Alright, here we are: the final normal narrative entry! Don't
worry; I'm not going to stop here! Truth be told, I'd hate to close this out on
such a dull note. I might be posting
another entry about my re-acclimating to life in the US (if that turns out to
be a thing), and I'll definitely be
posting a retrospective entry, giving my overall impressions of the trip, plus
some interesting factoids (seriously, try to guess the total word count of this
blog). But let's not focus on the future, let's focus on the past! What
happened in the last few days of my trip? Uhhh....not much. But let's check out
what that "not much" entails!
I'm just going to start off by posting the links to all the
photo albums I put up in the course of everything written in this entry. Trust me, it's
infinitely more interesting to look at these photos than to read about me
posting them online. So have a look, and if you want, you can come back
afterward if you so choose.
New Zealand 15 - Auckland (2/5-10)
And the final portion of everyone's favorite, Factoria the Monkey Travels the World
...Yeah. Quite a bit. I'll discuss the actual numbers a
little further on (don't worry, this'll be a short entry overall), but needless
to say, I was a bit behind, and I needed to upload a lot of albums (each
containing a fair number of photos), and as I've mentioned before, each one is
a lot of work, since I like to actually add somewhat meaningful (or at least
somewhat explanatory) captions for each photo, so I needed to be pretty damn
disciplined if I wanted to get them all up before I flew back home. (And you
might be wondering: why was I so obsessed with getting all the photos up before
heading home? Well, I basically wanted to focus on different things when I got
home. First, I wanted to focus on re-familiarizing myself with normal life, as
well as reacquainting with my family and friends [and seeing if my old job is
available, which I'm currently putting the likelihood at 7%]. On a more
specific note, though, I also want to go through all my photos again. See, the
photos I post online are filtered down from the whole of the photos I've taken on this trip. That said, they still
are there to form a bit of a narrative, and so there are photos that aren't
necessarily spectacular, but are there for the sake of telling a larger story,
and giving a slice into some of the little moments and anecdotes of the trip.
[Example: I have a terrible photo of a terrible sign outside of a convenience
store in Australia's Red Center of "gourmet sausage rolls", complete
with a martini glass filled with ketchup. Artistically, it may compete for the
least worthwhile photo ever, but it was a funny little moment for everyone
there, so I decided to, as I'm constantly suggested, "take a picture; it
lasts longer".] Having done that, I now want to go through and do a super edit, or maybe two [the second one
would be for photos with me in them]. This would be a best-of-the-best album,
filled with only my best and/or favorite shots, literally just a few hundred,
with no quotas of any country or topic. And I'd love to make a photo book with
this: at least a personal one, and if I'm feeling confident enough, try to get
a small run published. And if I'm feeling really
confident, I might want to send in some series of photos [perhaps my
pictures-of-people-taking-pictures series] along with a small essay to National
Geographic. Who knows? The point is, there are other things I want to be doing
with my photo collection when I get home, and I don't want to get bogged down
in the drudgery of posting the larger batch online. Also, to close out this
overly-long parenthetical, I had the time available to me, so why not be
productive with it?)
So that uploading process, which we began on Monday,
actually continued after I finished posting Monday's entry. No time to waste, I
say! I basically continued uploading until I started doing the sleepy long
letter presses (y'know, when you suddenly find yourself with type like
thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii).
So, I went to bed at that point. I woke up just shortly before 10am. But
thankfully, they were still serving breakfast. While I still didn't get a plate
of fruit like my first visit to the hotel, I did notice that the quality of the
food and presentation did definitely improve when I was the only person there.
In any case, after having breakfast, I went back to my room and lit another of
my mosquito coils. (I probably lit five or six of the ten I bought throughout
my stay. By the end, the room smelled noticeably stuffier than the outside
room, but I didn't see - or get bitten by - a single mosquito for the remainder
of my time in there, so I'm happy.) I then uploaded photos for the next, say,
three hours. I then went to lunch. (See, I told you this was going to be a
short entry.)
