness behave like that.