A Human Experence

Blue Room

China in South America

Chifa

The Hardware Store

Zapataria

Bus

Apolister

Bringing Her In

Girls



The Rest of the Day

Ivan and Karla

Market

Church

Heading Home

You Going to Pay Me?

Super Man Ceviche

The Boys

Hangin

Salinas

Bro and Sis

The Beach

Fruta

Work

Boy

Morning Sun



The Next Genoration

Blue Boat

The Catch

Dreaming

Transportation

Shop

Safe Sex

After the Party

Playground

Comeda

Football

Waiting for Better Days

May we all love the path on which we walk and
may we all walk the path on which we love.
May we know so deeply its truth we are willing to allow all to walk their path,
willing to walk ours alone,
May we walk knowing all paths are beautiful,
and all paths have the same destination -
Ever new joy

I left on Thursday, solo, headed out for Salinas, a beach town in the south of Ecuador. The early morning bus was over crowded, packed with kids on their way to school and people venturing into their day – heading to the city or to the mountains or to the market. With my legs squished between my bag and the grey slacks of the guy next to me I made it to the Quito bus station where I caught a Taxi to another bus terminal. Pero, esa autobuss no salo para once hours, intoceses fue a una differente estation, where I caught a bus for the ten hour ride to Guayaquil, the biggest city in Ecuador.
On the bus – Quito is a big city and it took a while to meander our way out of the half finished concrete buildings and dirt side streets that the western side of town is pieced together by. For the first fifteen minutes the seat next to me was unoccupied and I and I had the luxury of stretching out but at the last bus stop, before truly heading out an older man sat down next to me. I said, “Buenos Dias, como esta ustead?” and he replied with a quick “Bien” and that was that. I tried to start conversation with him a couple other times but he wasn’t going for it and so, I put my headphones on and, like watching television, I stared at the window and wrote about what was showing at that time of the day. The ride went something like this: Donkeys and horses graze on crumbling undercut cliffs that hang over the road, behind them trash mixes into Loopin and corn and stands of eucalyptus trees. A white dog picks on a tied up brown cow who pays only a little attention to it while just down the road dairy cows in rolling green hills lazily chew their cud. Next to them, silhouetted against the blue and white sky, horses bow their heads to the delight of their tummies. Shifting gears, we’re really moving now. Passing a motorcycle, the rider, on an early eighties bike in a seventies blue helmet, red jacket and black leather gloves, presses forward on his little moto at the slow pace of full throttle, the wind plastering serious all over his face; he’s on the move. Rolling on we pass dilapidated school buildings with chipped light blue walls, rusted metal roofs, a broken window and a concrete soccer field. Kids are sitting and playing and swinging and learning; trying to understand the meaning in the numbers and letters in front of them. Valley after valley our roaring bus climbs out of pastures and concrete neighborhoods into the drifting clouds and steep rolling corn fields. Over the top of the mountain passes and down the other side into the next pasture valley. Each has its own center, its own church and market, its own dramas and births and deaths...its own beautiful life. Over a rise and up, up , up into the heavenly grayed sky and there, lifted on thermals and bones and feathers, vulture eyes of clarity glide effortlessly to heights beyond the reach of human perception, beautifully transforming the dead on which they feast into life; cleaning the land of rot and decay and thriving as beautiful gentle scavengers. A pause...a space of silent reflection. Slowing, we begin the ascent of a steep grade where sweaty men in orange jackets and blackened blue jeans sweep the freshly ground asphalt, coating it with hot tar like preparing a pan for the baking of a cake. Heavy equipment chews at the asphalt with defining power and persistence and, while men sit with their heads bowed, arms on their knees, hands dangling dripping with the desire for rest, for cool water and food, for a pocket full of money to reach into, our bus chugs by in a cloud of diesel exhaust. After cresting the top of the western slope, the Andes drop, turn after hair pin turn, into the lush vibrant jungle of a western pacific mountain range. Fog cuts out any thought of a view as we pass a foot away from the edge of what could be a thousand foot drop or a rolling pasture filled with daisies and dairy cows. For a brief moment the fog opens to revile a box canyon with a thin waterfall veil dangling 100 feet to