"Dude, you are a freaking langosta!"

As my coastal village homestay is drawing to a close, I decided to take and little break from the heat and sand and sweat and bugs to reflect on my experience so far. Now, I would be lying if I said that this experience was anywhere as bad as I was expecting because it truly was not (in fact, I may have enjoyed this trip even more than our rainforest excursion, although that may have something to do with the fact that I was unknowingly sharing my food with parasites during much of the rainforest excursion). However, I would also be lying if I did not say that this trip was incredibly, amazingly challenging in a number of ways.

Our first full day in town, Lara and I walked around, getting a feel for the layout of everything. And we talked to...well, almost anyone within earshot. We were instructed to keep a work journal of our observations, conversations, activities, all of it, so we set right to work talking to people about their town. That first day was absolutely EXHAUSTING! Besides the fact that we spent most of it walking around in the glaring sun and scorching heat and humidity (again, still cannot get over the lack of breeze here, even on the freaking Pacific ocean!), it is exhausting talking to so many people in Spanish and asking them in-depth questions about the economy here, social life, politics, all of it!

I went to bed and slept like a rock that night, but neglected to think about the fact that literally as soon as the sun comes up, it gets unbearably hot and therefore there is really no good sleeping to be had much past 7:00AM at the latest. However, Lenore and Faba told us on Saturday to take some time off and relax because we probably would be exhausted by then (oh, they know us too well!) so that was exactly what I did! I ate breakfast, put on my bathing suit, and headed out to the beach. I was the only person out there for a while and just sat on my towel, enjoying the sun and the slight breeze, reading an old paperback that I had found at Iguanazu in Guayaquil, left there by some previous visitor.

Eventually, I went back to the hotel and found Lara there, in deep conversation with a guy who had stopped by (don´t really know the reason). The guy was a driver and a guide for tourists in the area. I sat down and tried to listen and be polite, but very quickly got irritated and annoyed with listening to him. I believe it was a combination of the heat as well as the annoying way that the guy spoke really softly and conspiratorially about everything, as if he were telling you a secret when really, you just really could not hear a word he was saying. And around the time he first demanded Lara and I´s cell phone numbers and, when we said we did not have them with us, then made us write down his cell phone number, I had had about enough. I know people can exchange cell phone numbers and you do not think twice about it and there is nothing strange about it, but something about this guy sort of creeped me out and I could not quite put my finger on it. Needless to say, although Lara was too polite to say anything that might draw this uncomfortably awkward conversation to a close, I quietly excused myself and went upstairs to lie spreadeagled on my bed in the close, hot air, not wanting to move because I was so hot.

I went back out to the beach for a while after lunch, then returned to the hotel for merienda. However, as I sat down with Lara at the table to eat, her eyes suddenly got really wide and she cried, "Dude, you are a freaking lobster!" I stood up and looked in the mirror on a nearby wall--sure enough, though from the front I was fine, the middle of my back was positively fried! Luckily, it did not hurt too badly (yet), so I was able to ignore it. After merienda, I ran to the nearby pharmacy really quickly and although there was no lotion or aloe to be found to ease the pain that was sure to come from my heinous sunburn, I bought some baby oil (the next best thing and frankly, the only thing they had) before heading back to the house.

When I got there, Isaias told us that if we wanted, we could "dar una vuelta" around the nearby town of Montañita. We accepted, politely if not all that enthusiastically, since the heat from the day had just about sucked all our energy right out of us. So, we changed into slightly less-sweat stained clothing and walked up to the main road to wait for a cab to take us to Montañita. WELL, the "cab" turned out to be a dude in a broken down truck who came tooling around and slowed down long enough for Isaias to tell him where we were going and for all of us to cram into the cab of the truck. Even the dark of night could not disguise the terrible shape this car was in--broken windshield with holes in it, doors that you could not open from the inside because they were more or less a sheet of striaght metal rather than a traditional car door, no windows because, seeing as you could not open the door for the inside, you had to reach outside to open it from there.

