Ecuador

 Please leave your values at the front desk.

                                                     Sign in Ecuador hotel

 

The manager has personally passed all the water served here.

                                                     Sign in another Ecuador hotel

 

 "Pssst, Bob....dont look now but there's a naked Indian with a blow gun & a bowl on his head sneaking up behind us."

 I was perched on a park bench in the fronter town of Esmeraldas Ecuador with my traveling partner Aussie Bob when I had first caught sight of the stealthy Redskin. For red his skin was, dyed thus from the achiote plant this was a member of the Santo de los Colorados tribe, some of the wildest looking people in the world. His hair was also bright red, cut in a bowl shape & hard as a helmet. Parrot feathers dangled from stretched ear lobes & a polished monkey femor protruded from his nose. A large copper arm band glistened in the sultry night as did several copper ankle bands. Other than symetrical black face paint, he was naked as a jay bird.

 He had crawled on his belly across the dimly lit town square & now crouched behind a trash can eyeing the traffic warily. With a momentary lull in the passing cars he lept from hiding & streaked across the street, litterly diving into a darkened alley. Moments later, two paniced eyes glowing from that striped face, again peered in the darkness.

 No one seemed to notice him.

 The strolling towns folk paid little heed as if terrorized naked indians streaking down main street were as common as lice in this sticky jungle town.

 "A bloody Colorado, lookit that bugger go." smiled Aussie Bob.

 "Dosnt appear to get to town much." Whatdaya spose e's doin ere?" I was starting mimic Bob & his obnoxious, infectious Austrailan drawl.

 "They come to town to trade skins & feathers for kerosene." said Bob.

 "Kerosene?"

 "They drink it." said Bob mater a factly. Australians, after all, are not put off by any drink.

 "They drink Kerosene?"

 "Sez it kills the germs inside them, they do."

 "Oh".

 I had met Aussie Bob in a rotted roach hotel, festering in the Indian section of Quito. A kind of a 'bring your own toilet paper' kind of place. In fact it was a kind of 'bring your own toilet' place if you did'nt count the communal hole in the floor...but what the hell, when your young & stupid.

 Over a suspiciously rat-like peeled & barbequed Guinea pig dinner one evening, Bob had been trying to talk me into breaking into the Quito botanical gardens & eating a certain San Pedro cactus that was said to have, as he put it, 'magical' powers.

 I, on the other hand, have always been cautious of breaking in to anything in the third world, & have a decided aversion to eating plants with strong 'magical' powers in strange cities at night.

 I dont no.....call me a dweeb.

 Bob on the other hand was the kind of traveler that would eat or drink anything....as I have said, he was Australian.

 He had left Sydney two years prior with no money & one change of cloths, & had since, hitchhiked across Asia, Africa, the Atlantic, & now South America.

 By now Bob needed a change of cloths but still had no money.

 I was rich however, sporting 200.oo worth of travlers checks, I was a wealthy man in Ecuador. Bob took an immedeat liking to me.

 So, with minimum arguement, Bob agreed when I suggested financing a trip to the coast rather than committing the great cactus robbery in Quito & in the morning we had set off jostling atop a cassabba truck.

 

 We had spent a edgy night in the dusty river port town of Limones, side stepping drunken Jaguar poachers & contriband smugglers. A town of swinging door saloons, dirt streets, & gun weilding repubates blasting vultures from the town squares only tree, a dead snag.

 Esmeraldas comparativly was cosmopolitan, with one paved street & a ice cream parlor, but soon tiring of this commerice & glitz we headed out again down a dusty jungle track to the coastal slum known as Atacames.

 Atacamus was a one light bulb town that appeared to have washed ashore among the other flotsam on Ecuadors beautiful Pacific coast. When the generator & that light bulb went out at midnight so died the town.

 A sleepy, seedy little place with one sand floored cantina we were happily

home & negotiated for the lease of a shack on the beach. Soon, for the price of one U.S. quarter per day we set up houskeeping.