the limestone river valley below and, like a featherbed being pulled over our eyes, the fog blankets us. Persisting on we begin to descend out of the clouds into the grand vistas of folding mountains thick with gooey jungle. Than, as if the windows didn’t create enough to fill the senses, a JLO movie is started on the onboard TV’s. For the next hour and a half, as we pass threw some of the most beautiful jungle I have ever seen, we listen to American Latin pop music. Dense layers of Taro, Papaya trees, bamboo and grasses of every size and color, pendulous Bromeliads, banana trees, flowering gingers, Breadfruit trees and Monkey Pod trees roll by balancing out the plastic appearance of JLO and her music. Cliffs, comparable only to the steep slopes of the Nepali Coast of Kauai, hold space for waterfalls that peek in and out of their deep folds. Holding up these mountains are roots of gingers and ferns and palms - laden with vines and leafs and stems, green of every shape, texture and hue – eco systems within eco systems, from a square millimeter to a square kilometer, life has taken over. On distant slopes mesas allow fields of tropical fruits and huts and churches. The trash on the side of the road disappears under layers of sprawling, crawling green. Following a river gorge we continue our decent to the rhythms of JLO. Palms of every variety, tree ferns and classic bamboo huts set in banana plantations intermixed with bawd arbor canopies - clearings for papaya orchards allow glimpses of the raging white water rapids below. We roll into a small town where dogs scrounge for food, pig heads dangle next to candy venders, red and yellow parrots fly overhead, chickens roam the open spaces waiting to become the next fiestas feast, women dressed in their best cloths walk by burning piles of trash to carry slop to the pigs and kids play among broken foundations. Just outside of town a huge hacienda sits on a hill. Built on the profits of the coffee plantation below, fields that bring both pride and strife to local’s who work the ackers of caffeine. Out of a driveway a young boy runs as fast as he can next to the bus, running after his dreams. Someday, he will outrun the bus, I could see it in his eyes as we left him in a cloud of dust, to catch his breath among the towering trees, among the bromeliads that dangle exotic red, yellow and orange flowers from every gripable space, among the beauty that it sometimes feels like I alone see. Opening the window warm moist air, filled with rot and life, covers my face; nutrients float by free for the taking, easily digestible. The breeze is ripe and ready to eat, like a big papaya and a boiling pot of potatoes and steamed asparagus; each breath is a full meal. As profound as it is to say, I was sitting there living off each breath, so I decided to just lay back and breath and breath and breath...breath.
I arrived in Guayaquil in the early evening and was able to catch a bus directly from there to Salinas. I could taste the salt air as is got closer and closer. I missed the Pacific sea more than I had realized.
The ride to Salinas was two hours and I arrived in town in the dark. As I passed the ride reading into the night the beautiful feeling of traveling alone came over me. The comfort of a companion while traveling is appealing but something about being there alone with all the people around me brings a feeling of strength and observation and independence; the confidence to do it solo when no one is willing to do it with me. I stepped off the bus onto the street into the humidity and salty night air of a costal town, “Discupe, donde esta...(a phrase I learned quickly)...hostel Las Olas?” Two streets down and I found myself a little room, two beds(allowing me to double up the foam mattresses on one of them), two windows, a fan and a mirror in a 10 x 10 white walled room for $5 a night; the bathroom and showers sat on the other side of a small courtyard...it felt like my kind of hostel, small, simple and cheep. A walk, food and sleep.
Clouds cloaked the morning sun and as I walked the boardwalk along the placid sea. Salinas is like a small Massillon, as Ivan later put it, it is a bay that faces north on a peninsula the runs out to the west from Guayaquil. It’s the beach town, the get away and party spot for Guayaquil’s wealthy. Large hotels mixed in with small restaurants line the one-way street that parallels the beach/harbor where pleasure boats of every size are moored waiting for the weekend when they get fired up and paraded around. Locals set up umbrellas and lounge chairs to make a buck renting them by the hour or day and as ten o’clock rolled around the people started coming out and filling the open spaces, excited to be on the edge of a continent in the sand, wading into the water, drinking beer and wishing for sun. I meandered my way down to the water and, relieving my feet and recharging my cells I stepped into the warm clear Pacific Ocean, ella es boneta, ella hablame de vida...ella es la madre. Se amo.
