Day 44 Friday 4 June – Spending money on a girl

Yesterday, Mariela called me to ask me for money. Something I had not expected, and I didn’t like the idea at first. However, I know how poor she is and she told me she needed the $30 for T-shirts for the women of a sports team from her region. I thought about this for a second and agreed with it. The only problem was, how to get her the money, because I have no idea of how the banks work here. ‘Luckily’, Sarah still owes me money, so I asked her to bring it over to Kallari. Problem solved, happy Mary. Of course, if we hadn’t been calling each other almost every single day for the past weeks, I would’ve been more suspicious.

Today was a bit of a useless day. I didn’t get to do any interviews at all. Everyone was really busy. Tomorrow I may do 1 or 2 I hope. And hopefully one with Ingrid today in the evening. But tomorrow is also the BBQ by the swimming pool. I invited almost everyone personally, I hope the word has travelled a bit since then. But at least the mayority is coming and that is a good thing to know. The thing is, I need to go buy meat with Miguel tomorrow… What a joke! “How many vegans does it take to organise a meatfest?”

Going back to the house after work was a real pain in the ass again. I always prefer to take a bus, but here’s where that goes wrong: The bus system in Guayaquil is one big chaos. There are bus stops along the roads, but they are usually ignored. One needs to hail the bus (by extending the arm at shoulder level, palm down and moving the fingers towards you). This presents a couple of problems: if it is dark, you are almost bound to spot the bus you need way too late. Second, if it is dark, the bus driver may not even see you. And if the bus is full enough he may just actually ignore you.

The other chaos component is that there is no central information about routes or times. Though the busses usually pass by every 20 minutes or so, there is still no secure way of knowing which bus you need to take. Ingrid already told me I needed to take bus #63 Verjeles to get back, but if that bus passes you by twice without stopping, what can you do? I could wait for the third; take a different bus that does stop for me; or take a taxi. Option number one could result in me getting frustrated when the third (and fourth and fifth) bus pass by without pulling over. Option number 2 is no option, because the information about busses suck. So I take a taxi. There is no wonder why the traffic in Ecuador is so terrible, but I’ll tell you about the traffic some other time.

Later that night I get cheered up by the all-time awesome-est episode of HIMYM: Swarley (series2-ep7). And I discover that the actrice of another great series, Morena Baccarin, plays a big role. I wonder if Ammer knew that. So I end my day with watching old episodes of HIMYM, drinking a cup of rum and wishing it was 5 days later, where I’m back in the bus to Quito.