Sunday, March 10, 2013

Still always the same

Yesterday I drove out of Guayaquil, on a busy Saturday passing police checkpoints, forgetting that my visa had expired the day before.  I felt like I was in the USA when we started the day.  We picked up our trooper and went to MegaMaxi in the city, which essentially an Ecuadorian Walmart, went shopping around, ate some fairly crappy Dominoes pizza and took off driving for the coast.  It felt pretty normal compared to our travel day on Friday where our plane decided to fly to land in Quito rather than Guayaquil and not actually tell us.  We were flying back from the Galapagos islands and meant to fly from the island of San Cristobal to hot port city of Guayaquil, where I had left my truck parked for 2 weeks.  We looked out the window of the plane after 2 hours of flying and saw snow peaked mountains and a volcano that was clearly not the surrounding area of Guayaquil.  We looked at our tickets wondering if we got on the wrong plane.  Our tickets said GYE and we were in the exit row so we were sure this flight was ours.  But they brought us to Quito, which is in the andes mountains and about 12 hours of bus time away from Guayaquil.  It's also cold in Quito and I had on hot Galapagos clothes only - tank top & boardies.  They just told us to get off on the tarmac and go get our bags, hey even said welcome to Quito so it wasn't a mistake.  We went inside the building to baggage claim and the guy working for the airline had no idea that we had rerouted and got blindsided by an angry mob of Ecuadorians.  AeroGal, the domestic airline, took no responsibility for peoples problems, including a guy from Denmark who just missed his international flight and other connections, they just reluctantly after hours of screaming gave us meal vouchers and a new flight to Guayaquil.  I tried to help translate and argue for the Danish guy but in the end they said it wasn't their problem or fault.  A 2 hour flight turned into a 12 journey and an overnight stay in Guayaquil.  So we drove out of Guayaquil with our truck filled with too much stuff from boards to bags, guitar, groceries and started making our way when we passed checkpoints and didn't get ask and I thought I'd get my passport out since it was tucked in my bag in the bag.  I got it out and started my routine; emptied my wallet of money except 3-6 dollars, get a copy of the title of the car ready and my drivers license.  Then it dawned on me that my visa had expired so having my passport available was a bad idea.   So I repacked the passport and got a copy of  the ID page out instead.  We were ready in case anyone tried to hassle but I lost my sense of confidence and security a bit knowing that I had let my 3 month Visa expire and now driving around on a busy Saturday during the summer when everyone drives out of the city and to the beaches for the weekend.  I sort of drifted back into the state of that same driving traveler I was before, aware of my surroundings and prepared for police questioning.  The reason my visa had expired is the laws here have changed and getting an extension requires 3 days of lines, paperwork, copies and small bribes.  I know this world too well and those are stressful days with focused aggressive strategy of finding your way through a non-sensical process and digging for answers on how to get more time in your passport.  Now their policy is if you overstay, they don't fine you and you just get expelled from the country for 6 months but even that is negociable on your way back in.  So I took the risk and realized driving back that things were different now and I'd prefer not to have to show my passport while in my truck.  The police in Ecuador were really easy back when I drove down here in my truck from California.  They rarely stopped and asked me anything then so I knew that was probably the case now with an Ecuadorian car.    The driving is agressive here so you find yourself doing illegal takeovers around buses and slow trucks right in front of police who positioned ahead up the road but you can't see them.  Luckily they never hassled us.  I was ready but we never got flagged over for even a question on the 3 hour drive, we were waved through or never stopped and made it back to Ayampe.
We had to find somewhere to sleep, which proved a bit difficult on a busy Saturday, but we finally got ourselves into a house with a friendly Colombian family.   We were invited to a going away dinner for a guy who's been around for a few months but we decided to go eat at another spot and avoid the gang for the evening.  Its weird, Ayampe is a really small town with maybe 8 different hostal type places to sleep in and about 5 places to eat but somehow I felt like I was in this bizzaro world last night.  It was like we shifted the universe, and instead of seeing the regular people there was another group of gringos that was identical to the other one and talking about all the same small town things - land ownership, who's doing what, potential development - and these people knew all of my friends and all the neighbors and tried to speak spanish and integrate in the community and all that but I didn't know them and hadn't seen them before.  The one guy there was also having a going away party for also being here for 3 months but I'd never seen him and I too have been here for that long.  I sort of listened, or eavesdrop, to this guy talking about everyone I know in this small 2 street dirt road town of the gringo/business side of Ayampe but I didn't know him.  He was talking about how this place effected him, and how he sort of had local family now and didn't want development of this hotel or that.  And then there was a local surf guide with a swedish girlfriend and they were the same just like our friends that come through here that is a local surf guide and norwegian girlfriend.  It was seinfields bizzaro world for me in this tiny oasis bubble.  I sat through the entire dinner hearing the same exact conversation that would surely be happening with the other group at the other place, it was weird.  Small towns are strange but it hit me that there is always another me turning up.  And another and another.  There's a traveling guy, trying to speak the language, getting to know everything about the area and surfing and trying to integrate into the community.  I've gone much deeper than a 3 month traveler but there are these other drifters.  I've spent years trying to think like people here and speak like people here and even live like them.  I've gone around town getting fish soup every sunday for all the months i've been here, I go get it at 630am when everyone is starting the day with soup and beer for  the men.  I've been coaxed into drinking some beer with the men at that time.  Its rude to turn down the offer, I try my hardest to not make eye contact or greet everyone but its not possible.  They pour me a shot of beer, or a little bit bigger than a shot of beer and then pour the next one for the next guy and keep doing that.  Drinking out of one glass, sharing a big beer....the beers here are like 22 ounces big bottles and nobody drinks from the bottle - except gringos.  Anyways I've immersed myself into the culture and I know the body movements, the little funny calls or gestures people do, I know the local slang words and greetings, I have local families like this one that makes fish soup that I just go walk right into their kitchen and hang out.  They smile at me a lot, wondering what it is I'm really doing here living far away from my family.  And no matter how much I change or adapt or integrate, I'm still in the end just another foreign white guy that probably has a billion dollars.  Each new person I meet still sees me the exact as any other traveler, just another gringo with endless money that is traveling far away from their families.  Its always the same, I always meet someone new and try to put on my performance letting them know I'm like them, I speak and act like them, but they just look at me and see the person I really am - an American tourist.