My mission for the day, surfing. While at times world class surf comes threw Salinas it only happens when a rare North West swell rolls threw (this didn’t happen while I was there). Asking around I found my way to Victor, an intense and macho but very friendly and helpful surfer and owner of the local surfboard rental and patch shop. He said there was surf on the other side of the peninsula at a spot called FIE and ten minutes later we were off to get wet. FIE also has world class surf and was the destination for the world surf championships a few years back. It is on the other side of the army base that holds half the land on the tip of the peninsula and thus we had to get into and go threw the base. Victor, and many other locals, have a “Surf Card” that allows them to enter the base in order to surf this incredibly scenic place. FIE is a large rocky point with a break that folds to the left and ends up on a long stretch of beach that goes three quarters of a mile down to another rocky point that breaks to the right. This other point, the right, only starts to work on 10ft + swell and when it is working people come from all over the world to dance on its hollow waves. On this day the waves were six to eight feet and somewhat mushy. Victor and his gang all surf short boards, basically a totally different sport than long boarding and something I had yet taken up, but, besides a long board from the early sixties, it was all Victor had to rent thus time to learn to short board. I fumbled around for a couple hours and got worked by the waves and rolled by the waves and tossed until I had enough and we headed back to the shop. I found myself some lunch and returned to Victor’s just in time to do another afternoon run to FIE. This time I took the sixties long board, which was more like a door with a fin than a surfboard and weighed about forty pounds but, I knew, in the size waves that were coming threw, I would have more fun on it than on a short board. The waves at FIE had gone up in size and were 8 to 10 ft but still mushy and didn’t hold their shape for very long regardless, it was fun! That sixties board was so great, flying down those waves, just point it where you want to go and it flew there in a perfect straight line like a pencil along a ruler. All the gang loved seeing that old board in action, and, like a retired high school football star whom, forty years later, gets to show his stuff, that board loved to be seen in all its glory. As the orange sun set over the south Pacific, smiling down on us with yellow clouds, we paddled our way back to shore. Paddling in the Pacific creates a peace within me that is balanced and fluid, a center similar to that I find in meditation; it is like church.
Victor works weekends as a lifeguard on the southern side of the peninsula so surfing FIE was out for the next two days, but, in my hoping to possibly catch a late afternoon surf, I was hanging out at his surf shop/house (he lives in the back of his shop along with his wife, daughter, brother, mom and dad; a common living arrangement here) on Saturday evening waiting for him to return home when a Toyota van pulled up. Hopping out in a flurry of words and motion a camera crew of three men and two girls approached me, apparently thinking I was Victor, and started asking questions of which I could only understand one word here and there (they talk really fast here!). Seeing the blushed, bewildered look on my face they quickly turned to one of the local kids who hangs in the shop and asked him some questions but he shyed away as it seemed the cameras were large and intimidating to him. Victor’s brother, Anhill, hearing all the commotion came from the back to see what was going down. After conversing with the hefay of this crew from Guayaquil, they and all their commotion headed back to the van in a cloud of dust and Anhill waved to me to come along as he and the crew piled in the van like kids going on a field trip. Not really knowing where we were going but definitely ready for an adventure I piled in with them and, while sitting in the back listening as hard as I could, I tried to catch as many words as I could to put a picture together of what I was getting myself into. We ended up at FIE, where, I had finally pieced, Anhill was going to teach one of the girls how to surf for a piece this crew wanted to do about learning to surf for the Guayaquil news. So, as the crew and Anhill ran around filming and splashing and laughing and yelling, I sat in the sand while another sun set moved threw my eyes massaging my brain into a tranquil state of relaxation.
