Cousin Issues

South America » Ecuador
May 15th 2012

Published: May 28th 2012

Hello all! Sorry I have been remiss in updating my blog. Some things happened, and I didn't want to blog about it until I had sorted things out a bit better, but that looks like it will be too long to wait. I don't want to be too accusatory, but this is my take on the events so to speak, that resulted in me traveling on my own a few days earlier than I anticipated. Kevin is, after all, the one who initially requested me to blog about what happened on my trip, and he has refused to explain his actions to me, so here we go.

Tuesday, May 15
Today we were due to fly out of Cuenca in the afternoon, but did some exploring in the morning.
Went to a great fruit, veg, and etc type market... 'We were definitely the only gringoes there, but got some nice rambutans and passionfruits to munch on. Then a more touristy craft market, and a hat shop, where I got a nice trillby style panama hat. Because life just makes sense that way, 'panama' hats actually come from Ecuador. Sigh. Regardless, got a very nice hat for $13. Then we said goodbye to Lucy (sad, we had just been traveling with her for the past ten days, after all) and went to the airport to fly back to Quito on the way to Mindo.

Had a bit of weirdness with them not letting everyone on the flight (not overbooked, there were empty seats), but Kevin played the poor stranded tourist card and we got on. Short, uneventful flight., and after that's where things got...interesting, and the reason why I've delayed this post. Once we got to Quito, it would be a 3 hour or so bus ride to Mindo. Since the main bus had left already, we needed to find an alternate route. Thought I had, but once we got on the plane, I remembered that the bus station it left from had been closed for repairs, so we needed to find plan C to get there.

I wanted to confirm the address of the hostel and find the bus info, but my iPod battery died, so I tried to charge it on the flight. The airplane plugin was broken. Got to the Quito airport and decided to use the plugin there, so I could look up the info we needed. Used the bathroom, then found a plugin. Kevin started going on ahead, then turned back to ask me what I was doing.

I told him 'trying to charge this so I can look up about hostels and the bus and stuff.' He suggested we just look in his guidebook while we got going (note, at this point we didn't even know which bus terminal we were going to.) I said 'give me five minutes." He responded that I was wasting time, I reiterated 'five minutes.' At which point he started off on how He'd just spent half a days wage getting us here in an hour instead of a ten hour bus ride, and I was taking too long, etc.

At which point he threw up his arms and walked off. Now, my iPod was still charging, and we still didn't know what bus we were going to catch, so I figured I'd stay in that spot and look it up while he went and cooled off. Fair enough. Whatever. Got enough charge to turn it on, looked it up, found the hostel's address... Still no Kevin.

So, since I didn't want to wander off and have him come back and miss me, I stayed where I was, checked my email, etc. No returning cousin. So I very quickly ran around in the direction he had left from, and then the opposite direction. No sign. Headed back to where I'd been earlier, obeying the standard 'if separated, stay in one place," rule. Thought I maybe saw him at a distance, but he got swallowed up by the crowd from another arriving flight, so I stayed put.

He knew where I was, I didn't know where he was. Confused by this point, but hoping he maybe went to find an information desk or something of the kind to find out the bus information himself, but would probably be back soon. So, I take a seat a couple metres away. Catch up on the season finale of my favourite tv show on my iPod while I wait, why not? Realized I just finished the 40 minute episode. Panic slightly. Send an email to him asking for his whereabouts. He never checks his email, but maybe now he would. Buy a grilled cheese sandwich from the cafe beside me, still in full view of where Kevin had left from. Go back and sit down. Eat sandwich. Eat bag of plaintain chips. Watch another episode of tv on iPod, for distraction. Go to the bathroom quickly. Come back. Realize he has been gone for two hours. Start panicking. Call my Mum in near tears, explain the situation.

She is as confused as me, but advises to wait a little longer, then take a cab to a hostel for the night, and to email him my whereabouts. I buy a doughnut. Eat it. Wait another half hour, more out of inertia than actual hope he's coming back at this point. Agree mentally upon conclusion. My cousin just abandoned me in a large city in South America. Lovely.

I found a hostel, settled in. Sent him a polite email announcing my whereabouts, and would you please kindly explain what (in the hell) you were thinking. Wake up in the morning. No response from Kevin. No word at all. Okaaaay......

Spare a brief thought for 'oh god did he get kidnapped/sudden amnesia/murdered', before deciding that it's not worth my energy to worry about it, and that he's a big boy and can probably handle himself. I'm the eighteen year old girl alone in the second biggest city in Ecuador.

