Just before we pulled out, a really stupid lily-white gringo family on vacation climbed aboard. I was astounded by their unmitigated goofiness. I wondered if most gringos would look as silly in this same situation, fumbling around and using their "take me to your leader" style of communication. Clueless though they may be, I had to hand it to them- they wanted to see a distant country where they knew little and they up and did it. I imagined the dad was named Robert, but his friends call him Bob. Bob's friends probably use such idiotic words as "offbeat" and "freespirit" to describe him. Bob will probably regale his officemates with his tales of Adventure in Ecuador (such an exotic sounding place!) with exaggerated nonchalance. Secretly, Bob will congratulate himself that he is so unique. He will relish the thought that his peers (all of whom know little outside the suburbs) admire him. They will say "You were riding around South America in busses?! You nut!" Bob the Adventurer! Hey Bob, your rented translator seems a little embarrassed. What's up with that?

         The whole front of the bus reeked of family vacation. I listened to the comments they made to each other about the things we passed. They didn't have a clue. How could they? I didn't have a clue when I arrived in this country. But it was startling to see eyes so blind and to hear the exotic tales being spun out of an ordinary C.L.P. bus ride that would later be retold dramatically among all the other soccer moms. To have paid all that money to fly down here, only to be isolated from the world around you by the thinnest membrane of your imagination. To think of all the places I must have passed through in my life isolated within my own imaginative membrane. But I guess the gringo's were getting their money's worth. They thought Ecuador was so exciting. I guess it doesn't even matter then that in reality it was just Ecuador. Or was it?

         Cyntia was looking especially comely on this midmorning with her crisp pink tank top and denim shorts. It was an outfit that seemed perfectly suited to the salubrious smile and shining eyes she showed up with upon her plump, friendly face. She arrived with the air of someone fully tuned in to the brilliant shower of morning sunlight filling up the town on a day brimming with potential. Then Julio walked into my room and dumped a bucket of water over her head.

         Carnival is all about bothering other people. Rather than be given pause by a clean and dry non-combatant who is minding their own business, the carnival revelers and their various implements of annoyance are attracted to such individuals. It seems that minding one's own business makes one a mark. After all, it is not as annoying to throw water on someone who is fully expecting and participating in such activity.

         Cyntia, naturally, begged Julio to please not soak her. Julio, as a matter of course, soaked her anyway. Cyntia, in turn, took a disheartened inventory of her situation and then became an antagonist herself. Thus is the vicious cycle of Carnival stupidity. She covertly requested a bucket of water from Julio, who passed said bucket in through my side window. Cyntia then snuck up on a dry person minding his own business out in front of Julio's house. Julio distracted said dry person with conversation, while Cyntia nailed him with a blast of bucket water. The formerly dry person returned moments later and smeared black paint of Cyntia's face and tank top (they say the paint with which people deface each other during Carnival comes out of clothes, but as of this writing I cannot confirm that). Julio took a second shot at Cyntia right on the heels of her being painted black, who then ran for a bucket of water herself and hit both Julio and her painter. Then she hit me with a bucket. The minutes that followed were a free for all of flying water and everyone running around the premises after everyone else. During a pause in which everyone caught their breath and eyeballed each other for signs of pending mischief, Cyntia said that she and I should cut out to her house, which we did.

         At the house over yonder, Lorena opened with her usual announcement that she was going to kill me, subsequently explaining that the raffle ticket booklet I gave her did not have an official stamp of The El Tambo Commune on each ticket. She said she had run into someone who had pointed that out when she went to sell them a ticket. I asked her what difference it made. She told me that without the stamp, someone might reproduce the raffle tickets and sell them apart from the real raffle. I pointed out that she was selling the raffle tickets from a booklet, which was clearly not just some photocopy of a ticket, and anyone who could figure out how to go to a print shop and have a booklet of counterfeit raffle tickets made could surely also get hold of a rubber stamp claiming to be the official stamper of El Tambo. For all of that they could just print up tickets to a wholly fraudulent raffle of their own devising. I remembered then that Lorena had stated that she only wanted to sell 20 raffle tickets, thus she was probably hitting up friends and not going about town selling at random. I asked Lorena if her friends were accusing her of selling counterfeit raffle tickets, but before she could answer, Cyntia slapped down 2 palm loads of red Carnival paint on my face from behind and smeared it all over.