Saturday I headed to a beach south of FIE that sits off the military base where Victor and the rest of the surfing crew lifeguard on the weekends. We, two local kids and I, took the bus across the peninsula threw the middle of a shanty town built amongst oil wells. The town was composed of row after row of small huts on stilts with numbers spray painted on one side of them. Amongst them smoldering piles of trash turned to ashes, wandering dogs looking for scraps in the dust, laundry hung on lines, chickens scratched next to tireless cars and, while the steady up and down pace of oil pumps rocked in the background, kids played football in the dusty street with sticks for goals, kicking a tattered ball and running in the mid-day sun, screaming their hearts desire and playing as hard as they can for all their dreams...to win.
Sunday night Ivan arrived and Monday morning we headed out to FIE for an early morning surf session. The waves were small but perfect for learning the skill of short-boarding. After a few hours of frustrating attempts popping up finally clicked and I was able to catch and ride a couple waves; the feeling of accomplishment was good but my body was beat. We got out of the water and headed to our hostel, ready for food and sleep and after awaking and reading a bit, I was, again, ready for food and sleep and thus the night passed into morning.
The next day I awoke with a very congested head and felt like a fever might be setting in. To my benefit, and Ivan’s dismay, there weren’t any waves – creator is good to me – so we hung in a shady spot on the beach for the day, where, just outside the tide pools, sat a jagged, half eroded, rusty ship wreck. When the swell is big, this is one of the best surfing spots in Ecuador – El Barco as the locals call it. The waves break off the stern of the boat and pitch over as they hit the shallow reef to create a fast hollow wave; pictures we saw were impressive and beautiful and looked way out of our surf abilities. So it was good that on this day the waves were two to three feet but only rideable for a couple hours on a certain tide. Ivan went out caught a couple but my head and body were hurting to much to think of exercise; I just laid in the shade dreaming of vegetables and dozing in and out of sleep. Eventually I got it together, left Ivan to the waves and sand and slowly ached my way back to my room where I laid my throbbing head on my pillow. For most of the day I lived in this state of being sick but as I laid down it came to me that, perhaps, I should love this experience of sickness with all my being for within this state of feeling sore and bloated and throbbing is the appreciation and knowledge of the beauty of health and wellness - the essence of duality. With this my body became just that, a bodily vessel within which I can watch and experience and love all the states of duality in which it experiences itself - in which I experience myself – and, with that, I took a decongestant, sweated my way threw the night and awoke feeling cleansed and anew. It was the first time in my life I have been sick and loved it for the dualistic purpose it served.
The food of Ecuador consists mainly of chicken, rice, potatoes, fried bananas and sometimes you can find a small salad made of shredded cabbage, carrots and a slice of cucumber. At home, in the states or here in Tombacco, I cook and eat a LOT of vegetables, my diet basically consists of vegetables, fruit, fish and tofu and it is a very rare occasion when I eat starches or land animals of any kind so as I travel threw Ecuador I find myself literally dreaming of vegetables. I get by for a few days but as day three comes around my desire for vegetables (legubres) becomes consciously noticeable. Fruit, like bananas and papayas, are easy to find so I have taken to eating a lot of these fruits (for a while I was eating five or seven bananas a day but I found they make me stuffy (I think I have a slight allergic reaction to them as my dad does as well) so I have switched to eating two papayas a day and maybe two bananas (I’m trying to cut bananas out completely but there are these chips called Madueros which are like sweet banana chips and they are hard to resist)). Unfortunately my body won’t allow me to live solely on fruit thus I find I have to eat what is available and, within this, I have come to the knowing that what I eat and the way I eat plays a huge role in my daily life and profoundly affects my state of mind. There is something about buying my own food and preparing and cooking it that sooths me and helps center me, it is a part of the day that is slow and constant yet different each time, it is, for me, a practice in being in the moment and threw the absence of it I more clearly see how much I truly love it. It has been interesting to me to see how starchy foods affect my being, leaving me with a slow, sluggish, heavy feeling that, if I don’t watch myself, makes me grumpy and I find myself irritated and short (as if this somehow is going to help the situation). While I would rather solely eat the foods I desire I am eternally grateful for the way I am provided for, no matter where I am, the way I always have and have had food when I am hungry and even when I am not hungry, so grateful to be able to choose how I eat and when I eat, such a simple thing and yet such a blessing – such a blessing.
