El Vago en Suramerica

I´ts been a while, and fucking wild time since I last wrote.

From Guayaquil, I took a bus to the border with Peru in order to meet my friend Tanael the following day. I ended up having a bizarre evening in the city of Tumbes, one hour from the border in Peru.

Tumbes had a beetle problem. Some type of enormous insect was virtually raining down upon the city. While waiting for a hamburger from a street stand, I had to knock at least two off of my back. These beetles apparently bite as well. In front of this hamburger stand I met several guys from the countryside near Tumbes, and I ended up wandering around with them after eating. I went with them to a rally for a political campaign in a nearby park. That weekend were the national elections in Peru, so it was getting a bit crazy with the campaigning. The politicians in Peru have some interesting tacticts for attracting votes. There was an enormous game of bingo going on, and everyone was extremely invested in winning. Some women had up to five bingo cards in front of them, filling them all in at once. There was also some music, popular reggaeton songs with the lyrics changed to support the presidential candidate. The whole spectacle was bizarre and exhausting, but lots of fun.

In the morning I continued on to Mancora, a beach where I was meeting Tanael and his sister Taina. They had come all of the way from Santiago de Chile by bus, so they arrived exhausted, and we spent the next several days relaxing by the beach.

Mancora was a small, tranquil place, and perhaps even more so because of the weekend´s elections. The streets were deserted, and there was never anything to do. It was a pretty beach, surrounded by dry desert and with fairly chilly water. It is famous for its surf, and there were a fair number of foreign surfers in town. One day, a bit bored, we took a motor-taxi to a hot spring about an hour away. We had to push the taxi through sand on the way there, and when we arrived we all covered ourselves in mud and took photos.

Tanael and I decided that it would be better to head north to Atacames, Ecuador, rather than hang around Mancora until Easter, which had been our original plan. Tanael had already visited Atacames, and told me that it was a crazy place to party. Taina decided not to return to Ecuador, and instead headed straight for southern Peru.

When we arrived in Tumbes, my favorite city ever, there was a man waiting outside of the bus with a jacket for the Ecuadorian bus company CIFA. I had already taken CIFA buses before, so I went to talk with him. He told us that CIFA had suspended service over the border because of some protests, and that he would escort us to the office of the bus company on the other side free of charge. Tanael and I got in a car with him and another man, and they drove us to the border town of Huaquillas. When we arrived, they drove us into a rough neighborhood and then told us that we hadn´t gotten proper permission to cross the border and would have to pay the police. It was a hoax, but we had no choice but to pay at this point. Refusal could have been dangerous. They demanded $60 among the two of us for the “police,” and $20 more for the driver. We arrived on the Ecuadorian side of the border very angry, but luckily having lost nothing but money.

The rest of the day, and following night, was spent in buses as we made our way to Atacames on Ecuador`s green northern coast.

Atacames is a small, poor city with a nice beach. It is a diverse place, and its people are comparable to the inhabitants of the Colombian cost. They are friendly, animated, noisy, and fun. The malecon, or beachfront, in Atacames is the only place of interest to tourists, and it is lined with hotels, restaurants, artesan shops, and beachside open-air discos constructed of bamboo. The whole place quickly filled up with vacationing families from Quito, Guayaquil, and southern Colombia, all coming for the Easter “Semana Santa” celebrations. It got noisier and rowdier as the week went on. Already by Wednesday the discos were blaring reggaeton music beginning late in the morning, and remain full-blast until around 2 or 3 am.

It was a strange party because it was really a family party. Everyone was in Atacames with their brothers and sisters, cousins, parents, and even grandparents. In the discos you would see parents dancing with their babies in their arms, 12 year old princesses, and old men dancing on the stage in front of everyone. Imagine Spring Break, family style.

It was an unbelievably wild time there. I made tons of friends, both locals and visitors. Some nights I could go from disco to disco, and meet a friend in almost every place. We felt like heroes, because the people in our hotel loved us, and we easily made loads of friends.

The first night, we met two girls from Quito. We spent the evening with them by our hotel pool, and went out dancing together. They left the following day, and we ended up meeting a Colombian girl from Popayan, Monica. After the club closed, we hung around a campfire until late. The following day we met three girls who had just arrived from Cali, Colombia. Tanael and I each went for different girls, and everything was looking good. The girl I liked was called Lady. At one point the next evening, however, Lady stopped talking to me and never really acknowledged me again. I never found out why.

Sunday, after most visitors had left, ended up being the craziest night, and one of the most fun.

When we left yesterday, Tanael and I were a bit sad. We had really grown attached to Atacames, to its easygoing atmosphere and nonstop music. We are in Quito now, and in some ways it is a relief, and in others it feels far too subdued here.

We will probably remain in Quito about a week. There should be some intesting events going on. Thursday is the one-year anniversary of a massive, chaotic protest in the city, and on Friday there is a concert by Maelo Ruiz, one of the most famous salsa artists.

We have a bit of a problem, which is that we have several girls we met in Atacames who we would rather not meet during our short stay here. It is a big city, but weird coincidences happen and there is the possibility of a chance meeting. We`ll see how it goes.

Love,
Dan

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.