         Rather than retaliate immediately, I continued my conversation with Lorena and watched for Cyntia to let her guard down. Angela, Lorena's youngest sister, then put paint on my palms and all 3 sisters directed me to assault their cousin who was inside the house minding her own business. Assault I did. When I returned to the porch, Julio's niece, Mayra, whose grandparents live across the street, nailed me with a bucket of water. I unsuccessfully chased her with my painted hands into her house.

         The next hour or so found me fully painted in 3 colors, a fruit vendor attacked with water and then painted, dozens of water balloons thrown at passersby, and Lorena's 2 younger sisters covered head to toe in mud from their running 2 doors down and attacking 2 women who were washing clothes, which ended in a 4 person wrestling match in the mud. Down the street, I saw Mayra straying away from the safety of her house to throw flour on someone. I grabbed a water balloon and moved to cut her off from her return path to safety. The water balloon I threw was not a direct hit but came so close that Mayra was compelled to let rip with the screech of a person in flight from a projectile. Upon hearing the screech, people drifted out on to their porches smiling to see who had just been disgraced. There they did not find Mayra, who had disappeared again inside her house, but me, painted head to toe.

         It is perhaps prudent to remember that the locals here place me on a pedestal simply by virtue of my gringoness. Whatever my shortcomings, however blatant my incompetence, and never mind that most people here know nothing about me, I am still considered to be on a level superior to everyone else here by natural order of the universe. It strikes me as odd that a population can so fully rebound from Spanish domination and conquest to become the happiest place on the planet, but the perception that whiter skin means higher value remains perfectly intact. If it is perceived as strange by locals to see me engaged in manual labor, then it is outrageously funny to see such a being covered in paint from what you know was the basest of activities. Perhaps more amusing than my disgrace, is that someone had had the audacity to do it.

         Rodolfo came out to his porch to ask with half facetious concern what had happened to me. He then felt compelled to acknowledge what he thought was all too evident. "Uh… heh heh. They're all laughing at you." Then he added, by way of an apology "It's the first time we've ever had a foreigner here for Carnival." Then Rodolfo, who has been unaccountably full of affection for me from the minute we met, had a classic old timer's moment and said "Ah, but the world is good for a man in love. Go on, run along back to her." I tried to say something but Rodolfo cut me off. "Go on, go on." He made a gesture in the air that seemed to be shoving me out to sea in a world that was ostensibly my oyster. I went back and told Lorena what Rodolfo had said and we laughed until tears rolled down our cheeks. If Rodolfo weren't such a highly productive member of society, he would commonly be considered a crackpot. He's way out in left field with half the things he says, but in a town of pure laziness, only oddballs are productive citizens.

         Julio came to Lorena's house to get me for lunch. After eating, I took a long hard shower trying to de-paint myself. Then I did a lot of work in my garden and planted a lot of seeds. I couldn't really get into writing or reading. I stood in my window and watched all the neighbors attacking each other with buckets of water. In the late afternoon, while a massive water fight was going down in and around Julio's abode, I sat at the computer putting together a massive list of vocabulary to study, including a list of medical terms for the translating I would be doing for doctors later in the week. I was called for dinner. Very into my vocabulary list I yelled out "OK", but continued on with my vocabulary list. The call was repeated. Again I yelled back "OK". Susanna called out "C'mon! Its already served!" This was a level of informality I was unaccustomed to hearing from Susanna, but it didn't seem too strange under the circumstances. I know she often stands over my food fanning away flies until I arrive. When I rounded the corner by the kitchen, the ambush waiting for me was sprung. My shirt was pulled out and a full bucket of water dumped down it by Ineva, Julio's dead brother's usta-be-wife.