Wednesday the 12th of January, 2005. Ivan and I decided to head north to a beach town called Montanita where the surf is supposed to be more consistent and the scene a little less crowded. It is known for its lax attitude and copious amounts of partying, particularly in it abundance of pot, something not found very readily in Ecuador. The bus ride north follows the coast and passes numerous little fishing villages, random shacks and huts and long expanses of hot white sand beaches. We arrived in Montanita in the afternoon. As we walked into the main part of town I instantly liked the architecture and tyke style decorations. The town has an island feel with all the buildings using bamboo for peripheral structures, like awnings and railings, most of the roofs are made of palm fronds that lazily drape over their edges, layers of hammock laden porches and rooms reach amusingly into the sky, stepping this way and that way creating a softness to their height and adding to their dimension. They create a feeling of thickness and languid days filled with siestas in hammocks, slow walks on the beach and the turning of pages in a good book. It is a space very different to any other I have seen in here and, if one has done any traveling at all in this country, it is obvious its only connection to Ecuador is that it is on land that belonged to this country. Tourists flock to this very unusual place, the most I’ve seen, as it is a party paradise for hippies and surfers and hippy surfers in a country where hippie surfers are few and far between. Days are filled with surfing or sleeping and the nights with drinking and smoking. When the waves are small, as they were when we were there, the main activity seems to be drinking starting in the late morning and going late into the night - smoking happens 24/7. I don’t drink very often so I began to feel like the designated driver in a town where no one drives. I have a hard time relating to this lifestyle and started to find the evenings rather boring. However, one night there was a guy from Peru who put on a marionette show using puppets he had made of a drunk man, a dog and an artist, who even painted a mini painting; he was talented and very entertaining and drew a big crowd – it is something the world needs more of, artists creating art rite there on the street for the enjoyment of the general public. The world definitely needs more raw public creativity.
The waves in Montanita were getting smaller so we headed north for the day to a surf spot some guys told us about called Rio Chico. With our surfboards and a jug of water we found ourselves meandering down a dirt road in a small river valley surrounded by rolling, dry, shrub covered hills – two old friends wandering on the edge of South America- we looked at each other and smiled. As most roads do, if you follow them long enough, this one led us to an amazing space where a hostel and a restaurant sat on the edge of a mostly deserted beach that stretched south to a low rocky point jetting out into the sea and north a half mile to a jagged stony point. A mile or so off the northern point sat a large Island that helped to create the feeling of protection and isolation this space exuded. The restaurant was filled with bones of whales and turtles, local artifacts, pictures of boats and breeching whales, ancient shells, ropes and nets and other random miscellaneous beach finds – it felt like the South American version of Marsha’s house. The surf was fun and the food satisfying and we left knowing we would return, for it is not often one experiences a space as exotic and beautiful as this.
Although there really weren’t any waves, when we returned to Montanita that evening we took a sunset surf for the sky was like that of bliss. Low puffs of clouds drifted inland from out at sea, backlit by the setting rays that rimmed them in a deep orange that tasted like a freshly peeled tangerine and the pastel blue of the sea reflected on the underside of the clouds producing a color that felt like ice cubes on a hot day. The warm water lapped at our side as the rolling sound of sand in motion gently rocked the land into an evening slumber. With each moment the muted pastel colors deepened in hue and textured the clouds in a way that confirmed my belief that heaven is not just out there somewhere but here on earth as well – it was like a fresh watermelon popping open and a banana split and a cool mountain stream...like the smell and feel of a fresh cherry pie coming out of the oven and the ice-cream that melts over its warm crust.
