A throng of over zealous cab drivers descended on me immediately outside the door screaming unintelligibly all at once. I had somehow managed to let my guard down from 2 weeks of hanging out where people mostly strive to stay out of each other's way and certainly never accost strangers. A sharp flash of disdain burst in my torso and I forced them out of my way like the animals they were behaving as. I pushed my cart of 35-gallon tupperware tubs out toward the street that runs in front of the airport with the intention of flagging cheaper cabs there. A man with a walkie-talkie and ID badge ran after me and implored me not to go loitering by the street outside the airport grounds at night because it was incredibly dangerous. I thought about it a moment. He was right. For a criminal using his head, that would be a great way to reliably encounter rich people traveling with lots of stuff and likely money as well. If there was anyone in this city stalking "marks", there was a high probability I was walking right towards one of their favorite haunts.

      The man with the walkie-talkie pulled his clip on ID badge out towards me and said "See! We're the cab cooperative specially approved by the airport. Yeah it's a dollar more than you could get in the street, but by going out there you are asking for trouble!" I agreed and the man leapt to the opposite side of my cart and spun it back towards the lineup of cabs. I would say it is probably closer to 2 or 3 dollars more than you could get in the street, but in this instance, "using one's head" does not mean finding out how to buck the tourist rate, but rather recognizing when one is being hardheaded about their odds.

      For some reason, cab drivers in Guayaquil tend to be older men, say late 50's and upwards and are generally warm, helpful and seem to regard you as a friend who just stopped by on a social visit. They dress invariably in the unofficial older man uniform of Latin America, which is a short-sleeve, very lightweight, button-down, collared shirt with straight-cut bottom worn untucked and with a series of decorative pleats or ruffling running the vertical length of the shirt over each pectoral. The pants are some kind of synthetic blend, generic, dark color, straight-leg slacks. This prototypical cabdriver almost seems to be part of a retired men's club who drive cabs for fun. They seem to instinctively take you under their wing and turn promptly into a sort of father figure, except with lots more free-flowing conversation and curiosity. This cabby was indeed from that breed and strolled contently behind my cart, carrying on enthusiastically about how we were now averting disaster. When I told him I was bound for the bus station and the Santa Elena peninsula from there, he informed me that the last bus headed that way had already left for the night. I told him I still wanted to check it out because I recall being surprised at how late Ela once caught a Salinas-bound bus, but was unsure as to the exact time it had left. Though he remained adamant that there were no more buses, he seemed exited to find out how his passenger's night would turn out and fired up the engine cheerfully.

      At the bus station, I asked if he could not only pull over to the curb and park while I ran in to see if there are any more busses, but if he could hand me his keys and ID tag as well. He consented immediately and seemed to jump at the chance to prove how honest he was. Even so, walking off and leaving my bags like that ran against every instinct I have. I kept glancing back as I headed toward the bus station on foot to make sure his body language was consistent with someone settling in for a spell of boredom and not that of someone remaining inexplicably vigilant, as if waiting to snatch a spare key and fake ID out of hiding and pull away. He was not as relaxed as I would have liked and rather reminded me of a toddler playing in the tub, which if not fully acquiesced to boredom was at least oblivious to the whereabouts of the passenger- a good sign. Still, I make a point of encouraging my instincts rather than undermining their suggestions, so I walked as fast as I could once I lost sight of the Taxi.

      The guys at the C.L.P. bus cooperative told me there were 20 minutes left to catch the final bus. I returned to the taxi and told the driver what I had found out, as if we had become a team in Mission: Peninsula. He jumped out and opened various car doors while I motioned to the guys who sit bored in front of the bus terminal with flatbed pushcarts waiting for people with too much to carry to show up. We transferred my 140lbs of baggage plus overstuffed carry-on to the flatbed and raced off to the C.L.P bus. I paid the cart guy half the amount he asked and then dispatched him without discussion, even though I now have reason to believe that what he asked for was the going rate.

      I and everyone else aboard the bus slept the entire way to Santa Elena, where I alone stepped off the bus and 3 waiting cab drivers (there are usually a lot more than that) rushed towards me. I directed an index finger at the foremost of them and said "El Tambo- how much?" His opening bid was a winner: $3. Usually I hafta fight tooth and nail for $3, and it always seems to only barely work because there are so many Cab drivers and so few available passengers at night. This guy spat his bid out to me like I would be doing him a favor to get him outta there. We went straight to his car, while the other 2 cab drivers stood around looking burnt up. Unlike cab drivers in Guayaquil, cab drivers in the peninsula are typically a 35 and under crowd. As we drove away, my driver seemed extremely pleased with himself, as if he had just successfully proven the earth-shattering hypothesis that if you give a reasonable rate without having to have your arm twisted, you'll get more passengers and ultimately make more money than if you demand the same inflated rate as every other schmuck taxista and drive the few paying customers away to whomever finally deals honestly. That's a bird in hand, my friend. That simple idea is totally lost among Ecuadorians. They can't resist trying to get something for nothing and they don't realize or don't care that they're stupid scams are costing them, on balance. For half of the ride the driver held a one-sided conversation that was totally unintelligible to me because of his so-called "coastal accent", which is particularly bad in the peninsula and is actually more of a failure to achieve even basic enunciation of the words you wish to speak than it is any kind of "accent". It infuriates me to no end because I feel like I have been exposed to it far too long- slurred and full of vague colloquialisms though it may be- to still have entire paragraphs blow past me without catching a single word. I can even understand machinegun mouthed news anchormen now, but not so much the average person where I live. But then, I have known Ecuadorians who have lived many years in the States and speak nearly perfect English to complain bitterly that they cannot understand anything being said on black sit-coms because it is like another language. Maybe there is a similar phenomenon at work here.

