people, pt1

i had at one point told myself that i would never blog just for the sake of blogging and that people did to hear random thoughts on random things. however, the whole thing with a blog is that people read it when they want to so i cannot be clamed for pushing boring news onto people.

in any event, since nothing terribly extrordinary has happened in the past few days - well, traveling is always extrordinary and great, as is life, but nothing particular has happened, so i will do my best to let you guys know of the tales and woes of other travelers:

the other night in otavalo, anna and i went out to a place we thought was cool. it is called sahara and is a place that sells falaffels and hummus and things like that, but since they really specialize in making homemade bread, they also sell pizza. however, since it is one of the only dishes that comes with a vegetable that isnt iceberg lettuce in all of ecuador (or so it seems), we liked to stick with the fallafel. very good. however, upon walking in, we ran into a slovenian and a dutch couple (two couples, not a slovenian/dutch mixture). the slovenians we stayed with in vilcabamba, though never spoke to. we recognized each other, though they recognized me first because ive taken to wearing, much like my skin, this italy soccer sweatchirt that i bought just moments after the world cup. sure im a front runner, but the story is that i was cold and needed something to wear and it was the only article of clothing in xl in cuenca. nonetheless, this sweatshirt has prompted many a traveler and ecuadorian to ask me if i am from italy. evidently, the slovenian guy was one of the many to ask me this question. being that slovenia is so close to italy, they are somewhat of futbol rivals, so the sweatshirt aroused some sort of passion that inspired memory in these folks. as for me, i remember this couple because they set our house on fire. our house was connected by 4 rooms, and the hot water in these rooms was connected by electricity, and the hot water in their room caught on fire. a little fire, but nonetheless a moment of consternation. the dutch couple we met in puerto lopez. i believe that we were on the same bus going from montañita to puerto lopez and since anna, vincent and i were so loud on that bus and i guess we drew attention to ourselves when we argued the price down from $2.50 to $2 for the hour long bus-ride. you see, busses are supposed to cost a dollar per hour or thereabouts, so $2.50 was unacceptable. so, in broken spanish that was supposed to be argumentative and forceful, but sounded something like, 'price bad' 'i dont like it' 'you lie at us', we put up a stink and therefore became noticeable. the dutch couple therefore remembered us when we saw each other in the hostel we were both staying at and had grounds for starting conversation. later, when we knew that they went on the whale tour before we did, we asked what they thought of it and they didnt give a glowing report. they claimed to have been on something similar in thailand and were therefore jaded about hte whole thing. of course, the whale tour turned out to be the coolest thing ive done yet so i dont believe a word they say anymore. but htey were nice and they may have redeemed themselves later on the advice tip. we will see.

they were sitting on the floor in sahara smoking a hookah pipe and drinking tea. manu chao was playing in the background, as usual, and we joined them at their table. the slovenians were talking much about how on thier trip to turkey, the hookah pipes were bigger, and the dutch were talking much about how in amsterdam, the pipes are filled with something different. they knew each other because they had been together on a jungle tour and used their numbers as price bargaining leverage. then they went white water rafting together and also went on the jungle tour and thereby became friends. it just so happens that their trips started and will end on the exact same date so there is fate involved as well. we all talked and joked and agreed that there is too much starch in ecuadorian food (most of the time rice, potatoes, and plantains with any meal - in rare lucky cases, both potatoes and french fries with a meal), you have to sit in the front seat of a night bus in order to get any rest, and quito is more fun than we had expected.

the day previous, we had run into two dutch women who are traveling together. we met them in montañita, though they had been staying at the same hotel with us in vilcabamba and i recognized them because they were sitting at a table next to us one night while we were eating dinner and then playing cards. it was a non-descript night except that before long an older american man came over to their table, which was very much in earshot of our table, and began talking to them. at first, they were grilling him about how it was possible that george bush got elected again, so i was sour on the dutch girls immidiately, but then wound up feeling bad for them because not only did the guy go on to give a detailed account of the political system in the united states, but also went on to explain about the danger of plastic and generally the danger of anything edible and/or drinkable other than water filtered through a specific filtration system that will be available at his soon to be opened (somewhere in ecuador - though we were in vilcabamba which is known for having the most centarians of any village in ecuador and therefore the most people there giving reasons as to why that is the case) healthfood store, which of course should be visited. he was still talking after we had played a full game of rummy 500.

we were in puerto lopez with the dutch girls and they were going to leave before we did because they had heard bad things about the night busses about how there were frequent robberies and bandit attacks so they wanted instead to take the day bus. however, when we saw them in otavalo, they were strangely hapy to see us (the reasons why this was strange will not be discussed), and relayed a story that involved their bus having been stopped at a road block due to protesting banana farmers. the protest was going on for hours and they had gotten off the bus to walk around and stretch their legs when all of a sudden the road block was cleared and the bus left them there on the side of the road. they were both trying to tell the story at the same time so i can only remember bits and pieces of information about barbed wire fences, darkness, being alone on the side of the road, and various pickup trucks that eventually got them to quito. by the way, they had also relayed the same story to the dutch couple from sahara and when we were talking about it, they had an air of tragedy that i am certainly not going for. it is irony that i seek. irony.

besides, they had decided that they didnt like us by the time they gave us the bus advice. i think it had to do with the way we danced. it was strange. we met them at the roadside juicy rum place in montañita with the one man disco ball. we were the only ones sitting there. first we laughed and joked a lot about the plastic american guy and about how montañita was foggy and how the night bus ride from loja to guayaquil was not comfortable. then, when it was late enough we went to one of the two clubs that montañita has. then we went to the other where they have a fire burning in the middle and also hammocks on the dance floor. there we discovered that one of the dutch girls had spent a year taking salsa lessons. the other one hadnt. the problem is that neither i, nor anna, nor vincent had ever taken salsa lessons (ok, me and anna took one lesson once but it doesnt count because we still look like dinosaurs and rabbits). so, the more the night wore on and the more we drank and the more vincent and i craved hip-hop and began remeniscing about our never-gotten-off-the-ground rap group known as furiously retarded midgets, we began doing our signature dance known as the wiggly wangles and as time wore on from that phase, we began doing variations on the wiggly wangles that made anna embarrassed and, i believe, turned off the dutch girls to our company. on later days, they did not come over when they saw us eating at places or drinking except to tell us that night busses are dangerous. there is much more to this story, and there are others too...