The Downside of Travelling

Sorry I haven´t written in so long! Who knew that bartending, surfing and socializing could take up so much of my time.

One of the hardest things about travelling is meeting really cool people then having them leave. As a result, all relationships move at lightning speed. You meet cool people, you don´t go out with them that weekend or next week, but an hour later. Suddenly you spend almost all of your time with the same few people. Then as suddenly as you met them, they are gone. I feel a little tired from these little, short, but intense relationships. Everytime someone else leaves (or I leave!) I swear I am going to lie low for a few days and not meet anyone. This happened last when my good friend Natalie, from Montreal, left. I went with her to Guayaquil, then took the bus home from Monañita, sad to lose a good friend and exhausted, looking forward to a good relaxing time on the bus home and some peace and quiet. But it was not to be. I met three gringos before I even got on the bus, Mark from Winnipeg, Ruth from the Utah, and Grett from England. I spent the last three days with them, saw them off on the bus today (they have two weeks to travel north to Costa Rica!) and I am left again today, a bit sad and just mentally exhausted.

So, no moremeeting people! Yeah, right. I´m a bartender for crying out loud.

The second downside of travelling is how sick I have been getting. At home, I pride myself on getting sick only once or twice a year. Here, I get sick once or twice a week, and the other days I feel less than par. I´ve had my job for two weeks but have taken three days off. From extreme constipation to diaherrea, crazy stomach aches to vomiting, I always feel under the weather. I have barely eaten for three days now; as a result I feel really weak, too weak even to grab a surfboard and battle the waves, even though I want to. I am a bit worried about my health- why am I getting so sick?

My boss at work, Melissa, is a dear and she has been really supportive in giving me time off and good advice. She says it is possible I have picked up some sort of parasite- damn amazon!- and she is going to come with me to the pharmacy. Apparently there´s this 10-pìll, three day treatment that kills all of your parasites. She says that it is recommended any westerner living in latin america do this every few months. Hopefully it will do the trick.

I have so much written that I just need to type up on the internet! But it is crazy expensive in this town... $2 an hour, and it takes me usually about two hours to write one of the decent blogs. When I get to a town with a cheap connection, I promise I´ll post some more.