Crab Stacking

We are like mountain gnomes, or hermits - whenever we have to come down from our hills, we don´t like it. it´s HOT at the coast. I feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of bananas. And the oddest thing. People are selling small purple crabs by the dozen, and they are stacked into perfect cubes. I mean perfect. It seems geometrically impossible. The crabs are, well, crab-shaped. How can they be stacked into cubes? It defies the imagination.
We made it to Guayaquil by driving through Parque Nacional de las Cajas. Misty mountains, small terraced lakes, glittering streams running down green valleys. IT looked like we thought the Andes would look (complete with llamas). It was glorious.

About midafternoon, we got to Guayaquil and got our parts. There´s really no story to this, and that in itself is a story. It all went according to plan. Are we still in Latin America?

After that, we drove some more. It was a day of driving. Of picking cacao by the roadside, and later trying jugo de cacao at a yogurt stand. It tasted like a banana raspberry puree, sweet at first, and then it whacks the back of your tongue with tanginess. Mostly, it was a hot, hot day.

At the end of it, we arrived at Tengual, a little town about 2 hours north of the Peruvian border. When we drove in, a guy in the town square on his mobile loudspeaker (these are common - either bike or car-powered, they let someone drive around town and tell everyone AT VOLUME about Jesus, a party, Jesus, ice cream, or Jesus) asked us what we wanted, were we lost, did we need to go to Guayaquil - all over the loudspeaker, from across the square!! I don´t think out-ot-towners come here often. He gave us directions to the hotel over the loudspeaker, too, even though we were now stopped 2 feet in front of him. He likes his microphone, I guess.

We should have known this didn´t bode well for our night´s sleep. Motorbikes. No mufflers. I think the whole town drove circles around us all night.