Now, I think it was at this lunch that I came to a couple
conclusions. And they might be wrong
conclusions, since I've not visited terribly much of Ecuador, but they're
conclusions nonetheless. First of all, despite what the books try to tell you,
it seems to me that Ecuadorians are not friendly. In fact, I've found that not
only are they the least friendly people I've found in South America, they're
the most actively unfriendly. At
first I thought it might have just been the lady at the hotel reception, or maybe
just her and the taxi drivers, or maybe just them and all the people on the
Galapagos, or maybe all them and just
the people at McDonald's. But no, when I was eating lunch at the small set menu
place across the street from the hotel, it was clear that the owner lady who
was serving me was only tolerating my
presence; she made absolutely no effort to be kind, or even to hide a grimace
whenever she saw me. And at that point, I realized that I had not met one Ecuadorian I would call flat-out
"friendly". Not one. Okay, I guess maybe you could say Jose was a friendly guy, but he had serious
issues of his own. But yeah, in my experience in Ecuador, there's a very
unfriendly populace. Second conclusion - and this one is also surprisingly
different to what I read in guides - Ecuadorian Spanish (especially on the
mainland) is really difficult to
understand. At first I couldn't put my finger on it, I was starting to feel
really comfortable speaking to people, and then suddenly it all sounds like
gibberish, and they're literally laughing whenever I talk. Then, at one point
during this lunch, I asked to confirm with the owner lady, "Dos
dolares?", to which she rolled her eyes and said, "Thi, doth."
At that point, I realized they had a stupid lisp similar to Spain, and had a
number of other pronunciation differences from the easier varieties (Mexican,
Bolivian, Peruvian). All this together did make it all seem like gibberish, and
so I felt a little better about the
whole situation, although I still didn't care for how people made fun of me
whenever I pronounced an S like and S.
Anyway, after finishing up at that unwelcoming place, I went
back to my hotel room, and began doing more uploading. And I continued doing
that for about five or six hours. One useful part of all this was that I was
able to catch up on my backlog of podcasts (and I only then realized that all
the podcasts I listened to featured people I know in person; maybe I only
listen to them because it feels like I'm actually with them, just being
unusually quiet in a conversation). But yeah, that's all I was doing, and then
for dinner I decided to head back to that other place where I had gotten the
burger a couple days before. I got a chicken breast and some fries; it wasn't
nearly as good a value as the set-menu place, but I could just bring it back to
my room, eat in peace, and not have to deal with ladies who don't even bother
hiding their distaste for me. And the chicken was really good, so I can't
complain. After finishing the food, and messing around a bit to continue to let
my fingers rest, I continued on uploading until about 2am or so. I had to hit a
certain quota of photos/albums uploaded to stay on track with my goals, so I
couldn't stop until I felt I had met that quota. Once fulfilling it, though, I
immediately went to bed.
I woke up a bit earlier Wednesday morning, and in the most
irritating way possible. I had an interesting dream during the night, and I
woke up well aware how interesting it was, but only remembering brief flashes
of it. The more I tried to focus and remember it, the more it slipped away,
until there was nothing left. Oh, well, you can't win them all. Anyway, since
it was only around 9am, I decided that I wanted to take full advantage of the
day and do...all the same stuff I was doing before. After having breakfast, I
got straight to work, and then did more uploading (which, again, the time
consuming part is adding descriptions) until lunchtime. I then went out to get
lunch - during which time I also got myself another jumbo bottle of water to
last me the remainder of my time there - and decided I'd give the set-menu
place another try. The owner lady there saw me come in, and she smiled. Wait,
no she didn't. She approached me gruffly, and pointed at the sign with the two
available soups, waiting for me to tell her which one I wanted. After I
finished with lunch, I went back to my hotel room and, surprise-surprise, did
more uploading until dinner. (Man, I should have done this every day; it's so much quicker to write about!) For dinner, I
actually decided to go back to the set-menu place, I think more because of the
particular money I had available to me and wanted to spend. But after getting
more of the same unfriendly treatment by the folks there (another example:
there was a container of ají hot sauce on another, empty table. When I received my food, I asked if it was okay if I
could use it. The lady rolled her eyes, and actually got the container herself.
She handed it to me, and stood by, watching me as I put some on my food. When I
was finished and closed the container up, she quickly grabbed it and took it to
the back, out of sight), I didn't want to give them any more of my
business/money. I then walked back into my room, which I noticed had been
straightened up, meaning they clearly didn't need us to leave our keys for
that. Everything seemed to be in order, so I wasn't too concerned about it, I
just found it funny that I had previously told them "I don't need my room
cleaned daily," but they were still going for it. Or maybe they just
didn't understand my accent. Anyway, I continued uploading for the rest of the
night, and to my pleasant surprise, ended up ahead of my own schedule. So I
went to bed with the smuggest feeling one can possibly get for uploading
photos.
I'm not sure why, but I woke up even earlier the next day,
at about 8am. I tried at first to go back to sleep, but that wasn't happening.
