Never Never Land
Cabo Polonio 4/17/19
Having found myself here, I wonder if this is what I was looking for. To get away from it all? Escapism? I wanted to write “ to get away from the world”, in the sense of an external world slowly and inexorably bearing down, but that phrase doesn’t seem right when it was exactly “the world” that I wanted to get out into. The endlessly varied, chaotic, beautiful world. My plan was to go live somewhere out in that world, specifically Uruguay, but I see in hindsight that I very much wanted to get far, far away from the world of the United States of 2017.
In the past twenty one months, I have been to a dizzying amount of places, but this one is different from them all. I feel as adrift as I can remember, most of the way out on the Uruguayan coast towards Brazil, in this little ramshackle village on a cape on the Atlantic. We are off the road and off the grid. Cabo Polonio is not connected to any pavement or power lines, and the electricity here comes from generators, solar panels, or little wind turbines. At night the hostels, restaurants and bars are lit by candle and lantern light. It’s quite enchanting, this place where it appears that most of the humans are either drinking yerba mate or smoking marijuana, or both. If there was a place to be lost, this might be lost heaven.
It’s not that the tentacles of American culture don’t reach here — the constant taking of selfies to be posted on Instagram, then cross-posted on Facebook and used as WhatsApp profiles is just as big here as anywhere — but I believe, of the five hundred or so people residing on this cape at this moment, I am the only American. Most of the small number of Americans who come out this way only make it as far as the glamorous Punta del Este, and people are surprised I’ve found my way here.
If the goal was to get away from the U.S., 2017, I have accomplished it. Cabo Polonio is away. I have escaped. Of all the humans I know on the earth, I’m not sure that a single one knows where I am. A good number of people do know I’m in Uruguay, and though I’m a little off the beaten path, I am definitely in that country. This place is definitive of one aspect of the culture — this might be the capital of hippie Uruguay.
I find myself adrift, and at a distinct crossroads in my journey. The next real step might be a thousand miles. Of course, there is the temptation of taking no step at all and staying here, at least until I figure out which direction to go. But I feel a sense of urgency to get to where I’m going, if for no other reason than finances. I have just about finally run out of money. My best friend Chris has reportedly deposited a loan of a thousand dollars into my bank account, but that is all debt, and will only last a month at best. As soon as I start any serious transit, it will go faster. So wherever I go at this point needs to be where I’m going, where I will settle down for awhile and get a job. And there are risks involved with staying too long in never never land. Walter, who manages the Viejo Lobo hostel where I am staying, came here seven months ago for a weekend, and never left. I get the sense he will be here for years.
In need of counsel, a few minutes ago I tried to call my brother Daniel. When navigating matters large or small or making pressing decisions, I might ask my Dad or best friend Chris, but when I need to find my bearings and get down to what’s what, I often turn to my brother. He’s a farmer and carpenter/builder, and when not overwhelmed by the various responsibilities and projects he’s always taking on, he has a close-to-the-earth wisdom. He’s always had that. Even as a little kid he’d say things that would surprise adults and us older kids, a way of cutting through the fog.
After dialing him on Whatsapp, listening to the muted nothing of my nonexistent connection with Virginia, it quickly became clear that the wifi at this hostel, only available at night, is nowhere good enough for an audio call. The wifi is so tenuous that during the day it has to be conserved solely for Walter to handle the business of the place. If we guests and hangers-on were to log on too, the whole operation would fall apart. Though it was sad to have my brother right on the line there and not be able to talk to him, it feels only right and fair that you can’t just make a phone call out of never never land.
Cabo Polonio is this charming, slightly bizarre windswept village roughly two hundred fifty kilometers east of Montevideo. It is separated from Ruta-10 by a national park and wildlife reserve. Tall pine forest mixed with prairie land leads out to a gentle bluff, and below that is a wide region of dunes. There doesn’t appear to be so much as a gravel road through any of this. The dunes give way eventually to long majestic beaches, except at the tip of the cape, where a grassy stretch of land extends out into the ocean. There are rocky cliffs, and at land’s end a fetching old lighthouse that looks to be made of stone. It could be Maine, but more desert, maybe a bit like Point Reyes in northern California. The natural landscape is stark and pretty, the feel hazy, dreamlike.