So we tooled along the road for a little less than five minutes before arriving in Montañita and spilling out onto the dirt road...and it was like entering another world! Whereas Manglaralto is a small, impoverished town that aspires to greater things, Montañita is Manglaralto in ten years. Loud music was blasting, Ecuadorean and American alike; lights everywhere; tons of tourists from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, the US, Europe, and more; hotels and restaurants and bars and street vendors EVERYWHERE! Lara and I perked right up, our eyes wide in shock at how something like this could exist so close to a town as quiet and sleepy as Manglaralto!

We walked around for a while, in awe of the throngs of people around us, as Isaias told us about the town, its history, its inhabitants. We stopped to view some of the street vendors´jewelry and other crafts (I ended up buying a tagua bracelet and a bracelet made out of old Peruvian coins, which I was pretty psyched about; Lara bought one as well). About five minutes after getting there, Lara and I looked at each other and agreed in unison: "We are sooo coming back here tomorrow!"

We walked around a while longer and bought icecreams and colas for ourselves and Isaias. As we were sitting on a stoop of one of the stores, drinking our colas, out of the throng emerged two familiar faces: Jenna and Bekah! They had been paired up in the town of San Jose and their host brothers had brought them to Montañita, knowing it was the perfect place for people to have fun at night (and, well, for gringas in general). It was strange: we had just seen each other two days before, but it seemed like forever ago and it was so nice to see familiar faces!

After we finished our colas, we said goodbye to Jenna and Bekah and took a (much nicer, more reputable-looking) cab back to Manglaralto. We were then yet again faced with the tedious process of recording the day´s events in our journals. However, as it was far more pleasant outside our room than in, we pulled two chairs out onto the crumbling porch attached to our second-floor room and sat out there to journal. However, FIRST, my amazing compañera de clase was kind enough to put the baby oil I had bought on my back which, by this time, had actually begun to sting quite a bit.

After that was over, Lara and had just begun to journal when Isaias appeared with a cerveza for us. I was not interested in drinking (in fact, totally exhausted, I was not interested in doing much except going to bed), so I left it to Lara to finish it. Now, Lara is a master at coming up with in-depth, cultural questions off the top of her head and she never seems to run out of them. And she happened to ask Isaias one such question when he brought us the cerveza, which then led him to stay out there talking to us for about an hour. I did my best to listen, but I also wrote furiously in my journal at the same time, intent on finishing as soon as possible and going to sleep.

Among the things I reflected on in my journal was the incredible contrast between these two towns that are less than five minutes apart. Manglaralto aspires to tourism, but, as Isaias told us, he goes sometimes weeks without having anyone staying at his hotel. Yet here is Montañita--a prime example of everything that Manglaralto aspires to. It is successful, wealthier, full of people, lots of employment opportunities, tons of tourism. And yet, although the tourist in me was in awe of the place, I could not help but think that Montañita could be any town in Latin America. I could have been in any country--there was nothing left of the original culture to tell you that you were on the coast of Ecuador. Everything there was meant to cater to tourists--the restaurants, the bars, the shops, the vendors, the music. There was nothing Ecuadorean about the place. So I found myself wondering if that was the price that Manglaralto (and any small, impoverished town) has to pay for success--do they have to sacrifice their identity and their culture for the sake of a higher income and quality of life? Is it better to have empty hotels and an impoverished, unemployed population like in Manglaralto or a bustling town that is filled with tourists and robbed of its traditions and culture? Is it really worth it? And what are the alternatives?

I also could not help but write a bit about Isaias´s son, Patterson, in my journal since we had talked to him an incredible amount. And the thing I kept thinking and could not help but feel slightly guilty about thinking was that Patterson was all talk and little to no action. Patterson can go on for hours and hours about politics and about how he wants his community to develope and prosper and his hopes for the future. He talks passionately and very intelligently about everything. However, the fact that kept coming back to me was that he is 39, has no wife or kids, no job, and is not looking for a job at present, either. He spends his days hanging out with his friends and working on a rusted hunk of metal that may of at one time been a functioning car, attempting to revive it from its state of rusted hibernation. He talks passionately and intelligently about all these things, but when it comes down to it, I had not seen how he is at all involved in ACTING to bring these things about.

