Never Trust a Bus with Flare

Home. We spent all day yesterday back in Ibarra, buying stuff for the apartment. Paul dropped us at this cheap, mishmash store to buy stuff for the kitchen and whatever else. Not really sure what to compare it to. Imagine a really messy person´s desk. Now that desk explodes into a store. We managed to buy everything we needed for the aparment for pretty cheap. A lot of it is plastic, but it works. The gas tank was as much as the stove we bought. Dang. About $65 for each. But it´s only $3 to refill the tank, and they last awhile, so that´s good news. It´s Holy week here in South America, which means a lot of festivities. Last night we attended the annual "trueque" in Pimampiro. People from all around gather in Pimampiro to trade things. No exchange of money permitted. The goal is to obtain everything needed to make fanesca, the traditional soup eaten during holy week. Fanesca includes, many beans (cho-chos, lima beans), grains (rice, flour, quinua), peanuts, fish (bacalhao-what is it?!?!?!?), squash, eggs, plantains, bolitos (fried bread), cheese, milk, butter, and a partridge in a pear tree. It was basically a big party. Live music, tons of people everywhere. Traditionally it lasts from 6pm until 6am, but we left around midnight so I´m not sure if the tradition prevails. We were given many things (mostly shots of various alcohol, one felt like moonshine) and traded with panela (bricks of pure sugar cane).  It was a truly beafutiful experience. Paul played guitar and sang with some folks, kids stayed up too late, the drunks were thriving. Who could ask for more? I feel very privlidged to have been a part of it.

I am finally home. It took a long time to get here, but I have arrived. Jana, Kaite, and I are now living in an apartment in Pimampiro.  Paul found it and signed on it for us a few days ago.  We arrived to Pimampiro on Wednesday, threw some matresses into the apartment, and here we are. Muchas gracias a Paul for everything. It is truely amazing how things work out. Let me start from the second beginning. Katie (Jana´s friend from Haiti) arrived in Guayaquil last Thursday night. As it turns out, Paul had an overnight layover in Guayaquil that night, so we scooped him up from the airport and took him to the "house." After many hours of conversation, we decided to take Katie and come back to Pimampiro, instead of going to Lima as we had planned. This was not without heartbreak. I am hesitant to write about this, as it is public, but a blog is journal, and I will treat it as such. Katie, Jana, and I left MMRC sooner than we had promised. Jana and I were in Guayaquil for five days instead of the promised two weeks. The environment in the house was less than ideal. Everyone was tense all of the time. Every conversation turned into an argument, and rarely was anything productive accomplished. So we left. I am sorry for those that were hurt in the process, but I know the decision was right for me.

So we went to Montañita, a small beach town about 2.5 hours away from Guayaquil. It was a much needed break. This town is a surfer´s dream and a partier´s paradise. Needless to say we had a lot of fun. The three of us actually took surf lessons (awesome!). Never in my life did I think I was going to try to surf, especially from someone teaching me in Spanish. We had to practice in the surf school before we went in the ocean. Basically, you lay flat on your stomach on the board, when you "feel the waves at your feet" you begin to paddle (rema!) you pretend like your freestyling (the swim stroke not the dance move), then when "you feel the wave at your waist you arch your back and pop yourself onto your feet in one suave move. And you must land with your feet apart and knees bent (echos from my childhood of tennis playing), in the center of the board. Easy right? Sure, not so bad inside the surf school. Out in the water it was a different story. When they yell "¡posición!" ("but the wave is so close! let´s wait for the next one. no? right now? okokokok!") you belly flop onto the surf board, fix your bathing suit bottoms, move mas adelante or mas atras, depending on where you flopped, and REMA REMA REMA. Paddle or the wave will eat you. When the wave starts taking you, ARRIBA! You lift yourself up and surf into the sunset. Very easy. Or not. I maybe actaully stood up about 4 times. My knees were super bruised. Jana ran into my bottom with her surfboard at full speed, my ribs hurt from all the flopping, and I had so much water up my nose and down my throat it was hard to breath, and I think I snotted more than I ever have in my life. Cleansed.  But, it was a lot of fun. We practiced for about two hours. Side note, they scare you by telling you if you get too close to the shore, you will ruin the fins on the bottom of your surf board and you have to pay for it. So the few times I did stand up, I jumped off for fear of ruining the surfboard.  Another things we learned in Montañita.  Everyone has their own unique whistle. So, if you´re in a group of people, you whistle, your friend hears your unique whistle, and responds with his own personal whistle. Then you find each other and all is well. Interesting. It took us about two days to figure out what was going on. I am personally working on a whistle of my own. I am looking for something catchy but simple. Suggestions are welcome.  Montañita was fun, but I was done after a few days. The mountains were calling me.

