Part 10.b: A Crushed Dream

I was in 5th or 6th grade when I had to pick a South American country to do a report on. I picked Ecuador.

I remember very little about my childhood schoolwork. As a child I attended more schools than grades. I moved a lot. I often started a new school in the middle of a school year. I hated school. I didn't know at the time but I was getting an excellent education in how to adapt to new situations due to the nature of my transient upbringing.

I do remember choosing Ecuador for my report. I remember thinking that I wanted to go there because I loved learning about all of the animals! I remember thinking it was always hot because it was on the equator. I didn't pay much attention to anything about Ecuador after I wrote my report.

Fifty some years later I found myself traveling in Latin America...a month here...a month there...and I asked myself, "Why not visit magical Ecuador?"

Chelsea didn't have any plans for after Jardín so she opened a Workaway account and we applied as a team to what looked like a beautiful hostel at a beach in Bahia de Caraquez. The pictures online showed lots of murals on the walls and the owner asked me to come as an artist volunteer. Chelsea was willing to go as a general volunteer so we set out for my 3rd Workaway post and Chelsea's 1st!

I immediately hated Ecuador! The sky was gray. The beautiful hostel which was probably amazing before an earthquake destroyed this once booming tourist town was full of mosquitos. The American owner of the hostel was a racist and obnoxious. The other volunteers were great but I avoided him as much as possible because I have a hard time controlling my mouth! He did have a super loving dog which was my bit of comfort in the hostel.

The first day there Chelsea gave herself an incredibly bad back injury which sent us to the ER! Read about it in Part 10.a of this blog. I wanted to flee but we needed to stay because she needed to recover before traveling.

I did get to drop a piece of abstract art on a wall and looking at it you can see how I was feeling when I did it! There's another mural similar to this in the kitchen of our family home in Pennsylvania. I created it not long before I was compelled to leave.

Chelsea managed to make some really great quality promotional videos for the hostel once she had a little bit of recovery.

We were supposed to stay for a month. I think we stayed 10 days. We moved on to another beach town not far away and started applying for other Workaways. I wanted to show Chelsea how great Workaway was since I had had 2 exceptional experiences. After a couple of days in an airbnb I found a place we could volunteer at in just a few days.

I was really trying to make the best of it. The problem was that this new town was even worse than Bahia had been; empty, desolate, terrible food and a couple of times we saw big beautiful dead sea turtles on the shore. An what of my "memory" that said Ecuador was hot? This place was cold and windy all the time. We couldn't even get into the ocean.

The morning after I booked the next Workaway I woke up in a panic. I told Chelsea we had to get out of Ecuador. She wasn't having any fun either so she went right along with my escape plan.

I cancelled with the Workaway host and we got on a plane ASAP and headed to our next country with hopes of a better tomorrow!