I called Ela's house in Baeza. I called the Hotel Sander and asked if anyone named Ela had checked in. I thought it was strange that Ela had failed to exercise the only part of the plan that had been made official. I had to conclude that it was stupid to strand myself in Guayaquil just because a stranded Ela might think to come looking for me at the airport. I was not going to lug my heavy suitcase around Guayaquil looking for overpriced holiday hotel rooms when there was still a chance I could catch the bus that my plane wasn't supposed to have arrived early enough to catch. I grabbed a cab to the bus station.

      The traffic in Guayaquil was almost at a standstill. People who had come to town for the holiday weekend were milling about all over the streets. The heat and humidity were higher than I had expected. As the cab approached the bus station, I checked my watch. It was iffy as to whether or not I had made it in time to catch the last bus. I heaved up my heavy trunk and moved as fast as I could towards the C.L.P. ticket window. I crashed through anyone who jumped into my path to ask if they could help with my bag (for money, of course) and anyone who jumped in my way trying to get me to use their cooperative.

      My burning and shaking arms wanted nothing more than to set down the 74 pound trunk that my rapid advance was causing my knees to smash into, but I knew that doing so could literally make the difference as to whether I slept in my own bed that night, or whether I spent the night wandering around Guayaquil looking for a hotel. I was so hot and winded that my view of the bus terminal began fading to black. I was never happier to set anything down as I was to set down my trunk at the C.L.P. ticket window. The C.L.P ticket guy told me to forget the ticket, just run for the bus. I again hoisted the trunk. Something became extremely adversarial between my trunk and I at that moment. My arms were still completely spent, but it was no longer a matter of will power that kept it lifted off the ground, it was a matter of survival. At least that's what my brain had come to believe. I was livid at the trunk. Every inch I moved it towards the bus, the more I felt like I was defeating an enemy.

      The slot in the turnstile, in which one must deposit 10 cents in order to get into the bus lot, would not accept my 2 nickels. The security guard there said I would have to go run and find an actual dime. I argued with him that he had just let the guy in front of me through with his key that opens up a gate and I could just give him the damn nickels and he could do the same for me. He refused. I ripped off my backpack, threw it on the floor and tore through it looking for a dime. My wet hands inadvertently pulled out gum wrappers and dollars, receipts and finally a stupid dime.

      I may or may not have muttered something extremely wrathful in English to the smirking guard as I blasted through his turnstile making sure the corner of my trunk swept dangerously near to his kidney. A kid on the C.L.P. bus, the kind of kid that hangs out in the bus station all the time because his mom or someone works somewhere there and he likes to pretend he's the ayudante, got the C.L.P bus to stop for me as it was backing out to leave. I used my last bit of strength to shove my trunk into the storage compartment beneath the bus and then stumbled aboard to swelter in the stagnant air of the stationary line of buses trying to get out into the holiday traffic jam.

      I stepped off the bus in the central park of Santa Elena and immediately found a guy to drive me to Tambo for a few bucks. The moment I pulled up to Julio's house, Julio came rushing around the side of the house, saying, "Trent! Listen, Ela called from Guayaquil! She's good and pissed at you. She said she had gone there to meet up with you but you weren't there. We told her you had called us saying you were on your way to Tambo."

      "What! Where is she now?"

      "Rah poligibba la y hee morotah!"

      "What?"

      "She poligi to Tambo hee bus morot evening!"

      "Huh?!"

      "She's on her way to Tambo on the last bus of the evening"

      "No, I came to Tambo on the last bus of the evening"

      "No, there's another one."

      "I thought the last bus was-"

      "Never mind that. Put your trunk in the house while I get my shoes on. We're going back to Santa Elena to wait for her." Julio spun and scurried off. The driver of the pick up truck, sitting there with his engine off, had listened to the whole exchange. When I turned around to look at him, he gave me a single nod, as if to assure me he was up to the task.

