Together At Last!

This is both of us. We are sharing a computer in a closet that had seven tabs of porn sites as its home page. Currently, we are killing time before we have dinner with some of our Ecuadorian friends. Our ECUADORIAN friends. This begats a story.

We hopped on a bus heading from Quito to Esmeraldas yesterday, a bus we expected to be awful, but one that actually had fully-reclining seats. Immediatley, we were assaulted with conversation from a friendly brown smurf with a T-Shirt tucked into his jeans. That shirt had a picture of a camel pulling a car and read "Need a lift? CAMEL TOW." This man should have been crazy. In fact, he was Luis. He is our friend.

Luis mainly wanted to practice his English, which was fine because we mainly wanted to practice our Spanish, but he became a guardian. He protected us from evacuation at the hands of seat-stealing families, pointed out the freshest of mozzarellas to be eaten with jam, and told us that we should be careful because danger was everywhere, though really Ecuador is quite safe, though still watch your back, but really the people are great, but honestly anyone will steal anything. Luckily, he told us of one truly safe person in Ecuador. Luis. And only Luis. Tangentially, his older sister as well.

For dinner, we had salchipapas. "Salchipapas" is Spanish for "mayonaise-laden fried shit." Before our food arrived, something else did. Companionship. Animated, spirited, hyper-active Spanish companionship. Anita joined us at the mere suggestion of cerveza and we spent much of the night talking with her, though mainly listening to her, as well as her friend Rocio who suddenly appeared in the seat next to us. And now, we are waiting to go see them again for dinner. So there, we have Spanish girlfriends. And only one of them has a kid.

It should also be mentioned that we had a full day since in the early morning, we heard a loud banging on the door. We debated first over if it was for us, then if we should answer, until finally CC--the braver, stronger, more machissmo of the two--decided to answer it leaving Josh--the cowardly, weaker, and slightly effiminate of the two--shivering in his sheets (which were much nicer than the ones in Quito). The door swung open. Light from the hallway filled the room. A silhouette stood before us. Short. Round. Still wearing a T-Shirt tucked in to jeans. It was Luis!!!!!!!!!!!! OUR SLIGHTLY INVASIVE BUT OVERWHELMINGLY HELPFUL SAVIOR!!!!!!

We went out for breakfast with Luis, told him of our plans to go to the beach later that afternoon ("Don´t bring anything. No Camera. No Money. Oh, but the people are very nice"), and then joined him for a (mandatory) trip to the museum of Esmeraldas, where we saw anything ever shaped out of clay by an Ecuadorian. It actually felt a bit like a scene out of a Christopher Guest film, as a less-than-animated tour guide explained details of every piece while we nodded, indicating that we understood her Spanish, which we mostly did. Then, Luis would repeat all the parts we did understand in English, leaving the rest a mystery. By the end, the girl was leaning on a wall while Luis showed us pictures of snakes ("These are snakes. They are very dangerous and could kill you at any moment. But the people of Ecuador are niiiiice!") and introduced us to his friends. Whom, come to think of it, all seemed gay. Wait, it occurs to us now that Luis might have been gay. He did rub our legs when he woke us up this morning. And watched us change pants. And applied sun-tan lotion to our backs to protect us from the harsh Ecuadorian sun. Only one of these is a lie.

Like we said, slightly invasive, but overwhelmingly helpful.