Changing Countries

After a busy weekend of going out the pace slowed down. Mark and I met Carolina and her friend at a movie theater. I couldn’t make out the name of the film we were going to see when Carolina told me on the phone. Itrusted whatever it was would be cool.

I have never been more wrong. She and her friend expected us to see the film, Coco Channelle, a biography about a famous fashion designer. As fate would have it the movie theater literally closed down maybe that day or something and so at the other theater they were not showing it at the right time. Instead we went for coffee at Juan Valdez inside this trendy mini mall and talked for a while.

Seeing as our humor is not quite adjusted for Latin America we learned a few new responses for when people ask us what we do. Rather than tell people I work at McDonalds flipping burgers we learned it would be much funnier to tell people:

“I sell Cuy (guinea pig)”

“I am a lottery vendor”

Determined to see some movie other than on my laptop I tagged along with Mark to see Avatar in 3d for my second time. But my highlight of the day was sitting in the living room watching The Motorcyle Diaries with a group of Argentines. The best part came when they passed me a cup of mate. This happened no more than 2 times in the 4 months I spent in Argentina last year.

Lately work has increased and on Wednesday that meant waking up to 24 new emails in my inbox – no spam either. To give you a better idea I earned US$1,200 profit in 2 days. Not that I enjoyed spending 9 hours each day working with no break.

In contrast my time in Ecuador was  coming to a close as I booked my flight to Bogota, Colombia for Thursday morning. I say in contrast because I made sure to enjoy my free time as much as I could. On Wednesday night Mark and I went for drinks in the main plaza. Carolina joined us soon after, followed by another few friends even later. Another example of my many going away parties.

Like tradition we ended at Bungalow 6 for their insane ladies night. The place was absolutely packed and I muttered this is insane an infinite amount of times that night. By 1:30 I walked back to my hostel where I rested for a few hours until 3:30 AM when I took a taxi to the airport. I was exhausted and had a headache. I never wanted to miss a flight so badly but once I was stamped out of Ecuador there was no calling it quits.

I set my alarm for 6:15 AM and fell asleep laying across 3 seats only waking up just in time to board my flight to Colombia. The travel gods hate me because in Bogota public transportation went on strike turning a 20 minute taxi ride into nearly 1 1/2 hours through the city inch by inch. But at least I made it to Colombia!