 Now Aussie Bob, no jungle dummy, proceeded to build himself a bed of palm fronds high off the shantys sandy floor. I on the other hand, inherantly lazy, opted to sleep on the ground. And there on that sandy floor I made a tasty meal for every sand flea & mosquito in Ecuador. So thus figiting like a beached blood bank I passed a miserable sweaty night.

 But wait!! What was this? I now was suddenly awakened with a sick feeling of dread. In the pitch darkness a creature the size & weight of a clammy human hand moved on my bare chest. Another scuttled across my bare thigh.

 "TARANTULA!!" I screamed grouping for a candle "THE PLACE IS CRAWLING IN TARANTULAS!! hysterical now, blind & covered in poisonous spiders, I leapt about the shack yelping in terror.

 Of course this type of late night outburst from any roommate will usually warrent action & it was only moments before Bob found & fired a match.

 The floor of the shack was indeed crawling in eight legged creatures, but Tarantulas they were not....

 "Land crabs." said Bob, "get a grip ol boy."

"LAND CRABS!!" I screamed at him..."LAND CRABS!!"

 The creeping crustacions were everywhere, some eight inches across their backs, they scuttled into the dark corners & eyed us warily from telescopic peepers. Bright orange, green & red the carnivorious crabs again started their advance when the match went out.

 "Watch the buggers mate, they'll come after you..." Bob was loving this high on his palm fronds. "In fact the Indians used to tie their captives out on the sand, let the crabs eat em slowly...they start with your eyeballs..."

  I'd had enough & with agility born in fear bolted from the shack onto the beach, and there perched atop a chunk of driftwood spent the remainder of the night keeping the beasts at bay with a large club.

 

 Now it came to pass...daily in fact, an ancient shrimp trawler, crawling it's way up & down that stretch of Ecuadorian coast line. The decrepid scow, eaten in rust & engulffed in scavanging seabirds seemed more like a floating stinking carcass than an actual working vessel, but somehow the gallent crew managed to propell the craft past or beach daily.

 So on one sultry equatorial afternoon we decided to paddle out & meet this stalwart, seedy ship if perchance to purchase some shrimp, or for no other reason just to see what type of fellow manned this ghostly craft. In a borrowed dugout canoe we breached the shorewaves & cut a line to introcept the trawler.

 "Mabey their not keen on visitors Bob!" I offered as if negativity insured my survival.

 "They'll love to see us, "They'll be flattered we paddled out to see em!" said Bob as if survival was nothing without being positive about it....God I hate that....

 As we drew closer the crew of the trawler gathered on the bow & watched our approch with squint eyed intrest.

 "Lookit these guys will ya?" They'd use their mother for bait...." I was mumbling, for in fact never had a more disreputable group of cut throuts ever been assembled.

 Unshaven, filthy & draped in greasy rags they started to grin through rotted teeth as we pulled alongside & tied off to the crawling trawler. A dozen dirty hands reached down to pull us aboard.

 For a long tense moment not a word was said as we stood on that slimy deck surrounded by those stinking shrimpers. We stared at each other in total wonder for surely the boat or crew had rarely intertained tourists. We were worlds apart.

 Bob asked for the Captain, & a one-eyed bag of bones extended his gnarled hand. Bob appoligised for the intrusion & expresed a great intrest in the boat. The captain beamed, bowed low & proceeded, with the flourish & pride of a cruise line director gave us a tour of his world. He in fact, along with his crew seemed truly honered by our visit.

 Bob then asked if it were posible to purchase a bit of shrimp for our dinner & with a sharp command a 5 gallon bucket full of the tasty creatures was handed over. I dug into my shorts & produced a 20.oo bill, surly more money than these men made in a month.

 The captain smiled, held up his hand in refusal & said something that to this day I cannot forget.

 He said: "Sometimes, my son, man is meant to serve."