Travel Is a Topo Map
aka, Waiting for the Gringa
The moment my “weightlessness” dawns on me, time goes haywire. It spills from shattered glass, a growing mound atop my chance of making it back across the station in time. It stretches so I can see every outcome of my mistake playing out in the same sticky heaviness that keeps my legs in place, my brain from catching up with what’s needed.
At last, I pull up my pants and do the only thing I can. Run.
Some number of hours I’ve lost track of earlier, I stepped up to a bus and, coaxed by a quiet man with his arm extended toward me, made a decision to break a pattern. Kindness and warmth have greeted me as I’ve wended my way through Ecuador. But traveling is like a topo map. On it, truths—about the way things are everywhere, which is to say, about contradictions—rise up in sharp relief. Like a sister jealous of her sibling being an only child, I’m freest when walking roads I bar myself from after dark. Days after I arrived in the northern beach town I left this morning, the body of a blond woman was found near the road I’d walked and then hitched a ride in on. I couldn’t have thought of her lying there among the mounds of sand as I bounced softly by them in the back of a truck in the yellow haze of late afternoon; she wasn’t yet there. I couldn’t have not thought of her all day as I moved urgently to make my destination before sunset; she was always there. Woman shouldering blame, as if the moon could kill, as if not “being sharp,” as if failing to make “smart choices” were weapons. So until now, I’ve kept my pack with me on buses and cab rides.
When I have a seatmate, the pack rides on the floor between my legs, its 54 quarts bulky, zippers pressed into the seat in front of me, laptop and phone in the back. A small daypack—carrying passport, billfold, and writing log—stays strapped around my waist. During the first of today’s three cramped bus rides, sleep, aloof and haughty at this sudden change in pace, eyed me from a distance. Maybe that was why, when the conductor of the second bus reached for my pack and motioned with his lips toward the undercarriage, I handed the pack over.
Climbing into my window seat, I sighed. I spread my legs into the spaciousness, wiggled my toes. On a screen the size of a television set from the 1980s at the front of the bus, a Van Damme-shaped, poorly dubbed father sought vengeance on the men who’d kidnapped his daughter. I listened, willing the language, like a song, to soak into my tongue. I wanted to dream in its lilt. I wanted to effortlessly commune with the family I was soon to meet for the first time in the only language they knew.
My on-again, off-again partner had rung last night. I’d been sharing drinks at the beach town hostel, a group of us sprawled across red cement benches in the bar we inhabitants tended ourselves, sharing whatever liquor we’d brought from town. We’d thrown together tapas in the communal kitchen—nooks cut into the wall spilling left-behind spices, crannies stuffed with stained checkered linens, pots and pans and utensils hanging from nails. I’d snuck away to take the call. “There will be a ceremony for New Years,” he’d said, adding, his voice low, his bravado hiding behind his pant leg. “Come, Hollycita.”
I’d feigned hesitation. Just before I’d boarded the plane for his home country weeks ahead of his own departure, we’d slid to off. Again. Though my stuff remained at his place, we’d agreed I’d find a new place to live whenever I decided to book my return ticket. So on landing in Ecuador, I’d gone to the northern tip of the country. A friend was there learning to surf. Starting there and making my way slowly south over the coming months made sense. Like a sister jealous of her only-child sibling, I was an independent woman, scrambling as soon as her lover pivoted to get off the phone and figure out how to get to the other end of the country in a day.
Ecuador is small, but travel through it was slow then. To tell you this story, I’ll google getting from Canoa to Cuenca by bus and find “no available route.” How did I get to the first bus station? Was it in nearby Bahía de Caráquez? Did the Aussie owner of the hostel with his big-toothed grin drop me at a seaside station there on that little peninsula? Or am I only recalling bouncing in his silver, open-air Jeep alongside my gorgeous surfer friend, our long locks blowing in the wind on our hunt for flour to make Christmas crepes?
Where was the transfer when I handed over my pack? Puerto Viejo? Manta? Calceta? Multiple routes are possible. Wherever I boarded, I surely awoke in Guayaquil. After the movie, I’d curled against the window. The sun lay long rays across hills it had conspired with fat, heavy clouds to make forever green. Here and there, a sprite of river would wink from the deep valley. Was it here we passed glimmers of ribbons tied to thin posts marking terraced lines, passed the thatched-roof wooden homes of those who farmed these steep slopes, passed laundry stirring on lines, brightly colored ghosts? By the time dusk had cloaked the land and my uncertainty in silvery softness, sleep had sidled up.