So, I just decided to start getting the day's proceedings going. I got cleaned
up, booted up my laptop, and began uploading my first batch of photos for the
day. While that was processing, I went down at 8:45 to get some breakfast. They
should have been open; in fact, if you remember correctly, they woke me during my first visit there at 8:30
to have breakfast. But all I could see down there were two older white people
waiting at the cafeteria door, complete with a sign saying Cerrado ("Closed"). Were I a smart person, I would have
just gone up to do more work and then come down later. But I'm not a smart
person, and so I was waiting there with them, randomly browsing on my phone to
pass the time. The maintenance guy (begrudgingly) unlocked the cafeteria so we
all had a place to sit down, but the lady in charge of breakfast didn't show up
until 9:20. As far as I could tell, this lady had one job at the hotel, and she
was nearly an hour late for it (and the couple told me it was the third time it
happened). By 9:45, all I had received was a fried egg, and I was well beyond
caring at that point; I just wanted to go back and continue my work. I could
see that she was just starting to make some juice, but I didn't want to have to
wait another ten minutes for that, so I tipped my proverbial hat and went up to
my room. And, again, I did more uploading - most of it, in fact - before lunch.
As I had decided the prior night, I was no longer going to go to the set-menu
place, so I decided to head over to the quick takeaway place and get another
chicken breast. But when I got there...it was closed? That's another thing
about Ecuadorians (or South Americans as a whole): their open hours just don't
make much sense. A takeaway place with burgers, chicken, and fries is easily
one of the best places to be open for lunch, and yet this place decided, Nope, we don't need that money. Anyway,
I had to find someplace else, but most of the other local eateries were all
sit-down set-menu places, which I didn't want mainly because I wanted to finish
quickly, and because I had left my drinks in the room and didn't want to buy
more. I continued walking around until I saw a guy selling sandwiches. Turkey
sandwich: $1.50. Seemed like a good deal, so I ordered one. Except that the
roll he took out was about half the size as the imagery used on his cart. I
should have expected it, but still, shenanigans. Anyway, to compliment the tiny
(and thus pretty expensive even by North American standards) sandwich, I also
got a big chunk of watermelon. I brought this all back to the hotel where I
ate, and then continued my work.
Funnily enough, even though it wasn't the largest number of
photos, finishing up my "Factoria the Monkey Travels the World" was
actually one of the longer portions, just because I had to look up where each
of the pictures was from, either by visual cues or by the dates, and note each
of them in the description. Not gonna lie, this blog proved its value there,
because I was able to cross-reference old entries with those cues/dates to see
exactly where the picture was from (especially in Southeast Asia). But, at
5:30, with that album completed, I was done. I had uploaded everything. All of
my travel photos were online. And it felt good.
Now, to give you an actual number, since Monday, I had uploaded just a hair
over 4,000 photos. Four. Thousand. So
believe me, I'm not exaggerating when I say this was a process. (And here's a preview of my retrospective/factoid entry:
My filtered-down travel photos for the entirety of this trip - from flowers to
people taking pictures to the Himalayas - come to a grand total of 9,900, or an
average of 26.4 a day. How many photos total did I take? Well, you'll have to tune in for that. But the point remains,
finishing this was exceptionally cathartic; both from the more basal level of
finishing a large load of work, and from the more spiritual level of feeling
that I've put a cap onto my trip. While this among of my intentional reasoning
for trying to finish uploading before heading home, I now feel that if I would
have been uploading the photos in California, I wouldn't really be able to feel
like I was done. But here, I was. All the images documenting my trip were now
out there for the world to see; there was no more for me to share - pictorially
- with the world. It made me feel that, Yeah,
maybe it is all done. And that felt good. I'm sure I'll still be getting the feels in the upcoming weeks, but
nothing about the trip feels incomplete at this point. So I was exceptionally
pleased with myself. Well, except for my fingers. They weren't too pleased with
me, as they were all exceptionally sore (in particular my left pinky, which was
instrumental in a lot of Ctrl-V
actions). I had actually been considering doing some writing afterwards, but my
hands needed a break. So I just watched some hands-free videos instead to pass
the time before dinner.
