Once in Otavalo, we got a cool 2nd floor room at Los Andes hotel with a balcony that not only wrapped around the corner of the building directly above an intersection, but overlooked the artisan infamous market in the center of town. It was already 11am, so we lifted up one leg like people in cartoons do before they haul ass, and then shot off into the market to shop our proverbial eggs off for Xmas.

         Around 3pm, Ela became grumpy and had to be fed an emergency ration of half a medium pizza plus canoli. She emerged from the Italian restaurant radiantly, and strolled down the streets of Otavalo as if in 19th century picnic-in-the-park wear, complete with outsized frilly hat and umbrella.

         Around 8:45pm, all tucked into bed with drooping eyelids, a story came on the news that appeared to be about some tweaked-out bum. The newscaster was talking way too fast to be intelligible, but the close-up footage of the bum's face was held way to long to be just about some ordinary bum. When the bum simultaneously stroked his chin and rolled his eyes, a mannerism lasting only an instant, I announced that that was Sadaam Hussein and threw off the covers in search of my shoes. I walked down to an internet place and got online to look for the news headlines. It was indeed Sadaam Hussein, but he had been captured among his piles of Milky Way wrappers days earlier and no one was still making a big deal about it.

         We arrived in back in Otavalo behind schedule. We were almost jogging back to the hotel when we spotted a sweater store. As I was in the market for sweaters, we did an about face and ran inside to buy said sweaters at a ridiculous rate of speed. Ela then grudgingly obliged me a quick circuit through the front few rows of the market to look for a bag I had seen yesterday. Unable to find it, we retrieved my giant, overstuffed duffel bag of Otavalo purchases from the hotel room and threw it in a cab. The cab, responding to Ela's demands that it move fast, thrust itself through the crowded bus lot and dropped us off almost at the door of a bus. Once in Quito, that bus was taking a high road around the congested city, but Ela got the bus to drop us of when supposedly parallel with the area of town containing "Papaya Net", to which we cabbed and arrived 45 minutes late to meet Ela's Peace Corps friends.

         Although it was only about 2pm, the day had already run out of interesting events to report. My TransEsmereldas bus left for the peninsula after 9pm.

         7 year old neighbor girl, Ines, came rushing into my room extending a tiny puppy towards me at the end of one of her impossibly delicate arms. Chiquita- the weird ass dog that had come to our part of town back when she was in heat and being pursued by a pack of motley suitors, who then staunchly refused to leave our yard after getting knocked up, and whom, with her ridiculously undersized head perched atop the flea-bitten barrel of her fetus-stuffed torso that wobbled unsteadily when she tried to wag her tail - had given birth in my absence. Julio told me Chiquita had given birth to 3 pups but the mother of Ines, Ineva, had killed the 2 female pups at birth. That is "birth control" Tambo style.

         A while later, after I had begun unpacking, I snuck up behind Susanna carrying the tiniest baby sweater one could possibly knit, held it against my torso, and with as much consternation as I could muster in my voice, blurted "No alcanza! (It doesn't fit!)" She spun around startled, snatched the baby sweater from me with an audible gasp and held it out into the airspace above her face.

         "A baby sweater!? For whom!?"

         I explained that the teeny sweater was for a baby in the States and was part of the stuff I had picked up in Otavalo for Christmas. She gawked another moment at the amazing mini-sweater and then folded it carefully and handed it back to me. When I returned with it to my room, Susanna ran and got Julio to send him to my room to ask me what all I had bought in Otavalo so she could come in after him looking as though she were mere following the action instead of instigating it. Julio, unclear on his directions, almost rushed past my door out onto the porch before he spotted me in my room and entered with wide eyes sweeping for a clue as to what he was supposed to do. Then I gave the usual show of all the stuff I had bought, of which admittedly there was a ton.

         The family was uncharacteristically lacking in reaction to my purchases. I didn't figure out their problem until I heard Julio answering a question too loudly that Susanna must have whispered to him. "That's how the gringos are at Christmas", he said. I realized then that the family was shocked to see someone making so many simultaneous clothes purchases. They never get new clothes. In one fell swoop I had easily bought the equivalent of half the articles of clothing owned by the entire family, but with far nicer quality.

         I frittered around in my room, stringently packing my Otavalo purchases as densely in the giant duffel bag as was physically possible until about 2pm. Then I made an afternoon circuit of internet, the house Lorena's nannies at, Hipermarket and back again to Tambo. I spent the bulk of the evening schooling Julio and Ivan on the intricacies of using my semi-manual camera, which they wanted to borrow for New Years. I took care to interject between each tip that it would be a far better idea to hunt down a cheap automatic camera for which one does not practically need a mechanical engineering degree in order to successfully shoot pictures of fireworks at night. They remained undeterred and will almost certainly not have a single picture come out.