         I had to eat my dinner standing and shivering, soaked to the bone. Thus is the nature of carnival: to be as annoying as possible. It is not gratifying to throw water on someone who is an already soaked, willing participant. No sir, you must hit the dry and unsuspecting. That is how everyone currently going ballistic on each other in Julio's house got their start. One dry person hit another dry person with water, the newly soaked person took revenge, the 2 soaked people gained up on a 3rd dry person, and so on. Now I was soaked. Julio was dry and dressed in jeans and a polo shirt with hair freshly combed. He had apparently emerged from a shower recently. He was eating his dinner in a small ball at the far back corner of the bed in the room we eat in. His mouth was continuously stuffed with food, but he beamed and puttered with laughter the whole time at the antics of Carnival taking pace all throughout the house. He indicated to me that he was crouched unreachably far back on the bed so that no one in their right mind would pour water on him because a piece of furniture would be put out of commission for days, if not destroyed altogether. He reminded me of Ren, from Ren and Stimpy, a curved and trembling form cramming his mouth with food in the very corner of a room. He looked girly. Julio, too, is an oddball and thus a productive citizen.

         But Julio's time soon ran out. A small Carnival mob entered the room and lifted him off the bed. His dinner was snatched away from him and he was carried outside and soaked with a bucket of water. Susanna was laughing at Julio and I at the very moment she was hit from behind with a bucket of water. She was not happy. Then Antonio hit me with another bucket of water on my dry back side. Unarmed we both bolted for the barrel of water in the back yard. Antonio was rearmed first, but failed to get a shot off. I slammed Ineva with a retaliatory bucket of water and then set off after Antonio, who I blasted in the street in a full-blown foot chase. The hijinxs continued for about 20 minutes and then everyone just stood there on the front porch dripping water. We were all done with the game, but, suspicious of everyone else, no one wanted to dry off and change clothes for fear that doing so would make them a mark.

         The puppy that lives here died in the afternoon. I had noticed he looked terrible ever since I returned from Loja. I had been watching him earlier and could tell something was not right and suspected he would die, but did not expect him to die so abruptly only hours later.

         Made a quick internet trip to Santa Elena which I couldn't really afford to make, but needed to verify some news I had heard about the parents of a PCV.

         My pig is in heat. I forced a little writing out, ended up talking on the phone the rest of the night.

         Eventually, a navy commander from both the U.S. and Ecuadorian navy, both women, walked in to the lobby and sat down with us at our table. After the commanders showed up, Eddie showed up. Eddie is one of the three PCVs that the Peace Corps is experimenting with putting in Guayaquil. The 4 of us so called translators and the 2 commanders held a brief meeting of little importance. Then Lonne and Sally took off to the post office and Eddie and I went to KFC in the mall. Eddie thinks like me and we talked for a long time after our KFC combo meal had been reduced to greasy bone scraps.

         Eddie and I bussed to the Malecon 2000 (the touristy river area), where we bought a large quantity of Palo Santo (a wood that smells like incense when burned and drives off mosquitoes). Then we went to the only place in Guayaquil Ela and I had not gone to because we deemed it "almost certainly a waste of time", an area of town know as Las Peñas. As it turns out, Las Peñas is one of the city's best attractions. It is a section of town built on a sharply rising hill at the river's edge. Originally, there existed a fort atop the hill. The later architecture of the homes that spread down from the fort, built perhaps after the fort no longer was functional, had something of an old European Flavor.

         Due to the incline of the hill, Las Peñas is constructed like a wide, very long staircase lined with what is now restored buildings serving as bars and restaurants. It is a well painted, well landscaped, very cool atmosphere to hang out in. At the very top of the Las Peñas hill, there sits a church and a lighthouse, which you can climb to the top of. There is a restaurant set in a fake ship with a kind of jumbled armed forces/pirate theme. All the aforementioned is surrounded in comely park-like plazas. By day, from anywhere atop the hill, one can get a vast and spectacular view of Guayaquil and its waterfront. One can also see that Las Peñas has not entirely cut its ties to its slum past. Just outside the narrow strip of remodeled buildings, non-remolded, decrepit and reputedly dangerous neighborhoods can be seen still standing.