As promised, I snubbed the set-menu place across the street
one last time, and instead went back to the takeaway place, which was now in
their open hours. I ended up getting a hamburger, and fitted it with exactly
the right ingredients to use up as much of my loose change as possible. See,
while Ecuador actively uses American currency, they also have their own centavos when you have to break a
dollar. Oh, they'll accept a Thomas
Jefferson nickel, but if you're getting change, you're more likely to receive a
Juan Montalvo five-cent[avo] piece. And I'm pretty sure they ain't gonna accept
that in the States. So I wanted to use up as much of the Ecuadorian change I
had, and successful managed to pawn off all but a five-cent piece (which is how
I knew it featured Juan Montalvo), so I think that's fair enough. I went back
to the hotel, had them book a taxi for me at 2:30 in the morning, and then went
back to my room. Not having any more immediate objectives, I just ate and
messed around for some time. Eventually, I packed most of my bags, and then
spent the later part of the night reading the last hundred pages of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And,
true to my word, I finished it before my trip ended. My quick review is that I
liked it - some story arcs much more
than others - but I felt it could stand to be a hundred pages shorter, as
there's definitely some chaff in there. Also, the descriptions of some products
in that book were so oddly specific that I would be surprised if they were not paid placements. But worth a read,
I'd say. Anyway, by the time all this was done, it was a little before 1am, so
I decided to get a little sleep (with the light on; couldn't get too comfy). I managed to get about an
hour of rest before my alarm went off. I got up, got dressed, triple checked
the room to make sure nothing was being left behind, and did some last-minute
packing as a knock came at the door. It was the old hotel owner, telling me my
taxi had arrived. I grabbed my bags, handed him the key, and then went into the
car. To my genuine and pleasant surprise, he was willing to take me to the
airport for $5, same as the daytime rate for these private cars. I tried
keeping track of all my yawns on the way over, but lost count.
I got to the airport at about 2:50, and immediately walked
to the Avianca line, which was the only populated one in the terminal.
Unfortunately, I was just standing around for most of that time, since there
wasn't anyone at the desk until 3:30. I then made the slow march to the front
of the queue, and then got my boarding passes. The moment the guy saw my
passport, he began speaking English to me. In the middle of the day, I may have
insisted in speaking in Spanish - I've come this far, dammit! - but I was way
too tired to care, so I just let it rock. I got my passes, checked in my big
bag (I figured that, if it got lost, it would really make little difference at
this point), and then headed to the gate. At Immigrations, I managed to coax a
smile out of the girl behind the counter by ever-so-slightly lifting the brim
of my hat when she was comparing my face to the passport. So that made me feel
good, brightening someone's day for a second. I then went through security. I
had actually brought with me a full bottle of water and one with some leftover
soda. The thing is, despite what the signs say, every airport security seems to
have their own rules about everything. This place, for example, didn't care one
whit about me taking my laptop out of my daypack. And some airports will let
you pass through with a full, very liquid drink. I figured my options were to
either have thrown the drinks out before arriving, or take them through
security, where I could either keep them, or would have to throw them out
regardless. It turned out to be the latter, but I wasn't particularly torn up
about it.
At the gate, a lot of people were lying across the seats,
sleeping. It seemed like a pretty good idea, so I found a couple seats on the
end of one bench, put down my daypack as a hard pillow, and lay down. It
definitely wasn't a great nap, but I
know that I slept at least a little, since I had that distinct feeling of
startling awake. Anyway, the plane boarded at about 5am, and by the time the
hatch was shut, it seemed as though I was the only person in the entirety of
the emergency exit row. A big responsibility, but I feel I was up for it.
Actually, what I was really up for was more sleep. My chair barely reclined at
all, but I made use of every degree, and slept through the majority of the
flight, except for a small window when breakfast was being served. I checked
out the window during that time, and saw that the view was too hazy to see
anything, so I figured I wasn't missing much in my slumber. The landing process
was pretty hot and fast - these pilots seemed a bit like mavericks - but I
never had to put my emergency exit row skills to use, so I guess all ended
fine. We landed in San Salvador at about 8am local time, and I had about 6
hours before the initial boarding procedure was about to begin. Now, way long
ago, I had considered trying to pay to get into the VIP lounge at the airport.
I had even sent an email asking how I could do it. It was another of my "I
should splurge in my last moments" endeavors. However, they never got back
to me, and upon arriving, I didn't even see the VIP lounge immediately, so I
ended up dropping that whole notion. I walked around the area, getting a feel
for everything, and then eventually found a spot where there was a seat next to
an outlet. Perfect. I sat down, and while WiFi was only usable for a short
time, I was able to do a bit of writing before lunch.
There were only a couple options available for lunch. The
first was a Subway. Normally, I wouldn't even think twice about defaulting to
Subway, but I was a bit hesitant when I saw the prices. For the cheapest
sandwich (a veggie), a small bag of chips, and a drink, you had to pay $8. I
know it's an airport, but yeesh. So,
I walked around, to see if I could find anything cheaper. And again, being an
airport, I really couldn't for a full meal. So I went and got a sandwich (and
ended up getting...blech...white bread, because I don't know the Spanish term
for wheat bread). But it had a nice little private seating area, with outlets,
so I thought I'd just get set up in there, and hole up for the next two hours.