On the grass and sand of the cape some hundred structures, mostly small houses and bungalows, are laid out without benefit of streets or any semblance of a grid plan. There are a couple of shops including a food market/general store, plus a lot of stands and blankets of arts and crafts and food that spring up during the day. Five or six restaurant bars with outdoor seating in the yards, a smattering of rustic hippie Uruguayan hostels, and a very psychedelic-looking town museum called Aldea Infinita, which everyone talks about going to while they’re endlessly sitting around.
If you don’t have your own four wheel drive, the only way in is on these large-frame trucks with platforms. Only serious 4x4s can make it over the dunes, and so there aren’t many vehicles in Cabo Polonio. These transport trucks are somewhat reminiscent of the chivas of the Colombian Andes: passengers ride up on the back, where there are rows of benches covered by a roof. Here they just call them camiones, a very non-descriptive word for trucks.
Yesterday afternoon I arrived at the the park entrance on the highway after an hour-long bus from La Pedrera. The visitor’s center is where you buy tickets for the truck, and I was told there would be an ATM. In fact there was, but it was out of order. There hadn’t been a machine in La Pedrera, so I was getting very low on cash. I probably had enough on hand to get through a couple days, but maybe not even. The alternative was to buy a ticket for the next bus going east and ride to Castillos, the nearest town with an ATM, then catch another bus back. I would spend a not-insignificant amount of money in the process of getting money, as transportation here is not cheap. I decided to take my chances, but made sure to buy a return ticket for the camion just in case.
When it came time for the next truck to leave, about thirty of us climbed up on the back and all the bags were strapped to the roof. There were a handful of backpackers in the group, but mostly it was youngish to middle age Uruguayos and Argentinos on vacation. They packed us in tight, but not on top of each other. Everyone got a seat, more or less. This country feels quite civilized compared to many that I’ve come through; there is a certain sense of restraint. In many places they would have squeezed double the number of people on these trucks.
We rode through the pine woods along little rutted dirt tracks, then traversed the dunes. On the twenty minute ride we passed several camiones traveling opposite, leaving Cabo Polonio, with many of the passengers waving. It seemed they were excited for us. After fifteen minutes we hit the beach and drove the rest of the way on the harder, partially wet sand.
They let us off on a beach at the western edge of town and it wasn’t at all clear which way to go. There wasn’t a road or even a real path, just random houses and buildings. The passengers managed to disperse a dozen different ways, and I just started wandering. This is now smack in the middle of la Semana de Turismo — known in most of Latin America as Semana Santa — and Cabo Polonio at least is buzzing with people. Every house seems occupied and there are tents in lots of yards. Given that La Pedrera had been a ghost town, I expected it would be even quieter here, as this is so much more remote. But apparently the word is out, and this is a destination.
Immediately I could see why. I didn’t walk far before having to set down my bags to take pictures. There is something so peaceful about being in a place without cars, without streets. This feels far-off, not beholden to the normal rules of life, and the people who arrive here seem to have a slight look of enchantment about them. The closest I can conjure it, it’s like Patagonia — which I’ve never been to — crossed with Burning Man and the coast of Maine. It has this kind of make-it-up-as-you-go-along type of emergent society feel.
Without knowing where I was going, I naturally found my way to the Viejo Lobo — the Old Wolf — a little old cottage house covered in murals, and a rainbow colored roof, where I had a dorm bed reserved for the next two nights. Before making it inside, I met Walter — pronounced “Valtair” — the bearded, kind-faced brasileño in his thirties who runs the place, sitting in the sand yard. I liked him and his impish grin right away. He was expecting me, as this hostel has the same owner as Alta Piedra in La Pedrera. Guillermo, the manager there, had reserved a bed for me at a discounted rate, which was still pricey and the most I’d paid since Montevideo.