Looking out onto an outdoor platform with a dozen or so buses accordioning with travels and luggage, I felt glad of my dreamy companion, lucky she never stayed away long. Then from the fog of my love affair with sleep came a message: No time to linger. I remembered the plan. I had not many minutes to find the booth selling tickets to Cuenca. Miss the next bus, and I’d not make it in time for the New Year. Not to mention, I’d find myself navigating Ecuador’s sprawling economic capital under moonlight in search of a place to wait out the dawn.
I spilled off the bus. Memory paints the busy indoor terminal in sepia tones. Half-dancing to soothe my bladder, I moved through the yellow light, scanning signs, trying to make sense of the layout. At last, I spotted “Cuenca.” Rushing to the booth, I made my desires known. Yes! I turned with a ticket, directions to the correct platform, a tiny bit of time to spare, and a renewed sense of my own savviness to the next search—un baño.
Thus, it is while squatting, my bladder deliciously emptying, that I feel the extent of my weightlessness. Thus, it is from within a tiny stall that I unloose my legs from the quicksand of disbelief at my own stupidity, pull up my pants, and run.
Don’t think, I tell myself. I know me. I’ll best find my way back to the arrival platform by feel. I try not to notice that all the doors to the different platforms look the same. I try not to think of the New Year’s celebration back at the beach town hostel. I try not to imagine not arriving at the ceremony up ahead. I try not to feel the fool.
I won’t see, until years later, that it’s not my abruptly changing plans or even my dashing through a terminal, across a country led by my heart that’s the round square. It’s how I’d been slowly making myself smaller, less present. I’ll see how, even at the hostel, I’d held myself separate, shyer than was my nature, how I’d been doing that for so long I can’t remember when it started. I’ll see how I was torn, the different parts of me seeming a paradox.
I don’t know how I know it when I see it. But I do. I burst through the door. Onto an empty platform. And wince.
Craning, though, I see it’s only almost empty, only the perfect amount of empty. A single bus remains. Next to it stands a quiet man, balancing an upright 54-quart, maroon-and-gray pack, the tilt of his head a question mark.
“Es mio!” I cry, bursting toward him.
He nods, eyes wide as if to say, Yo sé eso (I know this).
“Gracias.” I lift the pack and hoist it over my shoulders as I whirl back toward the door. The engine starts, and the bus creaks to life as I throw myself back into the terminal—now sprinting.
When I burst onto the departure platform and spot the number marking the Cuenca-bound bus, its doors are about to close. I fly aboard atop the joy of my good fortune.
I’ll think as I tell you this story of that driver waiting, behind on his schedule, knowing surely the gringa will return. I’ll wish, not for the first time, I’d let him know the depth of my gratitude. I’ll think of the ceremony and family, who will soon embrace me with arms open so wide you could nap in them. I’ll think of my heart clinging to a false binary—to choose or be chosen. I’ll think of how I’m still learning to embrace contradiction.
This is a story for the monthly Ask&Give collection—stories from me and you about times when strangers show up for each other in “little” and big ways. Be inspired by a few past favs. In “The Night Vigil,” NYT bestselling author and overall badass
meets two young people down on their luck who show up in her time of need because, “This is just what people do. In “Repaying a Karmic Debt,” Deb Sinness, migratory snowbird and Marine vet, completes a circle of kindness.Want to write about a time when someone, perhaps a total stranger, had your back or when you helped out someone in need and be published here? Hit me up here or by DM. (Not yet published pieces may be given priority.)
Comment questions
Have you ever made a mistake that did or could have caused you a lot of trouble while traveling? What do you think about life’s contradictions? About the kindness and danger inherently woven together in solo travel? How do you embrace all the parts of you that may contradict each other?
Oh, that rush of panic at the weightlessness, the absence of the familiar burden. I was sprinting through the station with you. 💜
Wonderful Holly! The back and forth between the world and your thoughts is fantastic. And the way you grapple with your inner contradictions and how you can see them more clearly now with hindsight — it’s all so true to life and the complex nature of how everything unfolds for us. :)