In between
Gringos don’t seem to mix well with locals here. They move around in herds or small groups. Their backpacks all look the same, their light hair pokes through the ceiling of the crowd like flashing red signals, and their body hair is clearly visible on the fair skin over their skinny, bare calves. Often, there is a pair of them at the internet café, a group sitting together around the table at San Valentin Café, or a raucous herd in the discothèques dancing very conspicuously around a table with a bottle of rum or vodka in the center. I look at them as complete foreigners, and they look at me the same, but I’m not exactly native either.
There are a couple young gringo boys walking in front of me down the hotspot stretch of Avenue Daniel Leon Borja. A native man calls out to them in English. “Hi, how are you doing? What’s up?” in a way that sounds more like “What the hell are you doing here?” They reel around with looks of shock and confusion as I drift right through the situation like a ghost. I draw attention often, as if people instinctively have to size me up as I pass, but usually the look is one of “I guess you’re alright, even if you are pretty weird.” In that way, I guess it isn’t a far cry from living in America. However, even if I am an exceptionally Latin Gringo, I have yet to be treated as anything other than a foreigner. In the same token, the gringos don’t take any interest in me as a fellow traveler and find nothing strange about finding me sitting behind the counter of the reception with Newman or Sandro.
A gringo couple from Sydney stare blankly at Newman as he explains the ins and outs of the Devil’s Nose Train Ride in his blurred country-boy Spanish, and no amount of gestures will mitigate the failure to connect. I listen in until he is about finished with his lonely monologue and the furrows on the brows of the guests reach maximum depth before I instantly break the barrier with “What he is saying is show up at 6am, buy your tickets tonight…” The tension is relieved with hearty laughter all around at the unlikely surprise. All their questions are answered in short time and everyone is happy with a modicum of effort. The next day, I again stumble into a translating job while hanging around the reception desk when a Japanese-American couple, obviously very frustrated with something, try in vain to speak to Newman with their 20-word Spanish vocabulary. Newman’s eyes grow large at the sight of this frantic woman phrasing and rephrasing her plight in hurried English further obscured with a thick Japanese accent. What she needs is a hair drier. I tell Newman. He says there aren’t any in the hotel, but there is a hand drier in the bathroom. Apparently, this is the first time in her life she has been without a hair drier and she must go out and there is no way she can go out the way she is. Apparently, she only came to Riobamba to ride the train and she wouldn’t have done it if she knew all the trouble she would have to go through. She wants to know what kind of hotel doesn’t have a hair drier. The answer is at least all the hotels in Riobamba, but I use my experience from waiting tables in America to mitigate the situation with a few thrifty translations, the hotel staff goes out to buy a hair drier, the guests countenances are immediately transformed into those of great relief at the aversion of imminent disaster, Newman turns to heartily thank me for saving his ass, and the guests thank me for the translation on the happy return to their room to dry their hair. I should be getting paid for this.
In general, Gringos only come here, from all over the world, to ride the train, and those who live here all their life never ride it. The tourist events in the city featuring colorful native dress and lively dances apparently draw only tourists from other parts of Ecuador. Americans are rare, and even rarer are gringos traveling alone. I am told that North Americans, which I can only assume means Americans and Canadians, are much colder people than those around here, and I respond that perhaps they are confusing the people with the climate. Still, I see what they mean. The greetings are much warmer here. To many I am the only North American they have ever met face to face, but I seem to be a poor representation of a North America in many ways. Then again, I am a poor representation of any body of people in existence, including the people here.
Apparently, it is a universal phenomena for recent grads to more or less fall off the face of the earth for a year or two. I, for example, have fell off the face of the earth I used to know and landed on the midsection of the earth. But it is difficult to find anyone my age, recent grads. Ages 22-24, in general, are apparently holed up somewhere, probably thinking about what the hell they are going to do with their lives, or looking for someone to marry. At least, I haven’t met any of them. I meet loads of 17 and 18 year-olds, a good amount of 21-year-olds, who still seem to be halfway around the world from me. The rest of the time I warp to the other side of the world inhabited by my colleagues and hotel workers, 27-plus-year-olds. Apparently, there is a phase of life in the early to mid-twenties where people turn into phantoms for a while. I feel like a ghost, a ghost who is haunting those other people with bodies, circumnavigating the entire world with ease due to my spirit nature. I can appear to some of them, even if they have to squint a little, and they let me hang around even if I am a ghost. Perhaps we will gain our bodies when we realize we should forsake our spirit nature, marry, create offspring, or accept the fact that we will have to work for a living in a job somewhat short of our dreams. Or perhaps we will retain our spirit nature and float around the rest of our lives. In any case, these speculations cannot transcend the classification of myths and ghost stories, and further speculations will have to be consigned to the realm of the paranormal, which is where you can find me if you wondering where I went.
Tags: Travel, travel stories
Aaron Baldassare