Then we left the property and hiked out to where Jen was supposed to inject a bunch of cows a guy had in those parts. The man was not home and the people that were swinging in the hammocks there said the cows had already been let loose to graze for the week. We walked all over the backcountry looking for people with animals in need of Jen’s injections etc. Most of the houses were empty as it was Monday and all had probably set out to do work or buy stuff in Puerto Lopez. For this reason, Jen always does her work on weekends, but the seminar she had put together had interfered with that this time. We stopped back at the house where we had stayed the night and castrated two pigs (for practice for my benefit) and de-wormed another. Then we headed towards the road to Puerto Lopez, passing a few archaeological sites from Inca burial grounds located within the park

     We arrived to where the road would take us out of Agua Blanca around 11:00am. A man found us there and asked Jen to castrate his goat just as we had found ourselves a ride to Puerto Lopez. We had to let our ride go and castrate the goat. Our next ride wouldn’t come until 4:30pm. During that time, I took a quick tour of a museum that discussed the Incas and their burial sites as well as other archaeological findings. The museum is pretty cool, but a little worrisome. Had I wanted a few Inca bones or 500 year old artifacts, their was nothing to stop me from stealing it from the unstaffed and almost completely unprotected museum. Jen pointed out where big a big ceramic burial jar on the floor had been kicked and shattered since her last visit. One of the more interesting exhibits in the museum was one in which ancient fired clay dolls were compared to photos of present day locals so that one could see that the Incan facial features are largely unchanged in their descendents still living in Agua Blanca. Since this exhibit, I notice the Incan features everywhere I go in the Guyas/Manabi coast.

     Jen’s bag of medicines tipped over and a jar of disinfectant broke all over everything else inside. After a very long time spent cleaning up the mess, Jen and I sat discussing pig projects and Tambo. During this exchange, we came up with the idea that I should raise my own pigs in Tambo, since charlas alone had almost zero impact. If I provided people with real life examples of fat healthy pigs raised right under their noses as I prescribed, it might persuade people to adopt my methods. Then I will present a big sheet of paper detailing everything I bought for the pig and how much I sold it for. In this way, the theoretical, which Tambo cannot grasp, becomes the tangible right in their midst.

     At 4:30pm, we caught a ride to Puerto Lopez in a truck that had delivered stone to Agua Blanca. From Puerto Lopez, I bussed to Santa Elena. In Santa Elena, I bought a loaf of bread and butter to toast and eat for my late dinner. I could have bought something else at the supermarket, but toast and butter sounded so good.

      I could see from the moment I arrived in Tambo that we were having a big power outage. The bad news is: that meant no toast. The good news is: Julio is beside himself with excitement about my growing a pig on his property.

     Then I wrote until, at 3pm, when the sudden realization shattered over my head that I had never picked up my passport from the Peace Corps office in Quito. I was supposed to leave for the States on Friday. My passport was 21 hours worth of round trip bus travel away. I could think of no other option than spending the next 2 days retrieving it from Quito. I called the office in Quito and told them of my predicament. They added to the list of concerns that I had never filled out a vacation form, which is supposed to be filed 2 weeks before any vacation. The Quito office said they could send both things to Guayaquil via courier service and I could pick it up the night before my flight. No one said anything about my not only hanging out in Guayaquil, but staying the night as well.

     Much relieved, I hung up the phone and wrote for the rest of the night while kids drew with markers on a big sheet of paper I had given them to keep them out of my hair.

     Spent the better part of the day packing my suitcase. The Peace Corps office called to confirm that my passport was indeed waiting for me in Guayaquil, and to desist all manic twitching and cursing of damned absentmindedness. I went to the mall to take out money from the ATM and then attempted to read my email at a mall internet place, but could not access hotmail, because hotmail sucks. Back in Tambo, I presented an industrial catalyst type epoxy to Julio to fix his ripped flip-flop. Everyone became immensely excited by this and brought out everything in the house in need of fixing, but often fixing, I suspect, things that were not really broken.

     I went into Santa Elena to pick up my mail and do a last check of my email. I returned around 11am and Susanna fed me lunch with no small degree of urgency. Far be it from her to impede such things as riding big silvery flying tubes to distant, inconceivable lands. Then I checked and double-checked that I had everything and then lugged my super heavy plastic chest serving as my suitcase to the bus stop. I bussed to the C.L.P. station in Libertad and from there to Guayaquil. In Guayaquil, I cabbed from the Hotel Sander to the courier service that had my vacation request form and passport. Apparently the Peace Corps picked up the bill for that. Um, thanks. I filled out and faxed my vacation form and returned to the hotel. I drifted off to sleep around 7pm.

[After much careful deliberation, I have decided not to include days spent outside of Ecuador in this website. My reasoning, though I have been assured the distinction exists only in my head, is that the inclusion of days spent outside of Ecuador fundamentally redefines the nature of this site from being a sort of portal to Life as it takes place at another point on the planet, namely Ecuador, to being simply a catalog of my life. Though, admittedly, this site was begun as an amorphous mixture of these 2 things, we have arrived at the point where the decision to include or not to include these days will tip the scales irrevocably to one side. The “side” I am opting for relegates me to being but one actor in a cast of many, rather than a poor man’s Fred Savage, both starring in and providing bemoaning narration to my encounters with Winnie Cooper. And so, without further ado….]