The next day and a half – awaken, pack, buses, Salinas, met up with Karla, Veronica and Christian, dinner, sleep, morning, food, internet and...I decided to go north again – solo.
I needed solo time again so I headed out in the late afternoon back up to Montanita and the rest of the crew planed to meet me there a couple days later. I arrived back in Montanita around seven that evening, I found a room and headed down to the beach to play some music with the waves. As I got to the beach I was surprisingly and pleasantly greeted by dancing and music, a stage and fire. The makeshift concert was complete with amps that periodically cut in and out, a drum set held together with bamboo and wire, beer bottles at the side of the musicians and each song ending in a grand finally of chaotic strumming and banging. It was classic. I joined in the dancing and soon was lost in the funky feel of the moment. The rock band soon finished and a new group of musicians consisting of hand drums, a bass, a didgeridoo, acoustic guitar, a shaker and a juice harp started playing some great deep tribal world beat music that a couple Canadian girls had prepared a dance for. The dance played out a battle between an eagle and a lion in a fight of righteousness and freedom set in a ring of blazing fire. It was a fierce fight ending in a draw between the two with the understanding of the necessary existence of each to create a balanced world. The ring of fire burned long after the dance and the music deepened becoming even more driven and a primal dance took shape. I soon found myself seduced by the hypnotic trance of vibration and from the depths of my being a dance I have been dancing for a thousand years moved me into the realm of visual emotion and the night was lost into the power of passion. Sand, sweat, music, dance, waves, bodies, Luna...fire.
In the late morning of the day after, I found myself again, on the beach of Rio Chico, alone within the warmth of the sun, the steep sandy barren cliffs and clear warm waters; alone with all the life of the world staring me in the eye, on a hot sandy beach in South America. Into the water my mask and snorkel took me, once again, to the realm under the seemingly barren surface of the thin top layer of the sea. Into a space of fluidity and three dimensions of motion, where the mind silences to the rhythm of breath and to the beating of the heart - into a vast, vast sea of abundance and life. Under each rock is a universe, so small, small, small and yet encompassing all that is; looking deep, deep into its colors and tranquil fluidity, it is all that is, all that is.......is..............lost for long moments, until...air and back to the surface for air, for life. It could be a second or a minute, but most likely it is three immeasurable moments that pass between each breath, between each conscious choice to return to the surface for air, each conscious choice for life. It is all choice.
Sunset, oh, oh the sunset, like an orgy of water, sand, sky, clouds, and sun...light in the unforgettable slow motion of orgasm, each time exhaustingly better than the previous. The little spaces between here and there fill with the lack of light and it is time...Sleep.
A day – food, hammock, book, water, sun, hammock, sleep, meet up with the gang, food, sleep.
Once again Rio Chico lured us into her arms of abundance. Once again into the depths my mask and snorkel took me, once again engulfed by my lover - the big blue Pacific. She holds me tender, caresses my skin, dazzles my mind, and leaves me exhausted with the pleasure of her secret spaces. From the beach to the south we swam – Ivan, Karla and I – landing in a lonely cove that called us from a distance to leave our footprints in her sand and play on her expansive flat rocky point. We were, as we always are but often have a hard time seeing it, in a paradise all of our own, complete with a cave to explore, shells to collect and rock soaking pools of sun heated water trapped by the outgoing tide. Alas, water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink - sometimes beauty can quench everything but your thirst.
Evening - walking up the now familiar dirt road with my back to the sea I knew a lot of time would pass before I caressed those sandy shores again, before my footprints would be washed away to sea by the ever changing tides of my lover – the big blue Pacific.
