The air is heavy and sticks to my skin and clothes, I am in a café where ceiling fans whir overhead, travellers replenish themselves with antojitos and cerveza, a Nelly Furtado video plays on a TV mounted in the corner, sunlight leaps enthusiastically off the brightly painted facade of the building across the street and lazy traffic cruises down the narrow passageway in between. I have been here several months and a lot has changed for me. I often walk down the Malecón, a seaside esplanade alive with gorgeous pelicans and other sea birds, plucky fishing boats, families and joggers. It would be lovely if it weren't for the severe contamination causing a pungent sewer-odour to hover endlessly and the discouraging quantity of common garbage sloshing in the water and piling up on the shore. Sometimes
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