As opposed to the absurd 2:1 staff-to-guest ratio at the last hostel, this one is full up with twenty four guests, and there are only Walter, Gabriel, also from Brazil, and the latter’s girlfriend, a wispy young woman who I haven’t seen talk to anyone but him. This other Gabriel is about forty five or so and is the chef. He is tall and somewhat brooding, cooks the dinner at night, hangs around all day smoking big joints and will occasionally watch the door if he feels like it. Very few hostels have a “chef”, but he appears to be something like one. Last night’s offering was Corvina a la Plancha and tonight was Strogonoff de Camaron. His meals look and smell delicious, but I have to limit all unnecessary expenditures. At my repeated declining, the chef gives off slight airs of taking offense, but he is above caring all that much what I do.
After setting down my bags in a very — cozy, we’ll say — dorm room upstairs stuffed to the gills with bunks and mattresses and baggages, I went down to the kitchen to boil some water. It was early evening and Uruguay so it was time for my daily yerba mate ceremony. An evening walk with the simple goal of finding a good spot to sit and take your mate is a great introduction to a place. I set out towards land’s end, and before long found myself on some rock slabs at the height of the bluff, not far from the lighthouse.
This was the highest point on the cape, with a long view of endless beach stretching back west towards La Pedrera, where supposedly you can walk in nine hours. On the other side was the haphazard town, buildings scattered like mushrooms about the grasslands. There were little far-off figures walking the beach, families climbing on boulders below the lighthouse, some surfers in wetsuits still bobbing the waves, hoping for one more, the last camiones of the day heading back for civilization. This was a special place. If this was not my destination, I knew that at least I’d made it to somewhere.
Stayed up on the rocks until the sun had set behind the dunes, and found my way back to the hostel. Took a seat at the little table next to the front door where Walter holds court and greets people coming and going. For a while we were joined by Hannah, a young blonde German woman. They drank beers while I worked on my second thermos of water over my mate. When you start going for the second thermos in a row, you know your yerba mate habit is becoming excessive.
Walter is from the south of Brazil, about a hundred kilometers from the border with Uruguay. He came down here for the first time last year for a weekend and never left. Painted houses, cooked at a restaurant, and is now managing this hostel. When he showed up he didn’t really speak Spanish, and now seems pretty damn fluent. Some would say there’s not such a distance from Portugeuse, but in the last six weeks, since Buenos Aires when I started regularly encountering Brasileños, I’ve encountered many struggling mightily with Spanish. I found very few people from Brazil in the fifteen months I was in Colombia, Ecuador and Perú. Down here there are a lot more, but this is a lot closer to their country.
Hannah is twenty one, a baby, and has been traveling for a year. She is one of those completionists who start in Cartagena and make it all the way to Ushaia. I am a would-be completionist; I haven’t fully given up on my migration south to the end of the earth, but I’m not willing to do whatever it takes to complete it, namely, taking on a lot more debt. She did it and is now on the other side, volunteering at a hostel in La Paloma just west of La Pedrera, and has come here for a couple days off. Precocious, bubbly, confident. I get no signs of travel fatigue from her. Twenty one suits this lifestyle much better than forty one.
We three talked for a long while, almost all in Spanish. Hannah of course as a German speaks perfect English, but Walter speaks very little. This is probably my ideal conversational setting for Spanish — with non-native speakers who are comfortable with the language but aren’t fluent enough to have picked up a lot of slang or speak so fast. We talked about Cabo Polonio, Uruguay, traveling and hostel work, and then it was time for Walter to make the dinner with the other Gabriel, and me to start making mine. Luckily there are two kitchen areas, one for guests and one for the management. I made a soup with some things I’d bought at the little market not far from the hostel: lentils, tomato, zucchini, carrot, onion and garlic.