      Julio and I strolled around the park talking about my trip to the States. I told him it had been a surprising to rediscover how orderly and polite the States are in comparison to Ecuador. People stop and let you out into traffic. This is a grossly underappreciated social achievement. We do this for people we don't even know without expecting to profit one iota. We have been trained to recognize the tiny sacrifices that, once made, go a long way towards preserving the general order of society. Of course, we mostly do it only so we don't have to sit through a light with someone staring at our profile thinking what a jackass we are for unnecessarily crunching forward in stopped traffic just to protect the idea of our self-interests, but not actually benefiting ourselves anything in the bigger picture. You'd be surprised how uncommon that little snippet of "common sense" is in this planet of opposably-thumbed Great Apes.

      Another surprising characteristic of Americans, which is partially related to the above paragraph, is their fragility. Why should we care if a stranger thinks our driving sucks? Why do we get so neurotic if our leg accidentally touches someone else's leg in a packed car or under the table at dinner? Why do we have to neurotically preserve each other's little bubble of personal space? Are we timid? Why do we put so much stock in what other people think? Ecuadorians don't care if they're fat. A woman that has just given birth 5 minutes ago will put on her cut off shirt and shorts, apply gobs of blood red lipstick and march proudly down the street feeling just fine about herself. If an American feels imperfect, they run and hide. For better or worse, it's fragility, I say.

      I told Julio that it was also a little disturbing to see the way money is spent in the US. For 9 months I've been thinking of money in micro-terms. I've been trying to interest people in straining their brains to figure out ways to cut animal expenditures by at most 5 bucks a month. If I were to get someone to see their small-time Ecuadorian livelihood in a new light, so that they saw the benefit in changing the way they are doing things, and the result of that change produced 5 extra dollars a month for them, I would call that a big success. I will make a scene anywhere in public over 10 cents change not returned to me. Therefore it was a little difficult to watch the frivolity with which people part with their money in the US. No one seems to care if a meal is overpriced or an added fee for something is outrageous. The prices of many things are unjustifiably high and it is other rich people who are naming such prices. No one really respects money, as it is not readily linked to one's own survival. I spent a lot of time thinking about how far the tiniest fraction of an American's "play money" could go in another part of the world if you could get anyone up there even remotely interested in the inequality that exists- indeed, that America may be CAUSING- elsewhere in the world.

      Sometime after midnight, Ela stepped off her bus in the dark drizzle of the central park of Santa Elena and she, Julio and I took a camionetta to Tambo.

      Around 5:30pm, Ela and I caught a bus to Montaņita, which was about half way to Agua Blanca where we were heading to meet up with Jen Sterling. Montaņita was muddy and drizzly and hotel rooms were scarce because of the holiday weekend. We had phoned in reservations to a hotel from Tambo, just to assure we would have one, but we wanted to find a cheaper one if there was one to be had. We found a cheaper place on the outskirts of the active part of town. It was quite late by the time we finished stuffing ourselves on our meal of a large pizza, a big plate of fries and a giant pancake. Stuffed, we retired.

      I rechecked out our room and then walked down to the beach to go hunt for cacti or shells or whatever. The tide was so high that my path to the far end of the beach was completely cut off, so, instead, I squatted down at the near end of the beach to watch the action out in the water. The waves were quite high and the water was filled with people falling off their surfboards. The conditions must have been too choppy because for the size of the waves, no one was catching anything good.

      Our large late breakfast kept us full until dinner. Dinner was again a feast, after which we took to walking on the beach, now at a much lower tide and in almost total blackness.

      After eating we all went down to the beach. One of the girls swam and the other combed the beach with us looking for goodies. She and Ela collected coral decorations and clamshell soap dishes for their respective homes, while I gave a tour of the tidal pools. Then the 2 girls took a load off while I scaled the lower part of the cliff to collect cactus pads that had fallen down from The Sanctuario's landscaping atop the cliff. When the already raucous waves of the rising tide suddenly experienced a rouge burst of alarming 12 footers, our newfound companion became alarmed and decided to flee the rocky outcropping in favor of the reassuring stability of the entire continent. This effectively terminated the tidal pool tour, and we drifted towards the girls' hotel room, where we hung out until mid afternoon, at which time it became imperative that we get back to the peninsula.

      We arrived in Tambo in time to eat dinner at Julio's. After dinner, Ela remembered she had a few things to pick up, so we raced to the mall and arrived just about 1minute before everything would close. We split up and she hit Hipermarket while I hit the dollar store. Then we went to the TransEsmereldas bus station and Ela boarded the 9:30pm bus to Quito.