When I got home, I had very little time to get ready before I had to leave for Loja. I was feeling sick from the super hot and stuffy bus ride so I refused dinner. I received a phone call and couldn't get out of the house before 8:15pm. I rushed to the C.L.P. bus station in Libertad. It was closed. I ran over to TransEsmereldas bus station, where I was told one could not buy a ticket just to Guayaquil. Just as I was asking the people at an open-air corner bar where I could find the Baños Cooperative bus station, the last Baños bus leaving for the night drove past. The bar patrons screamed for me to run for it and the air behind my wildly fleeing figure exploded in a jumble of bus catching tips and cheered encouragement. I almost had to run out in front of the bus in order to flag it down when it did not stop for subtler gesturing- an action which appeared to have shaken the bus driver up more than a little.

         I got to Guayaquil at 11pm and bought 2 cheese sandwiches. I also bought a ticket from the only bus line going to Loja still open that late at night. Knowing there was no other competition to contend with, the bus line upped its prices and I had to pay $12 for my bus ticket. By 11:30pm, my bus was pulling out of the Guayaquil bus station.

         I had pulled a sort of scam upon entering the bus. On overnight bus rides there is a world of difference (to me at least) between getting a seat with no one next to you and having a seatmate taking up what could have been room to fully recline yourself. My seat number was supposed to be #18. As I was entering the nearly full bus, I saw an Asian man with a row to himself moving up one row to hang out- temporarily perhaps- with a second Asian man who also had a row to himself. This being a country without a lot of international diversity, I assumed the 2 were friends and put myself in the first Asian man's now empty row. I knew they couldn't know which seats the ticket window had sold tickets for and I knew they had no reason to believe the ticket in my hand wasn't for the exact seat I had plopped down in. But now that I was sitting in that seat, the first Asian man's options had become A.) sit in a row all night with his friend, or B.) sit in a row all night with a stranger. I knew upon entering the bus which decision he would make. And now I had a row to myself.

         But the story doesn't end there. I had vaguely made note of who was sitting in seat #19, my would-have-been seatmate. With little else to occupy my mind, I had also noticed when he slid over into the empty seat where I would have been sitting, seat#18, a window seat. Crossing the river in Guayaquil, there came a loud noise from somewhere in the bus in front of me. A number of heads were turned facing what an instant later I would recognize as seats #18/19. I saw the man originally from seat #19 violently rip the bus window open, which the man in the seat in front of him had just slammed shut. They were going back and forth ripping the window open and slamming it. The 2 men then each threw their hands on the window and fought over whether it would stay open or close, thus it was a stalemate. This childish display, had I sat in my rightful seat, would either not be happening, or would be happening right on top of me. The men were so angry and had already so transcended the social norms that keep people from doing inappropriate things in public spaces, that I knew it was going to escalate soon into actual hitting. My mind reeled for a moment with guilt, entertaining a bizarre scenario in which after a major incident wherein the bus pulls over, is emptied and the police are called, the truth comes out that the person who should have been in seat #18 was hiding back in #25 and everyone blames me and yells.

         The window fight was temporarily suspended with the window open. I had a feeling it was only a pause. When the bus driver flipped on everyone's air vent at a random moment a few minutes down the road, the man in front of window seat #18 suddenly spun around and slammed the window behind him shut. The window flew back open and in the commotion I heard the loud 'WAP!' of someone getting punched, followed by a few slapping or grappling sounds. I could not make out who had hit who. The men then got up and started moving into the aisle with their fists raised. I was sick to my stomach with what I thought was about to happen and slid down in my seat. These were no pint-sized coastal Cholos, these were big Guayaquilians with the height and bulk of the Spanish and ready to engage in fisticuffs in a crowded bus. The bus revolted at that point and everyone started yelling and demanding with great annoyance that the stupid Ayudante come back and put an end to this ridiculousness. The fighting men were sort of frozen in the aisle facing off, taken off guard, I assume, by the crowd's response to their shenanigans. The Ayudante came, but didn't really do anything and the standoff gradually diffused. Evidently there was some trash talking going on because soon after the stand off, the man from #19 shot to his feet in evident response to something and motioned menacingly at the other man, who ignored him.

         After a while of peering in various brown doors hoping to remember which one I had been to before (1 time and in the black of night) and asking shop keepers in vain where all the gringos live, I remembered Ela saying something about a phone number to the Loja House that she had. I walked about 4 blocks away to a phone place and spent the next 1.5 hours calling Ela's house and getting a busy signal. I wasn't sure if she was on the phone or if she was away and her cats had just knocked the phone off the hook. It could have even been that the phone lines were down altogether. So I placed a quick call to Julio to tell him I was in Loja and see if Adam may have called there. He hadn't. I told Julio that since I barely had enough money to get myself back home, if I didn't find Adam, who had said he would loan me any cash I needed, I would have to leave for Tambo later on that night.

