In Montanita, Ecuador I hit a lull. Doing snoopy walks at sunset hoping to catch the glance of a cute female, or slough off some energy from the Brazilians playing football in the sand. I was quite in my head, surrounded by a majestic beach, green cliffs and jungle in the distance.
Still sunsets and nights were tough. You see people get closer as the day dies, and I’m just a lonely gringo shuffling through the sand daydreaming.
But one night I was sitting and a girl I’d seen up and down the beach came along.
She was 5 feet tall, with long hair light that was considering whether to dread itself. She wore beat up sandles and a scarf dress. As she got closer though I could see her beautiful dark eyes and quick smile.
People often compared her to Shakira, which she hated (loved). She ambled up the beach toward me holding an empty paper towel tube around which were wrapped little bracelets and necklace type things.
She waved and walked up to my chair, standing to my right while the sun sank behind her and the surfers made their final cuts in the waves. I noticed her thick legs and round butt.
Her name was Laura, she was from Bogota, Colombia, and she had been a lawyer working for indigenous rights, but became disillusioned with corruption, an uphill battle that seemed futile in her country. So, she quit her job, sold everything, and found a band of roving South Americans and decided to just travel and survive.
She sold little bracelets on the beach that probably took ten minutes to make, but her personality was the selling point.
All 5 foot of her was built with ancestral sass, no nonsense, however tinged with a sentimental side. She told of her fight to help people and how it had inspired a tattoo that covered her entire right arm. It was the chronological history of Colombians, from the indigenous onto colonialism and independence. The heroic figures and battle scenes all etched from her shoulder down to her wrist. She had tattoos up and down both arms.
As she talked, I picked up her tongue ring and choker necklace. Every man will notice, daydream, then return to conversation. Details that are planned and can’t go unaccounted for.
We ended up chatting a few minutes, but I didn’t have any cash, so I grabbed her number and we decided to get together soon. She flashed her smile and carried on down the beach.
We eventually got dinner and she told me about Colombia’s sordid past. We sat at a meat griller, smoke and yells flying around us. Me shirtless, eating pounds of chicken, staring into her eyes while she recounted how the government would kill farmers, dress them up as guerillas and broadcast on the news that they had taken out some anti-government force.
They used the poor as pawns in a raging battle against narco-traffickers that effectively controlled the southwest portion of the country. As she spoke a I watched a street performer just outside who was her friend. He was a quiet Peruvian man who never spoke but dazzled with an acrobatic show perched perilously close to the numerous grills lining the street. This nightly circus just became the norm. When he finished and came around for a tip she glared at me, I noticed and popped a coin in his hat.
When I said something dumb, or made a joke, she called me the n-word but pronounced “eegah”. It made me so happy to hear this sassy Colombian from the street influenced but unencumbered by American slang. Try saying that in Chicago my dear tiny Colombian.
At the chicken grill she delved into her past. Her father was a cop, fighting the same corrupt system that she was. He was the prototypical shut off Colombian man, hardheaded, unable to show affection. She fought for his approval, worked her ass off to become a lawyer, and gained all the trappings of success that one could hope to find.
Eventually, as the corporate grind does, you find yourself in a sweet apartment overlooking a city filled with destitution that you haven’t made a dent in, and a government that will never truly care about its people. She sold it all, grabbed a few trinkets and headed south to Ecuador.
And now she lived in a commune with 6 other wanderers, sleeping in a hammock, cooking group dinners at 11pm listening to Argentinian rock. She was happier than she had been in a long time, and she didn’t have to convince me.
There are certain people you see walking by that can paint a vivid picture in your mind without every meeting them. Thankfully at that sunset I got to open this wild book for a little while. A glimpse into a vast universe I’d never be aware of. Hopefully she’s off lecturing another gringo in a smoky chicken shop while the restless beach town churns around her.
Wanderthoughts 