         I caught a city bus to the main bus station and then caught a C.L.P. to Santa Elena. I arrived in Santa Elena around 8:30pm and bought a hamburger and hot dog from a street vendor and continued on to Tambo. In Tambo, I went straight to Merci's tienda to let Julio's family know that I had arrived back in Tambo, in case they had been worried about why I wasn't back at 2pm like I had said I would be. I meant only to stop there at the tienda briefly, but was obligated to stay longer when the kid whose Padrino I am gave me a coke to drink with my hamburger.

         When I finally got out of there and was walking through the main strip of town on the way home, I saw a truck further on up ahead pulling away from where it had been parked temporarily unloading or loading something. Motor vehicles drive the dogs here crazy. As soon as the truck began pulling away, it was surrounded by a frothing and lunging crowd of rabidly barking dogs. 2 dogs I had passed about 200 feet back woke out of a dead sleep and tore down the road in the direction of the other barking dogs.

         Street dogs have absolutely no brains. They are filled with nothing but the basest instincts. They live in a world where the only problems that exist are the ones they cause. They are worthless. They try to attack cars, they try to attack horses, pigs, bicyclists and other dogs. They try to attack even people they sort of know if they are carrying something deemed large and unusual, like a suitcase. Walking through town at night is dangerous in Tambo- not because even a speck of violent crime has ever existed in town, but because people inexplicably insist on owning dogs.

         All it takes is for one dog to get startled and bark. That barking will alarm every other dog in listening range who in turn will begin barking. The dogs' will only escalate their own alarm by their own barking and soon as many as 7 or more dogs will be rushing into the street and surrounding your passing silhouette. And all you have done is walk noiselessly down a sand street towards your house minding your own business. The more dogs there are, the braver they get. You will have to fight them off. Luckily this is often as easily done as reaching down for an imaginary rock. However, just as often, that will only temporarily hold them at bay but not frighten them off altogether. You will need to hit them with a rock or at least bounce one past them to let them know you aren't faking. All manner of violet thrashing at them is useful. Kicking sand in their faces works beautifully in Tambo and spitting at them is a perfect way to augment throwing things if you are fighting off more than 1 dog within attacking range. They fear all projectiles.

         Now you will recall that the truck surrounded by barking dogs was down the street in front of me while the 2 newly awakened and furious dogs were way down the street behind me. When I heard the dogs behind me begin frothing, I stopped, turned around and watched their barely visible silhouettes blazing down the road in my direction. "Watch," I told myself, "in their blind rage they're going to get right on top of me before they realize I am standing here and then they will think I attacked them and the fight will be on."

         That was exactly what happened. The dogs nearly collided with me at top speed. In so doing, they got much closer than any dog I was fighting off would have ever gotten. They were very startled by this and were thus very ready to fight. I, too, was very ready to fight. I am so sick of these worthless and dangerous blind idiots. I actually went on the offensive out of anger. It had been a very close call and it had happened for absolutely no reason. I have never been successfully bitten by a dog here, but I vowed then and there that I will kill the first dog that manages it. I have had to fight off dozens of dogs in this country, but my patience is now finished. I will furthermore wound to the best of my ability, any dog wishing to mix it up with me in any form. Even a growl will now earn you a rock to the head. These are not pets, they are wild animals and it is time to neutralize this nonsense.

         From Santa Elena, I went to the C.L.P. bus station in Libertad. I had never taken a bus to Progresso, but I had driven through Progresso plenty of times on my way to Guayaquil. Progresso is halfway between Guayaquil and Tambo, but when I ordered a ticket to Progresso, I was told there was only one price for rides on a C.L.P. bus- $3.40; the price of a full ride to Guayaquil. I decided to forego buying the ticket and try my luck with the ayudante once the bus had already left the station. While waiting for the bus to leave, I was talking to a man that told me the price to Progresso has always been $2. I decided to check at the much less preferable bus line Costa Azul up the street a block. If The C.L.P. guy was trying to pull a scam, I wanted it to cost him a customer.

