Cayambe, Ecuador – WARNING: This blog has adult content and contains more of a commentary on my current state of mind than any real insight into Ecuador itself. It’s a slight departure from what I normally write.
I’m sitting in a damp and cold room in a 16th centurary hacienda, unsuccessfully trying to start a fire. My attempts to keep it lit have at least helped pass an hour or two. It’s raining outside, and I’m bored of not really having any scheduled activities or anything particularly interesting to see. Luckily it’s my last night of the tour proper.
So far, I feel quite indifferent to Ecuador. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just didn’t excite me. I can’t quite figure out why. Maybe I’ve been travelling too long or already seen so much that very little seems new enough to me. Ecuador didn’t seem to offer anything dramatically unique. Thermal springs. Check, have done that several times. Hikes to waterfalls and up volcanoes, also check. Zip lining. Done. Shopping in a market. Irrelevant as no money and no room in my backpack. Which has left me with just taking in the landscape, people watching, eating the food, and whiling away hours in a coffee shop, at a bar, or in my room.
Then again, maybe it’s been the weather. For the most part, it’s been cool, with several days of overcast skies and rain, reminiscent of a London spring. I hate that kind of weather. One of the reasons I choose to take a year out travelling was to finally get some heat and sunshine.
Or maybe it’s that I’ve had a dark cloud hanging over me since I started this tour with my whole fiasco with STA. The worry of trying to find £1,000 from thin air to cover flights I’ve already paid for and the bullying I’ve received from the customer services team has left me stressed, depressed at times, anxious, and with several sleepless nights. It’s also brought to the forefront that the formal part of my travels is coming to an end. There is only two months left, and with my credit card debt mounting the thought of having to go back to work and the real world looms heavy on my mind. I try to stay in the now, but it’s hard. Especially when in June I must really get some sort of job to just clear my credit card debt if nothing else. I know I don’t deserve much sympathy from those who’ve been slaving away this past year trying to make ends meet, doing jobs they hate, whilst I’ve been out exploring the world and having the time of my life, but it’s still a depressing prospect for me. Take how you normally feel going back to work after a weeks holiday and multiple that by 52 and you’ll get a sense at the level of dread I’m facing. Add to that the prospect of having no idea what job you want to do or where you want to live, still, and well you get the picture.
And then there’s the still being single factor. There was a part of me that hoped when I set out that being out of dreary London would reignite that sparkle in my eye and somewhere along the way that would finally attract someone special into my life. Well it might have done had I actually met any guys travelling my age that were single! To be fair, there has been a handful that meet at least those two requirements, but none of them remotely interesting. My hope of meeting anyone travelling died months ago, but with only two months left it now firmly feels like a miracle. A feeling not helped by a snide comment from the 50 year old Scottish guy in our group, who turned to me on the bus today at the chorus line of James Blunt Your Beautiful – it’s time to face the truth, I’ll never be with you – and said “There you go. A song for you when your old and all alone with your cats.” A comment a little to close to the bone today which was met with a fierce, “F**k off!
In total, all of these things, particularly the last two, have combined to make the inland and amazon part of Ecuador my least favourite country visited so far.