Lentils — lentejas — are something you will find the whole way from Mexico down here. I wouldn’t have expected that. In an hour or so you can make a fine soup from them. Growing up my Mom would make a lentil soup with tomatoes and carrots, and I’d grate excessive amounts of mozzarella cheese over it. This time I threw in a couple heels from aged cheeses I’d been saving for just such an occasion. Though I know I like a good lentil soup, every time I think: how good can a soup of lentils and common vegetables be? Once again, pretty damn good.
Afterwards I sat by a smoky bonfire with many seriously stoned people, and eventually Walter suggested I get out my guitar. A campfire is my preferred for playing music, so I was happy to oblige. Unfortunately, it was the same kind of scene I’d found in La Pedrera. A show without any audience participation, with minimal acknowledgement that I was even playing. People were at least mostly quiet, though part of that is that they were really, really stoned.
They weren’t expressing enough enthusiasm for me to know that I should keep playing, so after I’d finish a song I’d think, alright, that’s enough, I’ll put my guitar away. But every time, someone would ask for some super popular song I don’t know and I’d play the closest thing I could think of, that they don’t know. I have avoided learning many of those songs that every campfire guitar player should know, but maybe I should make a list of Songs Everyone Knows and learn some.
Found a couple sweet spots with No Woman No Cry, which I haven’t played in years, and Hey Jude, which I’d learned playing with Emily in Arequipa. But mostly it was playing to people who were kind of but not really paying attention, and probably would have been talking, except for the fact that no one else was talking and they were so stoned. Don’t get me wrong — I’m by no means anti-marijuana and enjoy it myself — but people using it to excess tend to be pretty damn boring.
Finally, I had enough, and went inside the hostel. On the dining table, I happened upon a copy of Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina by Eduardo Galeano, perhaps the most famous Uruguayo writer. I’d seen this book around on my journey, and tried several times to read it, but the language was a bridge too far. This was the first English copy I’d seen, The Open Veins of Latin America. I sat down immediately and started reading on the spot, knowing it would very likely be gone by the next day.
Galeano’s book is a passionate telling of how Latin America came to be the way it is. In short, it supplied the resources and wealth behind colonial and imperial Europe, and then raw materials for a capitalist world. It was kept in a weakened state for exploitation by brutal authoritarian colonists, then by caudillos and dictators sponsored by foreign powers in exchange for continued access to the plunder. The book doesn’t so much bring novel information as it illuminates the whole. It was banned in the 1970s under the dictatorships of Uruguay, as well as Argentina and Chile, all very much in the tradition it is condemning, all bankrolled by the U.S. I stayed up late and read the first hundred pages until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. It felt like almost a sacred text.
It is now well into the nighttime on my second night on the cape. Everyone is sitting by the big fire they make each night. My mood has improved somewhat as the music has changed from EDM, which forced me to take a walk around the village, to relatively old-school hip hop pop. Here at the edge of the world we heard “Wasn’t Me” and “Shoop” and “No Diggity” while the little windmill turbines above the house switched on and off with shifting gusts. When I say I wanted to get away from “it all”, EDM is definitely part of that. I haven’t even considered getting out my guitar.
I think this is as far along the Uruguayan coast as I need to go. The next step requires a turn of some sort — it feels clear that having made it here, there is no point in just going to another spot along the coast. It doesn’t seem necessary to go further up to Punta del Diablo or the frontera with Brazil, which are the next main stops. This is as deep as I need to get, and I could stay here for awhile; indefinitely, I suppose. Walter was talking today about a volunteer spot opening up. While I’m not sure this would be the right thing to do, I am hesitant to start traveling not knowing where I’m going, and there are reasons to stay.