         Around 2pm, I made an unsuccessful trip out to the store that sells my pig feed in a vain attempt to ensure that my pig did not run out of food while I was in the United States. I returned home to find a sizeable number of neighbors and extended family members clustered around Julio's fence talking and a fairly festive holiday atmosphere sweeping Tambo in general. I popped into the social event just long enough to explain that the Balanciado store had been closed and that now I had to grab my stuff and leave for Guayaquil to be ready to catch my plane in the morning. This created quite a stir among them and those that didn't pack themselves into my window followed me into the house and formed a celebratory crowd around my doorway. All of a sudden, I wasn't sure I wanted to leave Tambo. I am not a big Christmas fanatic, but it suddenly felt for the first time like Christmas here.

         Apparently a lot more campo inertia had leaked into my bones than I realized. All this tooling around in Guayaquil and getting on airplanes and going to outrageously distant lands that weren't connected to Tambo by bus, suddenly seemed like an exhaustive and very unsettling expenditure of resources. Something about it felt hopelessly irrevocable, like it were possible that the plane would break down in the US and leave me all that distance to have to find my way back to Tambo through. My brain had been too long working in micro problems, micro prices, micro distances. Going on an airplane to the United States felt like a very big deal. I had a vague sense that perhaps I had not prepared enough for it and even that I was not valuable enough to ride in an airplane. Who would want to fly me anywhere? My domain is mortar block and sand. I am from El Tambo.

         Julio grabbed one end of my loaded duffel bag and I grabbed the other and we started off in the direction of the bus stop. Little Antonio kept himself abreast of us, his short legs beating out a double-time. Waiting for the bus, Luis, the town social light, a sort of Ecua Cliff Claven (from Cheers) who spends his days propped up on various fences about town discussing this happening or that, joined the bus stop party. Ivan found us there moments later. We all got so involved in fervent conversations that we almost forgot to flag down the bus when it came. I scurried for my end of the duffel bag and Julio his. Walking backwards up the stairs and paying excruciating attention to everything involved in the feat, I was caught completely off guard when, having cleared all immediate obstacles, looked up to find that it was no longer Julio on the other end of the giant duffel bag, but the Ayudante. By that time I was greatly impeded from returning to the open bus door by the sheer largesse of my Christmas shopping and the bus was already pulling away. I had not said a single goodbye to anyone and I know how important it is to all of them. And then, because I must've been Job in a past life, the realization shattered across my head that I had casually purchased an opulent assortment of gifts for rich gringos (including babies) in a rich country that already has everything anyway, and had bought not even the smallest token, not Dunkin Donuts, not even Chicklets, for the family I point out constellations at night to, where my room is invaded with curiosity every time I return from trips, where my clothes are washed by hand and where I am always the first one served at meals. For them, nothing- not even a good bye. I felt like a world-class heel and decided I would call them on Christmas day and return with something from the US for them, which I would hand over along with some excuse as to why I didn't give it to them before I left, which they would accept unquestionably and be grateful for just the same.

         At the CLP bus station, Lorena, who nannies just up the road, popped out from behind a cement beam and surprised me. Now I understood why she had asked me before if I was sure I was leaving for Guayaquil at 3pm (it was now 3:45pm). Everyone was so excited to be vaguely connected to someone who was going overseas and they wouldn't dream of letting me walk any part of it alone if they could help it. I mentally added Lorena to the list of people I would call from the States on Christmas, along with EcuaMom, and then climbed aboard my bus to Guayaquil.

         The whole way to Guayaquil, I read from Ayn Rand's "Fountainhead". At the Guayaquil bus station, I got right into a 3 dollar cab to the Sander Hotel, and from there right into an $11 dollar room with air conditioning. I stepped out briefly to eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken (oh yes, KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell are global as hell) 2 blocks away and then returned at 8pm good and tired- but not too tired to read more Ayn Rand. I then dropped my watch on the floor. Snatching it up, I watched its digital numbers fade away into a blank screen. I guess wake up alarms and being entirely sure how much time I have before my plane leaves just got a little tricky.

        Then I cabbed to the airport. The girl hand-searching my check in luggage did a frightfully inadequate job. One inside the terminal beyond all security, I found Kyle Dismukes, also from the Peace Corps, waiting for the very same plane to Miami, which had been delayed indefinitely. We sat in the corner of the terminal and talked forever and then ascended to the second floor to buy food and talk some more. At a random moment, we decided to go check to see what was up with our plane and found it boarding. There had been no announcement. We joined the total chaos of the large, disorganized crowd trying to squeeze through a final metal detector (which had major security flaws, as there was nothing to obstruct me from handing a fully loaded surface to air missile over the nylon strap stretched between 2 mobile stands serving as the barrier between those verifiably metal detected, and the dusky mass of shifty eyed travelers). Outside, Kyle and I entered a ground transportation vehicle that took us to our plane. We had tickets to seats at opposite ends of the plane, for which we were directed to use 2 different doors. Standing on the tarmac, we shook hands and Kyle said, "I'll probably see ya in Miami."