Lastly, I wrote about Nora and Isaias and how absolutely astounded I am by them. In one of my moments of clarity when for some reason I was able to understand Nora, she told me about how she has had ten children, but that only five of them are alive (all sons). At one time, she had a daughter, but she died of some illness in her 20s, leaving her with only five sons. As a result of her lack of daughters (and heartbreak at having no daughters), she told us, she now has two young dogs, Areina (essentially, Queen) and Muñeca Princesa (Princess Doll). It is rare in the campo for people to keep their dogs inside the house with them or treat them with any sort of affection really, but Nora´s dogs sleep with her and follow her everywhere. There is something very sweet but also very heartwrenching about watching Nora sitting in their little living room at night, on their couch with its stuffing sticking out in places, and her Areina and Muñeca Princesa asleep on her lap. Isaias, for his part, is a very wise, very interesting man. I tried multiple times to draw his face in my journal because it says so much just to looks at him--skin like leather, lines etched deep in his face like a wood carving, eyes like an eagle. I still remember the first time I shook his hand and how solid, strong, and rough it felt--the product of a lifetime of machete-wielding on his farm. His face betrays nothing, no emotion--always impassive. It is incredible to know him.

Around the time I finished my journal, Isaias bid us goodnight and I slipped gratefully under my bed net, laughing maniacally (the heat can make you crazy after a while) every time a giant bug landed on my bednet--"Haha sucker, can´t get me!"--while Lara wrote in her journal. I do not know what time she finally finished, as I was asleep in less then five minutes.

Today, we had breakfast and returned to Montañita, as we had planned. We walked down the beach to get there, rather than taking a cab, as the tide was out and it is only a thirty minute walk. When we reached Montañita, it was as if we entered another world (yet again): whereas there was no one on the beach in Manglaralto, this beach was crowded with umbrellas and chairs and children playing and people walking. We immediately went into town to find some shade where we could sit, have an icecream, and apply our suntan lotion out of the sun´s merciless gaze. However, as we were sitting there, who should walk up but Merry and Allison, two other classmates who are in a village about half an hour away by car! Merry, for her part, looked hot, tired, and unhappy--apparently, after finally recovering from her bout with parasites after the Orient, she had now come down with a cough and sore throat just in time for this trip!

There was a tall guy with them and a little girl and we shook hands with them before going our separate ways. Lara and I, coated in SPF 50, went down on the beach and rented two chairs and an umbrella for $5, relaxing comfortably and enjoying the breeze. We talked for a while, watching the people around us and the vendors walking by us, desperately peddling jewelry, hats, food, icecream, drinks, even fake tattoos.

Eventually, a guy walked buy selling sunglasses and we stopped him because my $5 ones from Walgreen´s that I bought before my family´s trip to Costa Rica this past New Year´s were finally on the verge of breaking. I found a pair I liked and he told me they were $6. Lara helped me bargain (since I am terrible at it) down to $4, but by then, I decided I genuinely did not need or want them and said, "no, pero gracias." However, I inadvertantly stumbled upon an amazing bargaining technique, because even though I genuinely did not want them anymore, he immediately was like, "OK, OK, $3.50? $3? Come on, $3!" So finally, for $3, I agreed to buy them. He seemed relieved as he handed them over, even though we had just cut the price in half, saying, "I really just want to sell them...I don´t care for how much." Apparently, selling them even for a potentially absurdly cheap price, he can still make a profit.

We ended up talking to him for about half an hour after our transaction. He told us he buys his sunglasses in Guayaquil and travels all over the coast selling them. He also apparently has a brother who was born in the US, but lives here, and he asked us how long could his brother stay in Ecuador without losing his US citizenship (to which we told him that, if indeed he had been born in the US, then he never would and could go there whenever). He told us about the nicest beaches around, about the tourists and Americans he has met who live here permanently. And just after saying goodbye to him, none other than Merry, Allison, the man, and the girl showed up!