This is an iconic place; a lot of interesting humans come out here to the end of the land, and I would meet many of them. I would use a ton of Spanish — I’m speaking that language the vast majority of the time. I would stop spending money for the most part — they’d feed me dinners and I’d have a bed. It would be something, and I do feel like I’m somewhere, but it doesn’t feel real here. I’m realizing that what I was looking for was not so much getting away from it all as finding a good life to live. It occurs to me that I’m looking for some kind of real life, and I don’t think that’s here in never never land.
When I woke up on my third day in Cabo, they were playing Jack Johnson on the stereo outside. His laid back beach music makes sense here. I am sitting out in the hostel’s front yard, drinking my morning tea. There is a lot of activity around: a constant succession of kettles boiled for mate, people coming and going from the kitchen, a constant flickering from the lighting of joints, guests leaving with bags in tow. It is otherwise a peaceful and lovely morning. A layer of low fish-scale clouds set against a faded blue sky, a silvery sun over the sea. As a whole, Uruguay is a fairly relaxed place, but time is altogether altered here. Two nights at the Viejo Lobo feel like a week.
Last night around eleven, at Walter’s request I reluctantly got my guitar out to play a couple songs in a break between DJs, and it was different. Whether because of the hour or the crowd that happened to be around the fire, people were much more receptive than the night before, and even better, a white South African woman staying at the hostel came and sat down next to me, and started singing. We knew some songs in common, and if I played stuff she didn’t know she would sing backup harmonies, or sometimes just make up her own words.
She is one of those people who recognize that a guitar around a fire shouldn’t be a show, but a chance to participate, to commune. A lot of people think of music as something that other people do, but I’m certain it’s what all humans did for tens of thousands of years. Sat by fires and made music, probably often without any instruments, music against the night and the wild animals, music for the love and pain they felt, for the spirits and the ancestors. This woman, whose name I lost in the night and who is gone already, knew that, and she was not only willing but a capable singer. It was such a pleasure to create music with someone.
I have decided to leave while I still can. I’ll hang out until early afternoon, though I have to have my bags packed and out of my dorm room shortly. I’m on the verge of running out of cash — not money, as apparently there is some of that in my bank account, though I haven’t actually confirmed it — but actual access to cash. So whether I’m leaving or not, very shortly I will need to take a truck and a bus to the nearest ATM, and I feel like when I leave here I might as well just go. I am ready to not be traveling anymore but to be in the next place I’m going to live. To settle into something, find some students to teach English to, make some money, have a sense of usefulness. I’m ready to meet the people I am going to know for awhile, not just more travelers who I’ll likely never see again after tomorrow. But where?
After my experience failing to find decent work in Montevideo, I had decided that I didn’t want to go to the next place until I had something concrete lined up, a job I could actually subsist on. The universe isn’t cooperating with that plan, here on day nine of my week on the coast. From the twenty or so emails I’ve sent to schools in Argentina, I’ve gotten one job offer, in Salta, teaching mostly business English twelve to twenty hours a week at six dollars per hour. It is less than inspiring and not enough for me to live on, but it’s something. Salta is a lot cheaper than Montevideo, and I liked it better. Perhaps I need to take the first step, although I’ve taken a whole lot of steps already.
Yesterday Walter was talking about me staying on as a volunteer, which I would be open to, but he hasn’t mentioned it today. Meanwhile, I am planning to leave and still not sure where to, not even today. Probably back to Montevideo? Perhaps the next day one step further to Buenos Aires? Make a solid push for Salta and just commit to making it work there? It sounds exhausting. Maybe give Montevideo one more try. I don’t know. I would go back to Perú, to Arequipa — my life there looks very good from this vantage point — but for visa reasons I’m not allowed back in that country until September at the earliest.
I was just sitting here writing, trying to figure out what to do with my day and my life, next to two pretty women: Valentina, a teacher in Montevideo, and the South African woman who I thought was gone but has reappeared. My uncertainties were being assuaged by a perfectly tranquilo day, when without warning, the dark side of never never land suddenly revealed itself. A bizarre and disturbing situation just ensued in front of the hostel, jarring me out of my existential ponderings.