I thought I had had interesting bus trips in the past, but trying to get from Montañita to Pimampiro topped them all. All started out fine. We took three buses until we got to what we thought was going to be the ultimate bus from Puertoviejo to Quito. About 8 hours. The plan was to stay the night in Quito, then head up to Pimampiro the next day. So we´re in Puertoviejo, expecting to have to wait 3 or 4 hours to catch a bus to Quito (that´s what everyone had told us), when a nice young gentleman comes up to us, asks us where we are going, and says "vamos, this bus is going to Quito right now." What luck! We thought we had just cut 4 hours off of our trip. The bus itself was fantastic. The front was all tricked out with tweety bird and winnie the poo stickers. Lots of Fun. The bus helper man was super nice, I asked a million questions. I even asked if the bus was going to the Northern terminal in Quito (it´s about an hour past the Southern terminal, and we were coming in from the south). He said, sure, of course we can go to the Northern terminal if that´s where you need to go. Awsome, by about 9pm there were only 5 people on the bus, the three of us, and one other couple. It was like being in a movie theater all by yourself. It was great. We told the bus helper man we were hungry, and we stopped at a "rest stop" for about 30 minutes to eat. Our own private Limosine. It was all too good to be true. Around 1130pm, the bus stops at some random corner and the bus helper man (we now know his name is Fabiano), says, "ok, get out here." When I say random corner, I mean we are on the Panamerican highway in the middle of nowhere, about an hour outside of Quito. What?! "You said we were going to Quito!!" "No, we have to wait for another bus to take you to Quito." We fight for a little, but they insist they are going south from here and if we want to go to Quito we had better get out of the bus now. EFF. So we lug our obscene amount of luggage off the bus, and wait. I insist that they wait with us since they got us into this predicament. They wait, try to flag down passing busses, no one will take our sorry souls. We have turned into hop ons. Or wannabe hops ons. We were PRAYING for a hop on. It was freezing mind you, raining, we had nothing warm. Miserable. So we waited outside for an hour. No one would take us. The passing buses rarely even stopped. Crap. The bus we were on was going to Ambato, which was two hours away from Quito. We asked how long it would take to get to Ibarra (where we were meeting Paul the next day) from Ambato. "Oh, about two hours." Perfect, we´ll just get back onto your lying bus, and sleep in Ambato for the night. Ambato turned out to be another 7 hours from Ibarra. We completely back-tracked for over two hours. ANGRY! So I told Fabiano that I was mad at him and that he was a liar (¡Mentiroso!), but all turned out ok. I ended up sitting in the front of the bus with the bus driver for the last 2 hours (great view and much warmer). We were freezing. Got to the hotel, took a cold shower, and froze the night away. Katie was bitten by bed bugs, all was swell. We Finally made it to Ibarra (and Paul was luckily still there!!!!), around 630pm the next day. Long journey, but we made it.


Today we ate our first meal in our new home. Luis (president of Paragachi), Sonia (university student, not 47%), and Paul joined us for breakfast. Stove (hooked up with help from Elena) worked! Fresh bread, coffee, fresh Jam, perfection. Side note again, the Jam is made from Ovos, which is a fruit that is only grown in one part of the world, the valley next to Pimampiro.  In this valley, it is said that people live the longest in the whole world. Eat more ovos! They look like cherry tomatoes, but taste sour and sweet and delicious. Until we meet again
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