It was 11 am, and the heat was consuming. I tried to get comfortable in my armchair underneath the parasol.
I grabbed a
couple of Oreos from my bag and ate them in one bite while watching a Lady
in Red (girl in a red swimsuit) buying a coconut with a straw from a moveable
booth further down at the beach.
I had really
been looking forward to spending time doing nothing but drinking and hanging on the beach all day. However, because Montañita is located so close to Equator, I
couldn’t stay exposed to the sun for more than fifteen minutes without being
burned to the ground.
A week had passed by since I’d left my travelling group without telling, and headed back
towards the centre of the Quito. Before I knew it, I had taken the liberty of
changing the original plan and postponed my trip to the rain forest, and
instead taking a twelve-hour long bus ride to Montañita, a small coastal town
located on the Peninsula of Santa
Elena.
The first thing I noticed was sand. The city was covered in it. The
streets and even the floors in some bars and restaurants were covered in it. I had
booked myself into a small hostel, where a small woman with tanned skin and
yellow teeth showed me up on the top of the hostel where madrassas were lined
up next to each other and covered with shackled mosquito nets. The canopy was in a desperate need of a fix: it was leaky several places, and a hammer, a
drill and some paintbrushes were carelessly thrown next to the cabinets
assigned for the guests.
Nevertheles, I would be
traveling to the rain forest at some point. I mean fuck, I’m in my twenties. I need to
get out and experience the world.
At the moment I was reading about he bird
life in Amazonas, and I noticed a colourful bird named “Stinky Turkey”.
The wildlife was sure more interesting than the birdlife back home consisting
of nothing but blackbirds and woodpeckers.
On my last night in Montañita I had my last supper: a portion
of chicken soup with shallot and spring onion seasoned with coriander,
and on the side: deep-fried sweet potato, and an offer of three buns
for two
Two guys at the
table next to my table, looking like they’d had the most horrible hangover, eating
nothing but French fries.
“How are you?
Feel like you’re recovering?”, one of them said.
"Yeah, I’m don’t
feel that nauseous anymore. Please explain to me again,
what happened last night?”
The first guy rolled his eyes with exhaustion.
"For fuck's sake,
Tobes. Before I knew it, they'd carried you out through the emergency exit.
Well, after you’d taken off that bucket trying to impersonate Lincoln with an AK64.
The other guy look at his friend, confused.
"A broom", his friend explained, "You need to
stop taking that shit, I’ve never seen a person's pupils that dilated before".
"It was a brownie,
some dude sold it to me down the corner. What can I say, I was hungry."
I like your description of the beach and the city they seem very realistic! With most of the words you are succesful in making it sound natural, but some of the incorporated words can seem a bit forced, like with the list of, but in general I think you did a good job and made it fluent and natural! :)
ReplyDeleteInteresting slice of life as a tourist in Equador. It meets the reading protocol for travel writing in that it features local color and interesting encounters (to the extent that the hung-over guys' conversation is interesting). Also it reads well as non-fiction: realistic and informative.
ReplyDeleteThe ingredients had good integration, although a little tendency to list use can be detected. I enjoyed the playful use of the Last Supper and the sign text about the buns being three for two.
I like the way you have used your own incorporated words to create the story, which makes most of the parts of the story sound realistic :)
ReplyDelete