A Japanese couple, I’d say mid-twenties, came up to talk to Walter, but they don’t speak Spanish and he doesn’t speak English, and certainly not Japanese. Walter looked around the various people hanging out in the yard, and decided that I had the best command of both languages of anyone here, so I became the traductor. It should have been Valentina, who is an English teacher and almost bilingual, but she’s so quiet that Walter didn’t know that.
The Japanese guy introduced himself as Yoshi and explained in urgent tones that the night before an Italian who was staying here at the Viejo Lobo had been hanging out at the bar at their hostel. After much drinking, this Italian had attempted to rape his girlfriend. They were here to find and confront him.
“¿Que dijo?” Walter asked me. “No es bueno,” I said, daunted by the idea of translating this. “Tenemos un problema.” I didn’t know a lot of crucial words, but I did my best. There wasn’t much that could be done. Yoshi wanted to search the hostel, and Walter couldn’t let him do that. Next he wanted to look at the list of guests — Walter said it wasn’t possible. He said there wasn’t any Italian man staying here, only three Italian chicas who soon happened to come outside. They said they hadn’t met the man in question either. This was definitely by far the most intense translation work I’ve done.
The situation quickly came to an impasse. Walter said he was sorry for what happened, but he had to take care of the hostel guests, and couldn’t give out their information. They could wait if they wanted, to see if the man in question showed up, but to do anything more, they would have to get the police. I thought carefully about each word Walter was saying, making sure I was not giving bad information. Apparently there is one part-time police officer in Cabo Polonio, and the couple left to try to track him down. Understandably perhaps, the young Japanese woman hadn’t said a single word.
Walter and I shook our heads, sighed. That was intense. “No es bueno,” he said, imitating me and laughing. The other Gabriel came up and Walter explained the situation to him in Portugeuse, and at some point he gestured to me and said “não é bom,” and they both thought that was very funny. I hadn’t meant it to be. I felt very weird about the whole thing — the Japanese guy had vigilante energy, and on the other side I wasn’t sure if somehow I hadn’t been part of harboring a rapist. I didn’t think there were any Italian men staying at the hostel, but it was possible he’d just spoken good enough Spanish that I hadn’t picked him out. It also felt ominous that I was getting mixed up with this right before leaving town.
A bit later I went into the hostel and in the little back sitting room, I happened upon a man crouching down hiding and peeking out the window. He was about my age, with dirty blonde hair. I’d seen him the day before, and had taken him for an Argentino. I knew immediately who he was. He looked at me with a terrified expression that said “don’t give me away.” Before I could think of what to say or do, he started speaking to me in broken English. He said his name was Stratto and he had listened to the conversation from his room. “Grazie,” he said, and I said, “don’t thank me, I was only the translator.” I didn’t want his thanks. “Yoshi is here now?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t want to hear his side of the story, but he dove into it.
He apparently had been partying the last few nights with the Japanese couple, and last night, late, Yoshi had gone out dancing and left him with his girlfriend. “One thing lead to another,” he said. I wondered with his basic level of English, how he knew that expression. Movies, maybe? When Yoshi had come back he found them making out, and got very angry. In Stratto’s telling, the girlfriend had accused him of rape later to try to make things better with her boyfriend.
I didn’t like this story and didn’t want to be any more part of it. Stratto said he was scared and I said he should be, and that I was going outside. “No tell him,” he said. I sighed, and said “I can’t promise you that,” and walked out before he could say anything.
I told Walter who I’d found, and he said “por supuesto”. Of course he knew. It was a very small hostel and he was the only person checking everyone in. “¿Que piensas?” I asked, and he said “Yo no sé.” He and Gabriel went inside to talk to the Italian.
