The Musings of Matt Hayes: Leaving Canoa

Time slips by if I don’t pay attention, and the last week in Canoa did just that.

Two days before coming to Ecuador I swung my leg over my R6 to head to Ocean Beach, dropping my camera out of my pocket - it broke when it hit the ground. I thought I could just buy one in Quito but prices are roughly twice what they are in the States so instead I bought one online and asked Aimee to send it down to me. The thing about Canoa though is that mail only gets delivered once a month, and its much more likely to actually arrive if you send it to the post office two towns away which requires a bus and boat to get to. So Aimee packed a USPS Flat-rate box full of contact solution, gummi bears, and peanut butter (which is worth its weight in gold amongst the gringos) and sent it on to the post office in Bahia. I waited two weeks and then started making the trek to Bahia to check the mail.

The shortest time it ever took was three and a half hours. One of my favorite trips to the post office started with my thumb out on the edge of town. A farmer slowed down enough for me to sling myself into the back of his pickup, modified with an extra tall bed. I didn’t choose those words for syntactical flow, his truck never came to a stop. I stood in the back absorbing potholes with my knees as we battled for pole position with other taxis, trucks, and busses down a two lane road at 100km/hr. He didn’t ask for money but I gave him the bus fare anyway because I had heard that was customary. After a short boat ride across the bay I showed up at the post office ten minutes before the sign on the door said they would open. I walked across the street and got a delicious almuerzo at a table where I could see the post office door. They never opened. The sign on the door said they were open from 2-4, and it was now 3:15. I finished and walked back across the street and stood with an Ecuadorian waiting for his mail. They still didn’t come. I sat on the ground writing in my journal until 4:15 when the post man showed up on his moto and casually unlocked the offices. He looked for my package for a couple seconds, shrugged, and told me it wasn’t there, not caring a bit that I had just waited for 2 ½ hours for him to show up. Oh Ecuador…

Ecuadorian breast cancer awareness stamp.

I was living a block from the beach in a long two story building. The front of it has lots of plants clustered around columns that support a terrace going along the whole second floor. The only way to get to my room was to walk into a common area on the first floor, up the stairs, and along the front patio to my room. To keep things interesting on Wednesday night, they locked the first floor room before I got home. I knocked on the owners door for a while but, although they confirmed the next morning they had heard me, they didn’t answer. My only option left was to scale the side of the building gripping a small piece of hammock rope with one hand and using flowerpots as stepping stools. After two failed attempts and some minor cuts and bruises, I finally broke into my own place early Thursday morning.

I finally got the package on Friday and that night I left Canoa. I’d been saying that as soon as the package arrived I’d leave but after spending a month in Canoa it was starting to feel like home. I met some great people there, had an awesome place to stay for $4 a night, and was enjoying the small town atmosphere. Two long bus rides later I got to Baños, a ridiculously cool place.