         Out of options, I walked back to the intersection of Sucre and Cariamanga. I figured that I might see a Loja gringo walking down the sidewalk or maybe Adam would see me from a window. On a whim, I asked at a corner tienda if the shopkeeper knew of an apartment where a bunch of gringos lived. She knew exactly where it was. I went there and let myself in. The design of the building is such that I could get as far as the hallway of the gringo's apartment, but the individual rooms of the apartment were locked up. I knocked on all the doors and then plopped down on the hallway floor and again pulled out my book. It was now noon.

         About a half-hour later, Adam showed up at the apartment. His bus had gotten to Loja an hour late and when he arrived at the apartment at 11am and had not found me, he went to a phone place and called Julio. Julio had told him I was in Loja but unable to find the apartment. Adam had checked back at the apartment and this time found me. We headed out to a restaurant, then to pull money out of Adam's bank account, then to meet a friend of the Loja gringos who works at a Western Union. From there we caught a city bus to a park Adam had heard of but had not yet been to called Jipiro.

         Jipiro park, which we found after no small amount of confusion, is probably the coolest free municipal park I have ever seen anywhere in the world. The park has a series of sizeable buildings made to resemble various architectures, such as Arab, Chinese etc. There is a large castle with numerous levels and observation decks that you can climb to a great height. A long slide allows you to escape the building quickly. Tucked away inside these buildings are various rooms where one might play chess at free chess boards, visit a library, take a computer class. There was a large pond loaded with little fish in which one could rent paddleboats. In the center of the pond, there was an island on which there was something of a mini zoo. The pond has an extensive canal system that one can use to take their paddleboat all over the park. There are caged ostriches and even one free range ostrich. There is a mini Eiffel tower and a swimming pool with waterslides inside of a glass building (cost for the pool: $1).

         After Jipiro park, Adam and I returned to the Loja house to sit around drinking coffee. E. Ray, another volunteer from the Loja province, was in town and staying at the Loja house. That's where the 3 of us were to be found for the rest of the evening.

         Then we walked up to a clearing at the edge of the mountain where the farm's horses are kept. The pasture had a spectacular view of all the surrounding mountains. We could see all the way back to Catacocha. We plopped down amid our panorama of central Loja and spoke for hours of things both ridiculous and sensible, foolhardy and wise, insulting, human, finite and eternal.

         We got off the bus in Loja and took a taxi to the empty Loja House. Then we went out to a restaurant. After eating, we paid another visit to yet another Loja EcuaFriend. Unlike we Scattered Few out in the province of Guayas, the folks in the Loja province are plentiful and centralized by the city of Loja (and the Loja house therein). There is a long history of such a centralization in Loja and when EcuaFriends are acquired by individual gringos, they are shared with the group and then passed down as the composition of the group of Loja volunteers gradually changes through time. Therefore there is not only a network of gringos based out of Loja, but a network of EcuaFriends as well.

         Upon returning from to the Loja House, we found E.Ray again and also Jon and Jessica- 2 volunteers from the next province over (Zamora) who are near enough to Loja to have been grafted on to the Loja network. Jon and Jessica will be leaving the Peace Corps in a few months and it is their early despedida (going away party) that Adam and I had come back to Loja to investigate. Adam intended to join the group and head about 4 hours west with them to the party in the province of Zamora. I, as yet, was uncertain. If the group of party-bound gringos that turned up at the Loja House were annoying, I would just continue Northwest to Tambo. However Jon and Jessica were cool, it happened. Then, long missing PCV Matt Trout turned up at the Loja House, which all but determined that I would join the party in Zamora.

         After a while, Adam and I went out to a movie place where one can rent movies and then watch them on a big screen TV in one of several rooms in the back of the store. No, it wasn't that kind of movie place. It was a fairly ritzy establishment which appeared to have heavily based its look on Blockbuster video. I have to wonder if the owners of the store did the math before they made such a huge investment. Whereas a real Blockbuster could theoretically rent out 100's of movies in an hour, this place could only rent out in 2 hours, as many movies as it had giant, expensive TVs. To me it sounds like too much overhead. Perhaps Colombians are just laundering their cocaine money here.

         Upon returning to the Loja House, we found it filled with numerous members of both the gringo and EcuaFriend network engaged in a joint social venture. Not long after our arrival, the EcuaFriend faction left for some discotech, as it was the weekend contiguous with Carnival, Ecuador's most beloved holiday. I suspect the EcuaFaction had come by hoping to round up gringos to accompany the mission. However, by and large, gringos hate Carnival because it is beyond obnoxious and no more than an excuse for people to behave like total idiots. The gringos were unmoved by the prospect of an EcuaDiscotech and the EcuaFriends headed out alone.

