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Published: July 13th 2012
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Sarah enjoyed her new book,
Precious, while I tossed and turned in the airplane seat feeling awfully sick on our flight back from the Galapagos. Our plan when we landed was to go to the bus terminal and figure out how to get out of Guayaquil as quickly as possible, although in all likelihood it would have to be the next day since we did not want to show up in a new town at night. We had already spent way too much time in Guayaquil and neither of us really liked Guayaquil. After claiming our bags, we tried walking over to the bus terminal. It is only 1 km away, but the directions we got were not great and we ended up in a cab. The cab arrived at the terminal, but disaster struck shortly after. While stepping off a curb Sarah rolled her ankle, spraining it pretty badly. Really?!?! What does Guayaquil have against us?
Back in the cab we went back to Hotel Montesa and back to the same room, #23. Ugh. It was pretty depressing knowing we were probably stuck in Guayaquil for a while. Being able to walk is a pretty critical part of backpacking, so until Sarah´s ankle was better we were not going anywhere.
It wasn´t just the ankle though. I still felt awful. And both Sarah and I caught some kind of stomach bug that had us hitting up the Cipro hard.
I began to wonder if somehow I had decompression sickness from scuba diving. I mean, we had done everything by the book on our dives, but maybe something weird happened. I don´t know. I was just trying to think of reasons for feeling so bad. I also wondered if maybe I was experiencing withdraw symptoms from having used the sea sickness patch for the entire cruise. I had read on the instructions that withdraw symptoms were possible.
That night was probably one of the worst nights of my life. I was freezing cold, but sweating profusely and shaking like crazy. You know those movies where the drug addict is put in a straight jacket and tries to quit the drugs cold turkey? Yup, about like that. Miserable.
Ultimately I am writing this, so I survived. It took about two days before I was feeling back to normal. And I am pretty sure it was withdraw from the TransDerm seasickness patch. If I had to do it over again, I would still use the patch. Being sea sick for 8 days would have been even more awful than the withdraw. But I may have been more inclined to take the patch off during periods where the boat was anchored in a calm place to reduce my bodies dependence on the drug.
The days passed. Cipro did its job and Sarah´s ankle got better. She was, unfortunately, bored out of her mind laying in bed all day, but fortunately we had a TV and the HGTV shows were plentiful. My days mostly consisted of: first thing in the morning finding breakfast, then going to the grocery store to buy ice pops so Sarah could ice her ankle (they do not sell ice in Guayaquil anywhere I could find), hanging out in the room for most of the day with some snacks from the grocery store, sometimes some internet time in the afternoon, then finding dinner.
It was boring. It just was. But very necessary. Even without Sarah´s ankle we would have needed to stay in Guayaquil and recover for a few days. It got draining though. Mentally I had checked out of travel when the Floreana was pulling up to the dock to drop us off at the end of the cruise. I mean, it just can´t get any better than the Galapagos. The rest of Ecuador can´t possibly compare, so why even bother? And then to be stuck in a place we don´t like with nothing to do? Yup, going home was definitely on my mind. In hindsight I am glad we did not pull the plug. We got back in to the swing of things and had some more great experiences.
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