Lara, Allison, and Merry took the little girl in the ocean, while I decided to hang out under the umbrella and read (given the state of my back--still very much lobster red, I thought it best to lay off the sun exposure today). However, that did not exactly happen. I was so excited to relax on the beach and read in the comfort of my chair, under my umbrella, with the breeze blowing on my face and the sound of the waves in my ears...too bad the only sound I ended up hearing for most of the next hour was the man, Allison and Merry´s host cousin, talking to me. Now, some people speak Spanish more clearly than others and on the coast, the accent has proven to be extremely difficult to understand (for the life of me, I can never understand a word that my host mother here, Nora, says, so I mostly just nod and smile when she talks to me). And this guy, besides being very difficult to understand, also quickly turned out to be slightly odd and more than a little creepy. He started out by asking me if I was married...then talking about how he wanted to get married...then something about money and trying to get rich...then asking me again if I was single or married...and throughout, every time a vendor walked by, he kept asking me if I wanted anything and while I was very polite ("Oh, muchas gracias, pero no...") at first, after about the tenth time, I got a little, ummm, testy.

All I had wanted to do was read my book in peace, but in an hour of sitting there next to him, I did not get to read more than maybe two pages. He did not seem to understand that I was really genuinely trying to read and he also did not seem to understand that I was not interested in talking to him more about me being single and unmarried (nor COULD I talk to him, since I did not really understand much of what he said). Around the time he pulled out his cell phone and first tried to give me his number (to which I told him that "Oh sorry, I do not have a pen") and then decided to play every loud, annoying sound and ringtone that his phone could make directly in my ear, I had had about enough. I was done being polite. So I blatantly more or less ignored him and his cellphone, reading my book as best I could, and occasionaly muttering, "Oh, uh-huh...uh-huh..." when he seemed to be pausing and waiting for a response.

When I finally gave up on this as well, I got up and stood in the surf with Lara, Merry, and Allison and they laughed, telling me they knew I would not get any reading done because he had been doing the same thing with them all day. Apparently, they told me he was the son of a prostitute and that he was thrown against a wall as a baby, which, among other things, may have explained why he was a bit strange. And while I felt bad for him for having such a terrible upbringing, I also struggled not to glare bitterly at him for ruining my nice, relaxing morning at the beach. Merry and Allison also said that the annoying-ness and creepiness of their host cousin was not limited to him alone. Apparently, their entire host family has been teasing Merry and Allison mercilessly about everything, from chasing after them with very large bugs to teasing them about being lesbians because they once saw them put sunscreen on each other´s backs. Their family later confided in them, apparently, that they are the first foreigners and first gringas to ever come to their village and did not want to offend them and wanted them to be comfortable there; yeah, so let´s tease the two gringas mercilessly and chase after them with bugs--good idea, nothing makes me feel more comfortable than that! And frankly, you do not have to be a gringa to be made to feel uncomfortable by that...

Eventually, we parted ways and Lara and I caught a bus (since the tide had come in and the way we had walked on the beach to get to Montañita would now be underwater) back to Manglaralto for almuerzo.

Tomorrow, we take a bus at 3:00Pm from Manglaralto to Alandaluz where we will finally (thankfully) meet up with the rest of our group. I know it has not been that long, but I miss them a lot. And while I do not think I am the most high-maintenance person, I cannot lie: I am glad to get back to somewhere where I can take a hot shower and where I am not covered in sweat and bugspray and sunscreen all the time and where there are not giant bugs and lizards sharing my bedroom with me. And more than that, I really do just like Quito and I like my homestay family and I only have a week and a half left with them before my ISP! And so I cannot wait to get back to them and make the most of that last week and a half in Quito.

Until next time, ciao!

-Alex