         Kids in the bus station were already perpetuating Carnival stupidity by spraying passersby at random with cans of sprayfoam sold in tiendas countrywide. Unfortunately for the gringos, bored EcuaKids waiting for their busses could buy sprayfoam at the stores inside the bus station. But fortunately, the Ecuas are accustomed to the depraved nature of their own ill-treated dogs in this country, thus the relatively huge and healthy (though totally harmless) golden retriever warded off most potential nonsense. However, we had brought with us our own potential nonsense. I don't know who, but someone had filled 2 plastic bags with water balloons. On the bus ride out of the city many an innocent bystander was targeted, which I didn't agree with. When it comes to depraved activity, gringos can easily supercede their Ecuadorian role models.

         The bus stopped in the city of Zamora (note that Zamora is both a city and a province, like Loja) to pick up more passengers. I jumped off the bus and went in search of food for Adam and I. The procedure in Ecuador is never "first come first served", it is whoever yells to the shopkeeper the loudest or has the most audacity in pushing to the front of a line, gets served first. Actually, lines don't exist in Ecuador either. Lines would imply that people are exercising patience and respecting order. Not in this country. They may spend half their lives motionless, staring off into space from their porches, but when there is ever a need to do anything (make a purchase, board a bus, etc.) Ecuas cannot bear to see a single person attended to before themselves. For this reason I was almost left behind by my bus. I could not, or perhaps would not, sink to a level base enough to get attention from the shopkeeper. You could even be talking with the shopkeeper and if someone walked in behind you and let rip with a demand from their big mouths, the shopkeeper would walk away from you and attend to them. The squeaky wheel always gets the grease here. I was halfway through my transaction with the clerk for about 10 minutes. Had I not been so hungry, I would have walked out. When I finally got the transaction made, I rushed to my bus. It was only still at the station because the gringos inside would not let it leave as I was yet missing.

         Our bus continued eastward from the city of Zamora, which itself is east of Loja. Our water balloons continued flying from the bus windows until we were again outside of the city. We changed buses in Zumbi. The bus we caught in Zumbi took us all the way to Jon's town, well into the Oriente of Ecuador. The gringos had thrown balloons from the bus windows during almost the whole ride from Zumbi. Other people inside the bus had done what little they could to raise hell with whatever water or sprayfoam, but no one had come quite as prepared as us.

         When we arrived at our destination (Jon's place), we stopped the bus and began shuffling out. The guy in the seat next to me, consistent with the mentality of EcuaMales, sprayed a little water from a converted coke bottle at the girls of our group as they walked past him. Matt Trout, the last of us to disembark from the bus, broke a water balloon above the guy's head. The bus reacted to this noisily. It wasn't cheering exactly, but thrill, perhaps. The guy threw a few feeble jets of water from his water bottle, but it was ineffective.

         Then as we were retrieving our bags from underneath the bus, cups of water and perhaps a balloon or 2 came right down on top of us from a number of unknown assailants in the windows above. Ambushed! We immediately put space between us and the bus and launched an all out blinding assault against the side of the bus. A few of the windows slammed shut, but the fire was so heavy that many people next to open windows simply took cover. That's when we launched a number of water balloons directly through various open windows. One extremely large water balloon, perhaps a foot in diameter, was lobbed inside an open window. I could not believe the extent of our counter attack and had to suspect we had nearly destroyed the inside of that bus.

         In Loja, Adam and I cabbed back to the Loja House, where we bought and tried to prepare eggs. We found, after having cracked half our eggs that the propane tank was all out of gas to cook with. We went out in search of a gas place that would be open on a Carnival Sunday. After a search in vain through the neighboring streets, we gave up. However on our way back home, we stumbled across a home that had a halved gas tank pasted on its side a mere 2 or so blocks from the Loja House. We rang the doorbell. The person who answered the door verified that they do, in fact, sell gas. We headed back to the Loja House to retrieve the empty tank. Unprovoked, the neighbors next door to the Loja house launched a flurry of water balloons at us as we arrived home.

         As Adam unhooked and readied the propane tank for transport, I filled a plastic bag with water balloons. Then we started back towards the gas place making very certain to mind our own business. When the neighbors appeared in their street level doorway and 2nd floor window to throw water balloons, I unloaded on them wildly from the stash in my full plastic bag. They scurried for cover as I shamelessly blasted the front of their house. Then we continued on to buy gas.

         On our return trip, the kids next door again attempted to nail us with water balloons. Even less sensible, a kid tried to run up to us and hit us at close range with spray foam. I don't know if they thought we had run out of water balloons, but they found out soon enough that we hadn't. I launched a massive assault on everyone, even the mom and the dog when they came into view. Once inside the house, Adam went out on to the 2nd floor balcony to continue doing battle. I cooked my eggs.