So, we eventually ended up at Sol de Oriente, a $7 per night hostel. No windows in our room, and the concrete walls made the hallway noises echo all the way from the street. It was about 6:30am, so we brushed our teeth and climbed into bed to sleep for a few hours before taking on the day. We woke up feeling absolutely off, a little bit ill, and in a fog. I rolled out of bed and stopped on a roach... woops! We went looking for fruit and bread, our normal traveling menu, and found a place with fruit smoothies. From there, we went wandering for the bus station in order to buy our return tickets. Still feeling quite strange, we decided the best medicine would be to nap and read on the beach, and that we did. I slept so soundly that I awoke with towel lines on my face that lasted for an hour. It was overcast, but a fabulous temperature with a pleasant breeze. We read a bit more in peace, and then a group of men asked us to play volleyball. Different from the offers to have our hair braided, ride a banana boat in the ocean, drink sandy coconut juice, or buy already broken sunglasses, we obliged! It's pretty hard to pass up volleyball.
We played for an hour or so, then decided we had been friendly enough and should part ways. We danced in the waves until we realized we were getting hungry, returned to our dirty cave-of-a-room to suffer a cold shower, and set out for the night! We found a great cheap meal of rice and veggies, watched the sun go down, and set out to walk the streets and find a fun place to dance the night away. We found a great place right on the beach and spent most of the night there until we couldn't shake a pair of guys from Quito. It seemed like the sign to find a new place or head back to the hostel, so we paid the tab and continued searching.
We climbed the stairs to a little discotec overlooking the street, but something about it felt very unnerving. When we walked in almost everyone we standing around the edges of the floor, very few people dancing, and we felt like we were being watched more than normal. The staff was very nice, so we put our stuff behind the counter and started to dance by ourselves in a corner. We decided we were done dancing with other people for the night, but some very aggressive younger men approached us and wouldn't leave. We still felt very out of place, to the point that we were feeling unsafe, so we asked the bartender for our things and cut out after being there for no more than 10 minutes. We nervously laughed off the experience as we walked back down the street to another place we had been the previous visit, when Anyel noticed that one of the boys was walking behind us. I turned around to find that she was right, and he ran up next to us and said something that I absolutely could not understand. I thanked him for the dance and asked him not to bother us anymore. He said "I'm not bothering you," and gave us a bit more distance, but continued to follow us. We thought it best to dart into a place where we could appear to be occupied and get some help if we needed it. We sat down at a bar and ordered a drink, meanwhile this kid sat outside leaning against a car and watching us. When we got our drinks, we moved to another part of the bar where he couldn't see us as well, but he continued to sit outside like he was waiting for us. The nerve, huh? We got tired and decided he probably wasn't going to do much, and if he did we could tell a bartender or security guard about it and be on our way. So, we walked in the direction of our hostel, and he actually ended up leaving us alone. He stayed right where he was and just watched us leave.
Still, the situation left us wondering what we might have walked into at that discotec. There is a whole lot of racial tension in Ecuador, and the black population which is concentrated mostly on the coast is treated almost as poorly as the indigenous population. The whiter the better, and I suspect there is a lot of resentment which comes with the segregation, and visa-versa. The mestizo population is dominant, and people seem to pair up with others of a similar color and also of a similar class status. The black population is small, but very much isolated and segregated. Anyel and I think that part of what might have happened was that we walked into an entirely black crowd as if we belonged there, and it was in no way a place that tourists are wanted in their community. And rightly so. We have gotten used to just kind of wandering and being generally welcomed in any place, especially as touristy as the coast is, and hadn't thought about how threatening and offensive our white presence might be in many situations. A very good thing to be reminded of.
The next day... we said farewell to the hostel from hell, and found Alta Gracia, a great hostel for as little money, a better bathroom, windows, and a balcony perfect for late afternoon reading. Then, we found a cute little place to get our legs waxed and made friends with the women in the salon. They were fabulous and patient with our struggle to understand coastal spanish, but the waxing experience is something I will never recommend nor do again in my life! Not because of the pain or the time it takes--that was bearable--but the fact that there was still hair left on my legs, we ended up with what looked and felt like razor burn, and the women performing the waxing said they'd never actually done it and had no desire to. What a silly, silly thing. But, now we can say we've done it, for much less than we ever could in the states, and have reason to never do it again. The burn went away after a while, but we decided it's actually more convenient and effective to just shave. Or not shave. That's the most inviting offer...
Saturday was sunny and warm, but very windy. So much that after 15 minutes our towels had virtually disappeared in the sand. Sitting on the beach wasn't nearly as relaxing because we couldn't just BE with our ears and eyes and mouths full of sand, and the pages of our books blowing away in the wind. Nevertheless, we spent a good amount of time laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, people watching, and loving the fact that we didn't have a single thing that we needed to do all day. We swam a bit, walked a bit, and retired early to the hostel for showers and naps in between chapters. Neither of us were very hungry because we'd eaten a huge lunch, so we got some corn on the street and banana splits for dessert. We walked the beach for a long while when it got dark, then found some great break dancing to watch while we ate pineapple and watermelon. We went back to the fun place to dance and stayed there all night. We made friends with the bartenders and DJ, fended off some very irritating younger and older men, and ended up staying until they closed. And we didn't have to pay. The crowd that night was full of energy and they seemed to be having as much fun with us as we were having with them. We danced to all sorts of music and had plenty of help trying to appear occupied when an unwanted partner approached.
The thing about the beach is that people bring their whole families out to dance and eat, so we were dancing with couples carrying their sleeping children around, older women who seemed to have come out on their own (WOOH!), and groups of young people who switched partners for each song and invited us to join in. It was the perfect atmosphere, and I think I will miss that very much when I return to the states.
We bought bread, pineapple, and coconut for the bus ride home the next morning, and were more than ready to be in Quito when we finally arrived. I have lots of bug bites, a little more color, and great memories from the last weekend in Ecuador.
1 comment:
We will have much to say in the company of each other but until then you inspire me to write about my trip when thinking about it has left me exhausted.
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