      About halfway through the ride, the driver asked me what a taxi to Tambo usually costs and I suddenly thought I had figured out what he must have been happily talking to himself about all this time

      "They always want $5 but I almost always eventually get them down to $3", I told him.

      This seemed to dovetail exactly with his supposition because he nodded wildly as he continued speaking unintelligibly through a happy smile.

      In Tambo, Julio was easily awakened by my tapping on the side door. He let me in and then sat in my room from 12:30 to 2am while I gassed on and on about all my mishaps, obstacles and close calls I had had en route to Ecuador. I showed him the things I had brought back with me, the most notable of which was a very old electric blanket. The electric blanket would provide many episodes of entertainment and disbelief throughout the coming weeks. No one here had ever heard of an electric blanket before mine arrived, but it seemed utterly to confound logic that one could conceivably warm a cottony fabric using electric wires without setting it on fire or being electrocuted. What's more is that it was by and large indistinguishable from a normal blanket, rather than something resembling a truck radiator inside a cloth slipcover. The whole idea just wasn't very plausible. Waves of spectators would still be asking me to repeat my electric blanket demonstration weeks into the future. Invariably, they would keep at a safe distance as I plugged it in and let it warm and then watch it as hawkishly as I watch a card trick, as if convinced they are going to disprove my blanket sham by spotting a thin wisp of smoke or a subtle charring of the fabric and declare that they knew this bone-headed gringo blanket was a fire trap and an all around stupid idea. But the blanket just lays there. Then, as if testing the theory that nothing must be happening, they spring over to the blanket and launch an arm between it and my mattress and declare with an air of incredulity that is is warm. This cues everyone in the room to run over and do the same thing. Usually they gasp, but then a long moment of silence elapses without speaking. Then one of the several people sunk to their shoulder in my bedding again announces that blanket is warm and everyone exchanges amazed expressions.

      At 2am, Julio went back to bed and I slipped in below my new blanket. And it was necessary too. At sea level near the equator we may be, but it still gets plenty cold at night during parts of the year here in the peninsula. This is not true of Guayaquil a mere 120km to the east, which is plenty warm and even rainy year round. The climate of the peninsula more resembles the climate at the coastal edge of Peru to the south, rather than any other place on the "Costa" of Ecuador.

      When the hellspawn Lorena nannies arrived, I broke out and walked to the mall to buy junkfood at Hipermarket and see what movies were playing. I arrived back in Tambo around 3pm and went straight to work in my garden banging out of the hard ground what would one day become a flower bed. Julio came and went from various meetings of an unknown nature taking place in the Casa Comunal, or what would be known in America as "town hall". He was wearing a shirt he had worn nonstop since I gave it to him upon my return. It was a shirt I had picked up dirt cheap in Vietnam and had again run across in my closet while recently at home in Ohio. I had brought it back to wear myself, but rediscovered why it is I have never liked the shirt. The shirt is at the border of being too small for me, but it is made out of a stiff, probably synthetic fabric that absolutely refuses to stretch and furthermore has a very thick and rigid decal on the front of it, which compounds its discomfort. I gave it straight to Julio who is smaller than me and he has obviously fallen in love with it. You can see that he feels so cool walking around in it. It's really funny. The shirt is a vibrant red with a large, bold, bright gold star on the chest. It's the Vietnamese flag, though that fact remains a rather subtle one because it is not flag shaped and just looks like a simple shirt.

      By dusk, the hole chopping in the hard ground was completed, thanks to the assistance of various helpers. Julio had cut a 2.5 foot diameter hole in the middle of his yard and planted the ugly cactus we had taken from near the buzzard nest on the hill. He had done this while I was in the States. I knew it going to happen because they always do this kind of thing when I am away and I had forgotten to explicitly forbid it before I left. I was immensely chagrinned to discover this addition to my garden, but ultimately it is them, and not I, who will have to spend decades looking at the thing. I am well aware that many a misfortune awaits the plant beds I will leave behind and it is their aesthetic, not mine, that matters. Well, actually, since they have no definite sense of aesthetic, it's their feeling free to participate in the construction of the highly esteemed garden that matters. Or whatever. Someone give me a convincing rationalization for why I shouldn't care that there's an ugly cactus marring my carefully designed plant beds! No, no, it is important they feel like the plants are legitimately theirs to enjoy and grow old with, rather than just the trapping of that weird ass gringo they once had staying with them. But the flowerbed I had just finished was a 14 inch wide strip that runs in a circle around where Julio has planted the campo cactus.