Soon Yoshi came back, alone this time, and asked if he could go in. I was checked out of the hostel, planning to leave in a couple hours, but suddenly I had taken on some position of responsibility at the place. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I can’t let you in.” Who knows what had really happened the night before, and Walter had made it very clear that he had to protect his guests and the hostel. Yoshi said that the policeman wouldn’t come to the hostel immediately, that he had to call for other police to come from another town, which took a long time. I told him I would get Walter but he said that was okay and disappeared around the side of the building. He came back holding a liter size glass bottle by the neck. Oh no. “What are you gonna do with that?” I asked, though I could easily imagine. “Just in case,” he said.
The other Gabriel came back outside, had seen Yoshi walk up with the bottle, and for the first time got involved. I was back to fraught, high-pressure translation work, which I was definitely not being paid enough for. Gabriel told him strongly he had to leave, and other things. Unfortunately, Gabriel’s Spanish isn’t very good, and he thinks he can just substitute Portuguese words for Spanish ones. Maybe you can, but I was having a hard time figuring them out. I was now translating broken language from angry people, but the message was clear. I probably didn’t even need to be translating. Walter, hearing the commotion, came out, and eventually Yoshi did leave, though with a wild look in his eye, and I saw that he simply went two buildings down and then cut around to the back of the hostel.
I went inside to tell Walter, and saw Stratto hiding under a window, terrified. “He kill me,” he said. It seemed possible. I didn’t say anything, just made a grimace. Walter and Gabriel and I went outside. “No lo dejes entrar,” Walter commanded — don’t let him in — “voy a buscar la policia,” and he left. Gabriel went around towards the backyard to intercept Yoshi. Here I was, now guarding the hostel alone. Other people had been around the whole time but were still just lounging around in hammocks and chairs, living their hippie beach vacation dream. How did I get so deep into this? I decided to just sit down and write about it. These damn humans.
Luckily I wasn’t forced to deal with much on my watch. In half an hour Walter came back with the police officer, who wasn’t even wearing a uniform, just a hat, and they went to find Yoshi, who I’d seen creeping around the periphery, now with another Japanese guy. Clearly he thought Stratto was inside and was waiting for him to make a run for it. I saw that they were all talking, and then Gabriel appeared at the door, looked both ways, and shuttled the fugitive with his bags out the front door, shoving him in the opposite direction from his pursuers. Stratto hurried off around a corner. A couple minutes later, Yoshi and the other guy came rushing by. They must have figured it out somehow. And thus the whole bad scene moved on, and I was out of the line of fire. This is such a small place that I’m sure they are going to find each other. They’ll probably end up on the same truck out.
It is just after one in the afternoon, and I was planning to leave on the two o’clock truck. Now I’m thinking I would just be following the craziness, and I’ve decided to wait another hour. A compounding factor in my inaction is the fact that I’ve gotten stoned. When it seemed like the coast was clear, seeing me visibly shaken by the whole episode, Walter offered me a hit off a joint. I usually decline during the day — smoking ganja is a nighttime thing for me — but this all seemed to be part of the same movie, so I took it. It is not advisable to get stoned right before you’re supposed to do something important, cause you might well not do the thing at all.
The whole dark experience has cemented that it’s time to leave never never land, but simultaneously I became more invested here. I’m not sure to what end, but I certainly was useful to Walter and this hostel. I would just stay another night, but all the beds are taken, and I don’t feel like looking for another hostel.
Figured I’d ask Walter one more time if a bed had opened up tonight, knowing one hadn’t but hoping he would suggest something. I called over: “¿Al final, tienes una cama para esta noche? Para el traductor?” He replied “Gabriel tiene algo para ti.” Hmmm. I turned questioningly to the large man whose name I share, lying in the hammock with his girlfriend, smoking a joint. “Vamos a andar,” he said, though it didn’t look like we were going to walk anywhere anytime soon. “¿Ahora?” I asked, and he said “Paciencia.” It looks like never never land might want to keep me for awhile.
