That said, it was still a very good day. Our life is complex, I suppose.
A little background, Saturday was an awkward day for me. We were trying to get from Tena to a small town in the Amazon and everything felt wrong to me. I was vibrating on uncomfortable and anxious, unable to shake the feeling that I had slipped into the wrong skin that morning. I was clumsier than usual: knocking things off shelves, walking into stationary objects at eye level, and unable to string a sentence together in Spanish or English.
I was so wound up Bitty was being affected by my mood. Well, she had been a bit spacey honestly, which is usually my cup of tea. We did not end up finding the correct bus that day, because life in Ecuador insists on being difficult.
So Sunday we get out earlier and go find our bus stop. And then waited close to two hours (these buses are meant to come hourly) while horrible off-key religious music played loudly nearby without stop. Torture.
We transferred to our waterfall hike in the jungle with a rotating grip of children laying in various poses against my seat and/or myself, two little punks even fumbling through some of the girls' bags while they looked the other way.
But we arrived and paid $2.00 per person to hike up a slippery, muddy puddle of a path until we came to slime-covered boulders along the river. While I was debating which precarious path would be easiest managed a friendly wasp/bee decided to welcome me to the area with a love tap from his ass to my spine. I did myself proud by whining loudly until I could force Bitty to take a look and pity me. "Yep, it's red and very swollen." Disappointing.
But here is where Bitty's incredibly unbalanced grocery bag-purse decided to throw her off the slippy top of a boulder and into the river. Good news is she has instincts like a cat and was able to save her camera from any harm. The bad news? Her head and body got smashed.
We settle under the waterfall, Bitty unpacking her important stuff from her bag to let it dry out, and we go for a dip in the base of the falls. I am still slightly ill-at-ease and don't get into the water, preferring to stay at the edge of the water.
We munch on cookies and chat about human morality (is it natural or engrained by society?) when I see some movement out of the corner of my eye. I yelp and rush to check Bitty's sun-drying items as another young hooligan takes off running with the grocery bag and my rainbow wrap flying behind him.
The above photo is just moments before B's grocery bag was taken for a run. See, those boulders even look super slippy! I jumped up and looked at the rock featured in the foreground of the above photo, and Bitty's camera case is empty! I immediately take off running after the punk and just as I tumble off my own boulder (it was really slippery people!) the grocery bag throws the runner off balance. I roll up to my feet immediately and continue my pursuit, when Bitty calls me back because everything precious had been removed from the bags to dry out. All the little thief had was a pair of dirty underwear, my torn rainbow wrap, a guidebook, and our other package of cookies.
We were saddened, but mostly by the loss of our cookies. We mourned our losses, packed up, and headed back down the trail. Then some small kid comes up the path towards me with the grocery bag. I point at the little bastard and give him the come-here finger wiggle.
He tries to give me some story about how he stopped the much larger and older thief and got our bag back for us, and then puts his hand out for a reward. Bitty laughs at him as I look through the bag, the cookies are intact!
I give him my best withering look, pass the bag back to Bitty and say "gracias". Because when someone steals and then finds your sentimental belongings worthless, I suppose you should thank them for not just throwing it away. A larger kid appears from the side to ask again for a reward as we pass along the trail, so we said our "buenas tardes" and passed by.
It was really too good to be true. And yet, we have become part of the 50% of tourists we know who get robbed in Ecuador, at yet we didn't actually loose anything. The worst thing is that now Bitty's grocery bag undoubtedly has a complex since it threw her off a rock, got taken on a run by a young latin suitor, and then unceremoniously returned to us without so much as even a goodbye from the pack of boys. We think it is still working out some Stockholm Syndrome issues.
We spent the evening watching a tribe of monkeys who run the town of Misahuallí interact with tourists and one another on the beach in the jungle. Bitty had a headache for hours (she smacked her head pretty hard) and I felt like someone had beaten me with a bat, but otherwise we sipped coconut water calmly in the shade.
Another good day!
Lesson learned? Hopefully!
**UPDATE**
Bitty definitely was concussed. She had a hard time putting thoughts in order and remembering things, so the next day we played the fun game of make B in charge of directions and see how confused and lost we can get. It was a good time.