      Ela called in the evening and invited me out to her house.

      The mouse that lives in my room has always nibbled at any stick of gum I have ever left unprotected overnight since it first turned up in my room, but last night it failed to be caught by the trap I had bated with gum. This time, I bated the trap with Doritos' nacho cheese dip.

      Some time in the mid-morning, Julio and Susanna left to go to Alex's school for some kind of father's day program. Susanna, who has only been out of El Tambo 3 or 4 times since I've been here, emerged from her room wearing bright red lipstick in anticipation of her big trip to the outskirts of Santa Elena. Obnoxious lipstick looked as out of place on her as it might on a cow. I don't mean to suggest Susanna is comparable to a barnyard animal, just that bright red lipstick is everything she is not. Or rather, she's everything that red lipstick is not. Susanna is simple and natural. She prefers to escape notice. This was reflected in everything else she had on. I wondered what had prompted the lipstick. Had someone talked her into that? Her inexperienced application looked like it had been done by a clown.

      When they left for Alex's school, Julio and Susanna said they would not return until quite past when we normally eat lunch. But just as I was finishing a large junkfood binge in place of lunch, they suddenly returned and Susanna began cooking. Susanna was fuming and Julio, wearing a broad grin, came directly over to me to share his grand amusement at the fact that Alex had failed to notify them that the date for the father's day event had been changed. No event was taking place today. Inside the house, Susanna could be heard bitching into the air about her irresponsible son and how he was going to let him have it. Susanna had painted a bright red stripe on her face for nothing. Julio found all of this immensely amusing.

      When the soil was mixed and watered down, I built a protective fence to keep the stupid dogs from walking through it and then planted seeds for a plant that grows blue flowers with yellow throats. When that was done, I got distracted by potted plants until we ate dinner.

      At night Julio, Lorena's 2 sisters and I hung out on Julio's front porch forever. Then we came inside to play with the cordless phone with answering machine I had brought back from the States. I cant say that I've ever heard of anyone here owning an answering machine. I knew no one would know what the hell was going on when a recorded message came on as they were trying to place a call to our house, but I had gotten the thing for free and threw it in with the rest of the stuff I was bringing to Ecuador for kicks. I was right about that. Even when we called people in town to test our machine and told them we were testing an "answering machine", so call us right back and after you hear Ivan's voice saying we are not available, say something into the phone so our machine can record it, they still got confused and hung up after the message. Useless though the answering machine may be, it's still great to be able to wander around outside on the cordless phone. Later as just Julio and I were hanging out in my room the mousetrap went off under my TV stand.

      At 3:15pm, I arrived at Lorena's work. We had planned to catch another movie at the movie theater. The best thing that was playing was "Day After Tomorrow" and even that sucked. Lorena spent the first 20 minutes of the movie sending and receiving text messages on her phone, which pissed me off. She finally stopped, but obviously just for my benefit because when I stepped out to the bathroom halfway through the movie, I returned to the blackened theater to see the blue screen of her cell phone glowing in the audience sending another text message. Lorena's stock was quite low after the movie. I went to Hipermarket and internet with Lorena in tow. And then with little in the way of conversation, bussed to Tambo.

      Around 8:30pm, I wandered up to the center of town to see what was going on at the town wide soccer games that are held every Saturday night now. I bored of that quickly and started to head back home, but was intercepted by Rodolfo in front of his house, where I got stuck talking for a very long time. While I talked with Rodolfo, Lorena's sisters kept coming out of their house (2 down from Rodolfo) and motioning me over. It wasn't until Rodolfo's card playin' drinking buddies showed up that I found a chance to escape. I walked over to Lorena's house where I found Lorena still text messaging. After a little while of repeated interruptions by her stupid phone receiving text messages, I went out on to the porch hammock where I could at least watch the soccer game. Soon everyone in her house joined me there, where we all stayed for the rest of the evening. Around 11pm, the soccer game ended abruptly and everyone streamed out of the center of town in every direction. People started joining us on the porch, which was incentive enough for me to stream out of the town center as well.

      At 8pm, I arrived in Libertad on my way to the TransEsmereldas bus station. The Tia Supermarket was closed that I had hoped to buy snacks at, which was surprising as it was only 8pm. I bought my bus ticket to Quito, but my seat was in the last row and bounced me horribly all night. I didn't fall asleep until about 2 or 3am.