Except, no electricity. So, I just finished my food and headed back to the same
spot I was waiting before. There was now a woman sitting there. We exchanged
some pleasantries in Spanish, and it turned out she was going to San Francisco,
to which I told her that's more-or-less where I live, and a little more
back-and-forth before we both got caught up in our own little worlds. So that
was a nice little end to regular Spanish conversation for me.
I proceeded to mess around on my computer for a little while
until it was just before 2pm, at which point I figured I might as well head to
my gate. And it was kind of weird, I'll admit - some of the gates required no
security, others...did. I wonder if mattered where the planes were heading to.
For example, all the gates at the end of the terminal, where there was a big
security checkpoint, were all heading to - you guessed it - the United States.
I'm sure there's some special agreement between the El Salvadorian government
(hell, probably the governments of all countries) that anybody heading to the
US gets screened. To prevent terrorism and/or illegal immigration, donchaknow.
Anyway, it turned out that this wasn't just your normal security check. There were
no X-Rays or anything like that. There were
though, a bunch of tables, and you would just step up to one, and have your
carry-on completely dismantled. I got a little worried when the lady took out
Factoria the Travel Monkey and, after giving me a sideways glance, began
squeezing it, probably for hidden drugs (which I can understand; I'm a grown
man carry around a small stuffed animal, which itself is kept safe in an old
Ziploc bag). Thankfully, she put it, and everything else, back into the bag.
Then she wanted to give me a pat-down, but I gave her my vest first, and it was
genuinely hilarious watching her sigh as she went through each of the 27
pockets. Then came the pat-down, and
then I was free to go. Oh, wait, no, there was also a shoe inspection. A guy
stood in front of me, and I handed him my shoes, which he stuck both his hand
and face into to check for bombs and knives and what-have-you. Not gonna lie, I
felt bad for this guy, having to stick your face in freshly-taken-off shoes
from sweaty travelers has to be the worst.
Once all that was taken care of, I got to the gate, and
waited there for a bit. I suddenly noticed that there was already a line to the
plane, specifically one made of about thirty wheelchairs. No hyperbole there;
I've never seen so many wheelchairs going onto a plane in my life. Anyway, it
took them a long time to get everything ready (there were a dozen people
standing at the desk, and none of them were doing anything until about 15
minutes before the scheduled takeoff), and then we boarded. On the whole, the
flight was relatively full, but thankfully, the middle seat between me and a
sleepy old woman was empty, so I was able to spread my stuff around a bit. The
flight itself was a pretty basic flight. I first struggled to find out where to
plug in my headphone (turns out there was a jack on my seat, behind my head),
and then fell asleep for some portion of it, probably not more than a
half-hour, max. I then spent most of the trip watching the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which is really long. Pretty good, though, in
presenting what it's presenting. There was also a new Coen Brothers movie I was
interested in seeing, but I only had an hour-point-five left, not long enough
to finish the thing (and I'd have to
finish it). So, instead, I plugged my headphones into my phone and listened to
another song on repeat from the Bastion
soundtrack (which again, may have been one of the official soundtracks of this
whole trip). The song in question is called "Setting Sail, Coming Home", which - as you can
probably tell from the name - is very appropriate to my situation, in addition
to being a good song. Even the first few lyrics are as follows:
I set my sail,Fly the wind, it will take me,Back to my home, sweet home.Lie on my back,Clouds are making way for me,I'm coming home, sweet home.
It was particularly nice because there were some beautiful
clouds outside that we were sailing through. I also used the opportunity to do
some more writing. There was a little bit of turbulence in the last forty
minutes of the flight, which made me think how ironic - hilarious, in a dark
humor sort of way - it would be if the plane crashed and I died literally less
than an hour from home. I wouldn't have minded it all that much, except for the
fact that I this entry would have never have been posted, meaning I would have
wasted my last hours writing something nobody would ever read. (Well, people
aren't necessarily reading it when I'm alive,
but you get my point.)
And that's that.
As I said at the beginning, there's some more coming, but if for some reason you enjoyed reading me talking about my life on a daily basis...sorry, folks. I'm not gonna keep doing that for my time here. 'Cause, y'know, I'm not traveling anymore. So I hope you enjoyed it! Come back in a little bit for my big retrospective post, and I'll have plenty to talk about.
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