Hola Loja

After a delightful and unexpected yoga session in the Guayaquil airport (empty room with bamboo plants...needed to stretch my creaky bones and something about it just said 'ohm') I was finally aboard my freshly booked flight to Loja where Dany and Jorge were waiting for me.

It seemed like we had just taken off when we started to make our descent. It had been almost a year since I'd seen these immense mountains shooting out of an absurdly green valley but this was a geography I had not forgotten. Down to the leaves blowing in the wake of our landing. And just like that it was like I had never left. In the one room arrivals area, I saw Jorge and Dany on the other side of the doors, where they had to wait. I immediately began flailing like the wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tubemen. Short of running through the plastic flaps separating the luggage loaders from the luggage grabbers, I was the first person near the bags and when I had them with me, I ran over probably 3 people and knocked the wind out of a guard with my big roller bag but it didn't matter because I was about to give much awaited hugs to some of my best friends--not just in Ecuador--but on this whole planet. It felt surreal. The air, which for the past 24 hours had been of the gross recycled airport variety, even felt more vibrant and contributed further to the zigzag feeling I had all over. All my Spanish exploded out of my heart and mouth like I hadn't forgotten one word and we hopped in the car for a quick Popsicle snack.

Jorge regaled us with tales of his recent travels in Peru with Megan (my roommate in Ecuador last year) and though we all wished she could be there, it was somehow still enough to know that she had just recently seen Jorge and had the desire to return to Latin America so soon too. It just further enforced the profundity of our experience here and the quality of people we met. Our coconut-berry-mint mango  pops (a truly Ecuadorian combination...) dripped as the dusty winds of Catamayo swirled around us. We were just sitting at a random corner store, but because even that in and of itself is something more markedly Latin American, I was so happy. If I had to turn around and get back on a plane to the US, even that little chat over Popsicles while listening to honking horns, churns of conversations in Spanish and sharing the same space with two people I love dearly would have been worth it. Luckily, it was just the first of my 10 days here, so there was far more to come.

We hopped back in the car on the winding road back to Loja. Something about that road feels tattooed into my memory, down to every last curve in the road. And when we came around the curve revealing the view of Loja below, I knew I was home, all the sparkling lights below.

ReLAX

Two things are wrong with this picture: I'm wearing PANTS and I'm in the international terminal but cannot find my connecting flight to Panama City...once again, trying not to panic, I search for the Copa airlines booth and simply cannot find it. So I continue to search, this time for the help desk, which LAX likes to hide for some reason. I finally encounter it and am greeted by a very made up Eastern European woman who informs me that Copa airlines is actually a few terminals back. 

So once again, I was in the wrong terminal, sweating with my bags, wanting to kill someone from United Airlines who mistakenly directed me to Tom Bradley. I'm sure you're thinking well can't you just take the shuttle between terminals? Well here's the thing with that--it's a crappy bus that comes once every ??? and in the time you spend waiting you could probably just walk there. Not to mention it's one way. And it's a bus: i/e have fun dragging your huge suitcase on board. Also, I hope you're not disabled because you're going to need a hovercraft to use this airport.

Steam fuming out my ears (did I mention I hate this airport...?) I finally find the Copa airlines booth and am delighted to at least see that there is absolutely no line. Security is a breeze and I find my gate, which, per the norm, was the veeeeeeery last one. Everyone at my gate is speaking Spanish, with most people blasting something from their phone with no headphones as an ambiguous Latino guy stares at me wondering where I'm from. I can tell he wants to talk to me but doesn't know in what language. Sorry pal, from now on, I do not espeek engleesh.

Because...Ecuador

I am about to have a heart attack because in addition to being on hold with Tame (Ecuadorian airline) to change my flight, all my other plans have changed too. Oh and I think I forgot all my Spanish. Silly me for trying to plan something in advance in Ecuador...

Just a week before my arrival, Jorge found out he needed knee surgery on the very day after I got there. Can you tell your surgeon to come to the beach...? Dany naturally didn't want to travel alone all the way from Loja to Guayaquil so we sought Cris out and filled Jorge's spot...until she realized she had a supletorio exam and a wedding to testify at on the exact dates we were supposed to be at the beach...ok so Dany will fly solo...until she couldn't get a bus ticket for the date she needed. This is classic Ecuador. Not to say it is a disorganized mess and you can't make travel plans in advance...but it's kind of a disorganized mess where you have to wait til the last minute to make most plans even if waiting til the last minute is not advisable. You just hope you're lucky and always come prepared with a plan B. It's the good and the bad part of Latin America. Good because you have flexibility in the moment and don't have to prepare months in advance to do great things but bad because sometimes your plan B becomes plan Z...and plan Z finds you outside a bus station at 5am hoping there's a space for you...

We were maybe to plan M--and it all happened within 24 hours of my departure. Still not in Latina Nikki mode, I absolutely panicked, already preparing to go to the beach alone. Luckily, Dany gracefully took the reins and changed my flight so that I would first arrive to Loja. Oh. Ok...little by little my r's became rr's and I was checking out of gringa Nikki mode.

After squeaking out my final torturous workday, I raced home and packed, because the night before, already in Ecuador mode, I decided to stay out all night with friends in lieu of packing. Worth. It.

Now it's off to LAX because god forbid I try to start an international trip stress and sweat free...

Nos vemos de nuevo

Well it hasn't even been a year since I left Ecuador and I am already making my way back. Once again, I did a terrible job blogging when I lived there last year, and unfortunately by now it's too late to go back and fill in the missing spaces, so let's just take it back to that very last day...

I sat in the Catamayo airport with Juan and Fernanda very aware of the clock ticking above my head. It wasn't supposed to end like this, but after a series of work visa complications and general shadiness, I had to call it quits and flee back to the US despite having actually secured a job in Loja. I wanted so badly to stay, but the reality of the situation became clear and I thought it better to return to Latin America under less desperate circumstances instead of being manipulated and not even have a work visa. Not to mention the additional pressure of the pending student loan payments--being an adult is complicated. They tell you to follow your dreams and passion, but also you have to be responsible for yourself...

So there I was and finally my flight was announced. We bid each other adieu, me with tears the size of tropical storm raindrops. I had absolutely no idea (nor confidence) of when I would return to Latin America in general, much less my little home in Loja tucked away in the southern Ecuadorian Andes. I cried for an hour, for two hours, for a week, for a month...and as the sun disappeared over the Ecuadorian horizon, so did I.

What felt like a grueling several hours later, I found myself in the Spokane airport wondering why on earth I left paradise to come back to this crummy reality. Who cares about the loans when I could die tomorrow? I felt like I belonged nowhere and had absolutely no direction, nor any leads to even propel me forward. 

Little by little, I came back to myself, though my heart was still very much broken. Until I got my first paycheck from Clearwater...and in addition to using it to pay off some of those cumbersome loans, I splurged on a plane ticket back to Ecuador. 

It's a traveler's dilemma: do I return to somewhere I know and love or do I venture to somewhere new? I pondered if I should instead go to Japan or India or heck why not Latvia..but still felt that I needed to go back to Ecuador and be with my friends and family in Loja. It didn't matter if I even did anything noteworthy during the trip--rather I just wanted to see them, speak Spanish, eat some amazing food and breathe in a little bit of that Andes air. 

It's been a long 3 months waiting for the calendar to say July 24th, but finally it's here and I get to go home for vacation.