         The guy at the ticket window at Costa Azul told me a ride to Progresso would cost $2, but just to get on without a ticket and pay the ayudante. When the bus pulled up, it was in quite a hurry. People ran everywhere trying to jump in or stow luggage underneath the bus carriage. I just took all my stuff aboard with me because the plastic bag I had half of my stuff in was starting to tear and could not be tied shut.

         I squeezed myself into a seat and then buried myself in my 2 bags. The bus soon filled to capacity. Both jack asses in the seats in front of me, threw their seat backs all the way into the laps of the woman next to me and I. My lap was so full that the idiot in front of me couldn't get his seat back as reclined as the seat would allow. I deliberately allowed my stuff to jam up his reclining because I hate people who feel perfectly free to impinge on other people's space to add unnecessary luxury to themselves. He tried repeatedly to recline his seat back, knowing fully well he was bumping something behind him.

         When the ayudante came around, he tried to charge me for the full ride to Guayaquil, telling me there were no partial charges for partial distances. Rather than tell him that's not what the ticket window told me, I opted to see if he would give me the correct change for a ride to Progresso and then just blow up on him if he didn't. He was lying and he knew it. If he had the audacity to go through with the scam, he would pay. He gave the correct change.

         Buried in my seat, I could not see Progresso coming. People were suddenly heading up the aisle and then I saw buildings passing by the windows of the bus. I asked the woman next to me, holding a kid, where we were at. When she said 'Progresso', she immediately began moving out of my way. She had heard me and the ayudante talking about my destination. Her getting out of my way was impeded by the kid in her lap and the fully reclined seatback she had to contend with. I myself was sandwiched in place by yet another seat back and my luggage. By the time I got myself into the aisle, the initial burst of Progresso bound people had shot out the door and the bus aisle had filled back up with half a dozen vendors selling food. There was physically no way for me and my excessive luggage to get past them. The bus again started down the highway.

         I knocked the first vendor all to hell trying to force my way past but my plastic bag ripped open. The vendors began passing my stuff hand to hand up towards the front of the bus. I tripped over people and bags the whole way. When I finally got the bus stopped and climbed out, we were ¼ mile outside of Progresso. Looking back, I think my sweat-pouring, bag-carrying, ¼ mile walk back to Progresso was the beginning of the end for Ecuador and I. Our relationship had been mortally wounded, and like in that Tom Waits song, was quietly bleeding to death in a movie theater, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. Furious with the needless chaos Ecuadorians always bring to everything, I seethed all the way back into town.

         In Progresso, I got on yet another insane, over-packed, hot and falling apart bus headed south to Playas. I stood at the very edge of the packed-in crowd supporting myself only by a handle that was coming loose from the wall. I got off in Playas, not actually sure if I was in fact in Playas, but just the same glad to be rid of that bus. I walked down the beach looking for the Tucano Hotel, asking for directions every few hundred feet. The first thing I noticed about the people of Playas is that they are measurably nicer and easier to understand than people in the peninsula. I walked down about ¾ mile of beach before I found the Tucano. I checked in and took a shower.

         The Navy caravan of U.S. doctors and Ecuadorian soldiers arrived within a half hour after me. I came out of my room and extended a few handshakes and helped unload a few bags from their military transport bus. In another hour, we had a meeting about various uninteresting logistics. The pharmacist present told us that the medicines some brass ass in the navy ordered were ridiculously understocked in important areas and overstocked in senseless areas.

         After the meeting, Ed and I broke away and went to town. We wandered around town and the beach. Playas is a beach town. It was a Sunday nearing sundown and the thousands of beachgoers from earlier had mostly gone back to Guayaquil. Hundreds more were still around. We ate in a sidewalk pizza place, where the food sucked, and then walked back to the hotel in the dark. At the hotel, we found all the US Navy doctors plus Lonne and Sally eating in the hotel restaurant. Ed and I discovered that we had a $10 per diem for dinner. Even though we had just eaten, Ed and I ordered again because it was free and stuffed ourselves. Then went to bed.