Journey To Canoa

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So American Airlines never answer the phone. They clearly just give out a fake number to angry, bagless people. In the end we stayed an extra night in Guayaquil and went back to the airport, where we just marched in and swiped my bag out of arrivals, where is was rotating forlornley on a conveyer belt allegedy containing luggage from Panama. Whatever.

The main tourist attraction in Guayaquil was "Iguana Park", a small square of grass randomly placed in the middle of the city traffic, covered in litterally hundreds of Iguanas, some of which were fucking massive. They amuse themselves by climbing up trees and pissing on people from a great hight, occasionally throwing themselves to the ground and scaring the crap out of everyone. In exchange for Igunana food (tasty leaves) they will tollerate being stroked. It was pretty bizzare.

So having retrieved my luggage, we got the bus to Bahia de Caracaz early (ish) the next morning. I witnessed some of the worst driving I have ever seen anywhere in the world, including China where I was in 4 road traffic accidents in 10 weeks. It was pretty much what I was told to expect of South American busses - old, hot, driven by a maniac, overcrowded with people and chickens. But cheap! Six dollars, that´s 50p an hour. To make the journey more more entertaining, we comfort ate. Enterprising salesmen boarded the bus every half hour flogging (for about 15p) fresh juice, icecream, coconuts, roast chicken, banana bread, cakes, sweets, fish covered in corn stuff, etc. Me and Kit purchased and ate at least one of most of the above. It was GOOD. There were also people selling reading glasses, electric shavers and porn, but we felt we didn´t need any of these things for this particular journey.

When we got to Bahia de Caracaz we went for yet more food in a little cafe by the docks while we waited for our boat. Kit sat down at the table looking really worried and said to me - "I don´t know if I should tell you this, but there is a tiny, sad kitten covered in wee in the boys toilets". There was. We thought we should inform the waiter. He said something like "yeah that´s a wet kitten, what of it, stupid gringos?". We decided it was time to inflict our western standards of animal welfare, and attempt to steal the kitten. Kit got a cardboard box from the shop across the road, washed the kitten in the sink (he was not happy) and smuggled him back to our table. We called him Pepe. We weren´t really sure what to do with him, but we were pretty sure he would die if we left him stuck in there. Kit told me to go check the girls toilets, "in case they have some weird kitten toilet thing going on". I thought this was stupid, but sure enough there was a little kitten curled up behind the bin in the ladies. I began to question the fesibility of stealing two damp, angry kittens. We tried demanding an explanation from a different, more friendly waiter, who told us (well told Kit, in Spanish) that they nest in the roof and they must have fallen down. Returning to the toilet for a 3rd time (people were starting to think we were weird) I saw another kitten peeking down from a gap in the ceiling. Thinking the kittens would be best off with their mother in their "nest", we decided to return them to their home in the roof. I took the box containing Pepe 1 and ventured back to the toilets. Climbing on the cystern in flipflops, I predictably slipped and fell onto the suspiciously muddy, wet floor. I thought about how embarassing it would be to break my neck and be found dead upside down in an Ecuadorian toilet, covered in wet kittens. I tried again and managed to poke Pepe 1, in his little box, back up to join his brothers and sisters. Pepe 2 proved to be more difficult. Seemingly not having grasped the concept that I was trying to help her, when I picked her up she went fucking mental, started shreiking and climbed onto my head. Everyone in the cafe could definitely hear me crashing around and swearing, trying to disentangle a screaming kitten from my hair. Eventually I wrapped her in the hand towl and shoved the little ball of rage back up into the roof. I emerged from the toilet wet and covered in cat hair, then sat drinking rum and coke for another hour until the boat came. We checked again before we left and the little idiots hadn´t fallen down again so I´m going to chose to believe that they learned their lesson, and call this a happy ending.

After the boat we hoped on one of those little 3 wheeler motorcycle taxis they have in all the coolest countries, and made our way to Canoa in a slow, bumpy fashion.

More on Canoa later.

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