Julio and I went to Ancon, a town located about 5 km south of el Tambo. Ancon has a coastline like parts of Southern California. Julio and everyone else insists it is too dangerous to swim in and thus is completely unused by anyone. There were OK waves, but nothing special. When the English owned the oil companies in Ecuador, Ancon was full of Englishmen. But now, 30 years after Ecuador took over its own oil reserves, Ancon is half-abandoned.

      We headed back to El Tambo early because Julio said there was some kind of gathering to remember the one year anniversary of his brother’s death. However, when we got back, Julio and I didn’t even attend the gathering. We walked right past it in fact- not at all dressed for the occasion- because Julio wanted me to see a guy that uses a bus engine to power a circular saw to cut large logs into planks of wood. Back at the house, Julio and his wife broke out a bag of family photographs. Julio’s wife repeatedly smacked him in the head when I could effortlessly name the people in the older photographs but he hesitated. Julio broke out pictures of his service in the Ecuadorian military in 1981. I had earlier told Julio that I had heard the Ecuadorian militaries armouries keep blowing up (at least 2 in the last year alone) because someone is covering up the missing arms they’ve been selling to the FARC. He concurred and then told me that when the military had stationed him in the eastern jungles near the Columbian border, a carload of his friends went up the road to a store and were blasted apart by Colombian guerrillas. I had no idea how that was supposed to pertain to my statement, so I asked him why the Colombians had opened fire on the Ecuadorian soldiers. His answer was, “Because the Colombians are guerrillas.” OK, fair enough. But disco still sucks.

     I declined Julio’s offer to take me up the road to check out his son’s boss’ Landrace hogs, but he insisted and I really didn’t have anything better to do. On the way back from the hogs, Julio asked me to critique set up of his son’s boss’ farm. I told him the pigs were a little sunburned because they weren’t getting enough shade, but they didn’t seem too stressed about it so it probably wasn’t impacting their health. Then I realized I was on another continent having a discussion about hog farming in a language I wasn’t born speaking. Julio looked at me because I had stopped talking. I looked back at him and wondered if my companionship wasn’t filling the void left by his brother a little too conveniently. Then I wondered what time my watch would read if it were on my wrist. I blinked. Somewhere in the cosmos, a record scratched at length.