I´m here, now what?

As the last leg of my travels, the flight from Panama City to Guayaquil began it´s descent, I looked over the customs declaration form I was just handed. One box confused me. Address in Ecuador? The truth of the mater was I had no idea where I was staying that night or what I was going to do in Ecuador.

My sisters are going to meet me in Quito in two weeks and I was flying to Guayaquil. I don´t actually remember why I told them to meet me in Ecuador anymore. Originally just my sister Asma was going to come to Buenos Aires but with her school and all she wasn´t free until July and I wasn´t going to stay there that long. So I looked at a map and somehow came up with Ecuador. I think it might have had something to do with that crazy guy from Quito I met on Mt. Aconcagua who planted the idea in my head. But I heard about great beaches and islands and the Amazon river and active volcanos and it all sounded like fun.

The truth is I´ve actually kind of gotten to the point where I´m getting really really close to being done with this adventure. If it weren´t for the fact that my sisters are meeting me in Ecuador in a couple of weeks I might just have gone home. Well technically I don´t have a home, but back to the US. But as things are I´ll spend two weeks here waiting for my sisters and then another three weeks with my sister Asma. Samira will only be here for a week and after that...well actually I need to go to Medellin to collect the $200 that my buddy Bill owes me. And then I gotta see how somethings unfold, well just one things really. I might have one more stop to make before heading back to the states.

In my months of travelling I´ve learned just a couple of things. One is that it´s a really bad idea to show up to a new country late at night with no idea of where you´re going to stay. Last time this happen Joost and I came about 2 kms from sleeping on the beach. I was planning on doing a little research before I left Cuba but somehow that just didn´t work out.

Yanet and I spent the day before hanging out at the Playas del Este and it´s so hard to leave the beach even when you know you´ve got to go pack your bags. Everyone was waiting for us back at the casa for dinner since we were extremely late. But like always no one worried too much or if they did they didn´t complain.

Queque grilled me up some lobster, he knows it´s my favorite. The goodbyes were hard and take so long. Joost was awesome and presented me with his set of juggling balls he had just bought, I guess that answered my question of whether I was going to keep practicing. He gave me the 4th ball too and told me he wants to see evidence that I get that down. Be patient Joost, this might take a bit.

Somehow between all of this I never managed to get to the internet and find a hostel in Guayaquil. After I claimed by bags and made it through customs I looked around to see if there was a tourist booth open at the airport that could help me out. No such luck, especially not at 11 PM. So I did what I try to avoid doing as much as possible, I turned to my Footprints guide book and found a place to stay, flagged down a cab, negotiated a price and we took off. Luckily they had availability and it turned out to be clean and seemed relatively decent.

As I settled into Guayaquil I wondered again what I was doing here. I didn´t know a soul in this country, had no real idea of what to do and was already missing Cuba and everything it held. I suppose this is as good a time as any to figure out what the hell I´m doing. Oh yeah, that´s what I was supposed to be doing for the last 5 months.