On the other hand, this is Wednesday, and we were only travelling together until Saturday, at which point I was going on to travel through Honduras on my own for the next three weeks, so to hell with him, I'll do my own thing. We had a reservation in Quito for Friday, as we were both flying out on the Saturday, so if he didn't make contact, I'd see him then. Until then, I would do whatever I wanted, and let Kevin do whatever the heck he was doing.

Did so for the next couple days, had largely a fabulous time. Went to Mindo on my own, and then came back to Quito (will elaborate further in next blog post.) for Friday. Got to the hostel..... No Kevin. He didn't show up! Check into the room, wait a bit, go for dinner, come back... No Kevin. Repack my stuff, go to sleep, get up the next morning. He never showed up.

Starting to get QUITE worried now, as it's been several days and neither I nor the rest of my family has heard a peep from him. The 'gosh what if he got hit by a truck' sorts of thoughts are starting again, but I'm distracted by trying to plead with the hostel not to make me pay the rate for two people (since that's what the reservation was for), get a taxi, get to the airport, check-in, etc. Kevin's flight was several hours earlier, so I gave his name and flight number at the check-in desk, and asked them to check if he got on the flight.....

And he did indeed get on his flight. Which means nothing dire befell him, he just got annoyed and decided to dump his cousin and travel companion and skip out on a reservation rather than have to talk to me face to face about what happened. Mature.

It's been a week and a half, and thus far he has not given any reasoning or apologies his behaviour, despite me giving him every opportunity to do so, and even specifically requesting it. He has written a very vague email that basically said that he is too busy catching up with work and dealing with new roommates and he'll send an explanation "later". My mum and sister talked to his mum, who has talked to him... Sounds like he's trying to justify a lot, and blame me.

Now, I'm not saying I was a perfect person to travel with. I get distracted. I'm sometimes a little slow, and not a super go-getter type traveller. I tended to stay up later and sleep in later than he did (sorry, I'm not waking up at 6 am), am a bit of a picky eater, etc. I have ADHD, etc, blah. All of that MAYBE warranted the storming off part, out of frustration if he thought I was being annoying. I've done that sort of thing myself.

However, it does NOT warrant LEAVING entirely, not coming back, not keeping to the reservation, and sending no word whatsoever. The latter especially bugged me. Even if Kevin had dropped me an email saying "sorry I stormed off unexpectedly, but realizing I need some alone time, see you Friday." I would have been a lot less pissed off. Pissed off, yes, but considerably less so. But as it is, I had absolutely no idea where he was, why he had done that and what the heck was going on.

As I've said before, he could have been murdered or been in a car accident, and I would never have known, which is a scary thought. (especially since he had no traveller's insurance) But nope, he just decided to leave, with no explanations or apology. I'm grateful to him because he had, after all, paid my flight tickets and a lot of other expenses, and if not for that I would never have been able to afford this amazing trip to the Galapagos, and most of the time, he was a fine person to travel with.

But.... (and this is a big but), doing anything that bizarrely stubborn and rude evaporated a heck of a lot of the goodwill I felt toward him, which is a pity. Another part of what really hurts is this. As I mentioned in my last blog post, just the day before I had really confided in him about my diagnoses as an attention deficit disorder (ADHD) individual and various problems I face in relation to it. While he knew I had ADHD, he didn't, I realize, totally understand exactly what that means (most people don't), but after we had talked about it a lot, I was hoping he would be MORE understanding and patient. And he really, really wasn't.

This trip, though, is largely about facing my fears, doing things I normally wouldn't, finding ways to work with my ADHD, rather than against it. Making buses, planning things, organizing myself... It's a great deal to do with not letting myself be too defined by my ADHD, or let it control my life. It may be coincidence, or not. But I can't shake the fact that one of the few I really confided in someone about this, they took the first available opportunity to get the hell away from me.

Mental health issues and invisible aspects of neural diversity are such complex emotionally loaded topics, and it's easy to keep them on the inside, and struggle on your own, and this didn't exactly boost my confidence about NOT doing that.

So this blog post has been very difficult for me to write, but I think all of it needed saying.
I'm not going to let it ruin my trip, and I'm having a great time in Honduras. I'd still like to talk things over with him, hear his side, whatever, which was why I was trying to wait to hear from him before I posted this, but I'm done waiting for the moment, so here we are, then. Y

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