Half a day – food, chess, pack, bus, Punta Lopez.
Punta Lopez was a refreshing, raw change from the very removed reality of Montanita. The sleepy fishing town is a mix of locals and tourists who come to see Isla de la Plata also known as “Poor Mans Galapagos” for it has all the same attractions and is a quarter the price to get to. The town also sits as an island in one of Ecuador’s only national parks of which Isla de la Plata is a part, along with a two nautical mile stretch of sea along this part of the coast. Unfortunately enforcement of this sanctuary is lax, if there is any at all. The commercial fishing boats anchored in the bay didn’t look like they had any interest in upholding the law themselves and the little eight foot boats most of the locals use didn’t look like they could even make it a mile off shore. Despite this, conservation has to start somewhere and I am glad somewhere found its way to Punta Lopez.
Our hostel sat on the southern end of the bay and from the second story windows of our rooms we had a gorgeous view of the town, its fishing fleet and the flat sandy beach where the catch of the day was unloaded and thrown in the back of steak bed trucks to be taken to the local markets. Walking this beach in the morning was like walking threw a fish market with everything from albacore to thrasher shark to swordfish. Sadly, the size of all the fish I saw were unsustainably small and most had been caught by long lines and nets, methods that tend to create large amounts of unusable, indiscriminate deaths. It is a difficult situation, fishing in the world, for it is the main source of income and food for millions, yet, the over fishing of the sea is destroying that livelihood. For many, it is the only livelihood they know, the only thing their dad’s knew, the only thing their son’s are learning and in the downward spiral of this cycle, fish and man are both on the loosing end. It is a perfect situation for the beauty of education.
Early afternoon - again, we found ourselves meandering down a dirt road, surrounded by rolling hills covered in dry brush, surrounded by the songs of birds putting more depth into the experience of heading to an unknown beach, on an unknown road, to greet my oh so elegant lover – the big blue Pacific. White sand welcomed our feet to another uniquely remarkable beach. Sun, salt water...mask and snorkel...passing moments and the pleasure of relaxation filled my being as we walked home with the setting sun to our backs, pausing here and there to enjoy the remarkable light and passing sounds that create a space.
¾ of a day – papaya and banana, boat ride to a local Island, snorkeling, food, beach, boat, talking with sweetish tourists, Blue Footed Boobies, snorkeling, fish, colors, food, beach, sun, sun, sun, boat, food, hostel, shower, pack, bus.
Saturday January 22, 2005 – The journey home - We were really short on cash, really short, we didn’t have enough to catch the bus to Quito and the bank in Punta Lopez is closed on the weekends. Between us all we scraped up enough change to take a bus to Jipijapa and than another to Portrviejo where we would be able to replenish our cash supply at an ATM and catch the all night bus to Quito. Hopping on the first really crowded bus to Jipijapa I found a seat next to an Australian guy in his early 20’s who is here to spread his views on religion, specifically as a Jehovah Witness. He had a surfboard so we started our conversation with the peripheral stuff – why we’re traveling, how long we’re here, towns, people, surf, that kind of stuff - to get a feel of each other and know how deep we could go. His feel was open and sweet, his heart reflected kindness so we shifted the conversation to our spiritual paths. He picked my brain for a while, getting a feel of where I come from and where I am. Than I picked his brain and, WOW, I had no idea. It was so fascinating to hear his beliefs on Jesus and the bible and people and why and how and when. We had a beautiful conversation and I was left with the incredible feeling of two beings coming together from the small distance of two different continents to meet on a bus in Ecuador and enjoy each others conversation for an hour or two. I feel I am always in the spot I am supposed to be but when moments like that happen the practice of this knowledge manifests in the clearest of ways, a way that is undeniable, a way that reinforces my truth that much more. I am still smiling.
A night – off the bus, cab, ATM, cab, bus station, dinner, bus, sleep, sleep, sleep, Quito, cab, home, sleep, sleep.
Being on the road is exhilarating and open and free; coming home is exhilarating and open and free. To know one is to love them both.
Thanks for comming with me on the ride!!