the point A to point B ness of it all

ive found that i can be a bit testy on busses. im way too tall for them and my knees are always pressed against the back of some seat that seems to be padded with spiked bats, bowling balls and various angular shapes made of concrete. also, the behavior of others on busses often distracts me from my stated purpose of sleeping and listening to music.
for example: the other day, on our way out of baños, a man got on the bus with his family, and although i knew someone would eventually sit next to me because if they didnt, the bus would not move until it was totally full and then some - the fact that he and his family were the ones to have to sit next to and around me put them on my bad side from off the bat. fair? no. logical? no. but still, it happened, and when he produced the 3 liter bottle of coke, no doubt to be fed to the baby of the family for the express purpose of keeping the baby awake and crying throughot the night, i cringed. and when the man requested that anna and i close the window we were sitting next to, a simple NO was all i could muster up. then, when he explained that he wanted the window closed due to the possibility of volcanic ash pouring through the window, i was quick to point out that no volcanic ash had yet poured through the window and also that with the wondow closed, the bus would be too hot and considering all the coughing and sneezing and baby-poo that went on throughout the night, i dont feel too dumb for having protested blindly against teh window being closed. through the open window, we got a clearer view of volcano tungurahua in the nighttime, glowing orange - a bit more than we had expected it too, yet still, we considered ourselves lucky to have seen it because the fact that there is an active volcano near to baños is a huge tourist draw and everyone talks about whether or not they had seen the lava. the fact that anna and i had not seen the lava due to too much cloud cover left us feeling a bit numb. even though we heard the volcano rumble on a number of occasions, the fact that we didnt see the lava left us feeling a bit jealous of the travelers that had. this feeling ended on our bus-ride out of town. seeing the lava made everything so perfect for us. and the nerve of that man trying to ruin our fun.

it wasnt until the next morning, watching the news in a loja restaurant that we learned that the volcano tungurahua had in fact erupted, killing a person and destroying, totally destroying a number of villages. baños was covered in centimeters worth of ash, and the eruption happened 15 minutes after we left.

sometimes travel is a noun - that is, the thing you do when you quit your job, get rid of your apartment, pack the things you need into a backpack, and take off for some part of the world you havent yet seen, just to be there. sometimes travel is a verb. these are the parts of travel that the travel marketing agency (whomever they may be) dont advertise:

we were in a restaurant in loja at 8 in the morning because we arrived in loja at 630 in the morning from our night bus (crying kid, family sleeping in the aisle blocking bathroom access...). the plan was to catch another night bus out of loja to piura, peru, but this bus did not leave until 1030 pm. loja is not a city that warrants an overnight stay, even if it is to recover from an overnight bus, and our budget does not allow for such extravagances as getting a hotel room for the day just to relax in. so, our mission was to be in loja for the day without a place to stay. we started at the restaurant, and the volcano eruption, even though the true magnitude of it didnt hit us (that is a metaphor) yet, provided a good amount of conversation which took up some time, which is really all we were asking of things.
throughout that day, we did 3 hours of internet. went back to the same restaurant twice. bought peanut butter. nearly dozed off in the main square. had a beer at a shady place where scantily clad women would come downstairs every so often, followed by men who went to the bar to buy one cigarette: and im not moralizing, but its just funny that this was the only bar listed in the tourist brochure handed out at the tourist information center on the main square of the town. also, most every other establishment in loja was a copy store. it was the strangest thing that really makes you think about how and why cities get known for certain things. there must be some human business instinct that makes people want to outdo each other no matter what. some places did copies for $.03, then the next store over would do them for $.02, and the one after that would do them for $.01. even the candy stores had copy machines in them - as a rule. i cant imagine how the laws of supply and demand have so effected the landscape of this particular city, but it is a bit outrageous and funny.
we walked around town twice. looked at the skinned pigs at the market - with the skin sold separately next to the body. its quite impressive how they skin pigs in ecuador. we counted the vegetables and tried to find fruit that we had never before seen. we walked around the supermarket looking for nothing in particular.

and, at some point it became 8 o clock and we could stand it no longer so we went to the bus station in hopes that somehow time would speed up if we conceded our mission. it didnt. but by the time we did get on the bus i was quite tired and ready to wake up at the border, stumble across with my passport, and get back on the bus without even having to really open my eyes - kind of like you try to do when going to pee at night. all was going well, i got off the bus at the border groggy enough, but as it turns out, the border was closed. no, the room in which the person was to sit and stamp your passports from was open, but there would not be anyone there until 5 o clock. it was now 3 o clock. so, for two hours we waited at the border with the peruvian passport stamping building in plain sight and well lit and manned. so, the obvious questions arise: is this something that happens every night? if so, then why do they send busses to arrive at the border 2 hours early? why is no-one there? dont countries usually want to man their borders? certainly there were peruvians coming across to ecuador carrying handfuls of chickens - do they not need their passports stamped? it was all very confusing, and while traveling, there are often things that are confusing and most of the time this is what is exciting about traveling because you are in a new place where things operate totally different than what you are used to and you gain perspective on things that way and get reminded that there is no one way of doing things. then there are situations where the bus drops you off at the border 2 hours before the border opens - the border is closed, but the passport stamping shack is open and mosquitoes are biting you and you think, no, this is not cultural, someone just messed up! and from here, you think, it will all be different in peru. in peru, people wont sleep in the aisles of busses blocking the way to the bathroom - look, the peruvian border is open 24 hours, ahh... things will be different in peru.

and then you get to peru and ride through a coastal desert and see ruins of ancient civilizations and get vegetables with your meat and beans with your rice and see the snowy peaks of the andes, and you find the bootleg 'little man' dvd youve been searching for, and you find purple corn (purple!) and even though you are weary from having traveled, your love of travel is renewed.

but then you also know you have to get a job at some point too...