Chronicle of the City of Loja

Nothing kills the mood of a good interview more than an ethics form. There you are, talking along, about the most interesting of things, and thanks to technocratic bureaucracy at the home university, you have to slide an ethics form under the interviewee’s nose, and get them to sign it. Nobody likes to sign strange forms, especially from overseas. But, if they don’t sign it, some goof from the University can debunk the research.

Technocratic fart catching aside, Loja turned out to be a very pleasant adventure. No bullets to pull out of feet, or any of that sort of thing. It’s a pretty little city right where the sierras start to turn into jungle, but it’s still frosty at night. After the interview, the good doctor and I went out for beer with some of her friends. At some point in the evening it was decided that we’d go to the smaller village of Vilcabomba. Either because of the beer or the sleepiness, I missed the fact that we were going to a spa. Who would have guessed? Here’s me in Loja fighting off scruffy dogs for the covers on my bed, this in a house with no hot water or heat of any sorts, and a secret passage, so it seems, for the dogs to come in and compete for my covers. Those dogs, six of them on last count, really needed baths. But then again, so did I. So how would I have guessed that a luxury spa was in my future?

Missing the part about going to a spa, when I show up at the place in the picture above, there is a lovely aromatic Jacuzzi happening. Apparently $25 will get you three hours of Jacuzzi and professional massage time. While the doctor and her friend are already changed and ready for the hot tub, there’s me with my bathing suit nicely folded and placed in the drawer in Quito. I ask the staff if they have an extra bathing suit. “oh, I don’t know about that.” Great. Sure enough she leaves the spa through some random back door, and returns 5 minutes later with some guy’s underpants.

Now here’s a dilemma. Jacuzzi with some random pair of underpants that may have been worn by a hobo and 5 of the 6 dogs, or me sitting around reading for three hours. You can always read. You don’t often get the chance to wear random Ecuadorian underpants in a hot-tub. I dive in.

After dinner we race back to Loja to catch the last bus to Cuenca. It is going to be a long ride, and the weather is looking pretty rough. Still, a 4 hour bus ride should hopefully bring me to a warm bed where I’m not fending off brown dogs.

So there I am on a bus swinging through winding fog soaked roads in the Andes. Most people have the good sense to go to sleep on this into-the-night journey. But not the drunken bugger behind me. No no, he decides to sing us songs. Brutally off key songs. You know the feeling of a nail on a blackboard? Yeah that kind of singing. This dummy just kept singing and singing in his painfully annoying fashion. He sang for so long that he had to clear his dry throat, and then he’d keep going.

After the third hour of his drunken babbling I nearly leaped over the seat and strangled him silent. The only thing that held me back was the idea of the headline in tomorrow’s paper. “Tourist strangles man for singing.”

The bloody media.

They never take kindly to these sorts of situations.