lurched to my side of the bus to see what was happening. The bus driver and his ayudante stepped down off the bus and got in a yelling match with the driver of the coupe, whose family was now standing behind him. He wore a white tank top that looked like it’d been stained with motor oil. He screamed and yelled while the women behind him wailed. He pointed to the damage on his car as the bus driver peeked at the side of the bus to see what damage he’d done to his own vehicle.
The yelling went on until it looked like they’d reached an agreement. Both men returned to their respective vehicles. The white coupe followed us all the way to Chone and into the bus station.
CHAPTER 11
W e arrived just as the sun was going down. Juan was waiting for me at the bus station with a few other certified ecotourism guides. They greeted me and one offered to take my bag.
“Wow, that’s really heavy,” he said, trying to lift it.
“I’m going to be here for two years,” I said.
“Oh, right.”
“But I can carry it if it’s too much.”
He handed the bag back to me. Juan and I hitched a ride in the back of a pickup heading out to La Segua and pulled into the long driveway in the dark.
The population of my host family had grown to almost twenty since my previous visit. One more of Juan’s cousins—a single mother of three in her late twenties named Sandra—was now living there. She was pretty and kind and recently divorced.
And then there was Esteban, another of Juan’s relatives, a slightly cross-eyed guy in his midthirties who had a big potbelly. Juan referred to him as an uncle, but based on my understanding of the family tree, he was actually a second cousin. I could describe this man in several ways, but the day I met him I wrote down one word about him in my notebook and underlined it: dangerous .
The room next to mine on the bottom floor now belonged to a man in his eighties who wasn’t related to the family and never spoke a word to me. No one ever gave me a straight answer on who he was or why he was there. He had old, leathery skin and walked around muttering to himself. Whenever he saw me, he waved his hands around in an odd, made-up sign language.
That first night I dragged my two duffel bags into my room and began to settle in. Right away in my dungeon-like quarters, I was jockeying for real estate with spiders, moths, and cockroaches. Within the first week, I reached my breaking point and bought some chemicals to smoke out the critters.
Before heading to the outhouse one night, I sprayed down the room with the bug spray and turned on my fan to create a cyclone of toxic air while I left. When I returned and opened the door, I was hit by an exodus of bugs toward the threshold, like when pepper spray hits a group of rioters and they scramble for the exits. The fumes from the spray were so bad I sat wearing the face mask from my medical kit as I wrote in my journal.
At night I could hear rats crawling above me in the rafters. During breakfast the next morning I mentioned the rats, and Esteban flashed me a smile, exposing several missing teeth and a lazy eye. He was overjoyed to help me with my problem.
That afternoon, he came back to the house with a box of rat poison, complete with a skull-and-crossbones warning label. He got up on a ladder and scattered the pellets about. And then we waited.
During the night, I was awakened by the sound of rats asphyxiating and vomiting to death above my head. I would hear some raspy screeching sounds followed by a plopping noise. For several mornings after that, I’d get up and sweep dead rats that had fallen from the rafters out the front door. When the old man in the room next to mine saw me doing that, he used his sign language to insist that I leave the rats by the front door for him to take care of. He would scoop them up and walk off, muttering to himself.
CHAPTER 12
A s a survival mechanism, I constantly assessed the people I met and categorized them into
The yelling went on until it looked like they’d reached an agreement. Both men returned to their respective vehicles. The white coupe followed us all the way to Chone and into the bus station.
CHAPTER 11
W e arrived just as the sun was going down. Juan was waiting for me at the bus station with a few other certified ecotourism guides. They greeted me and one offered to take my bag.
“Wow, that’s really heavy,” he said, trying to lift it.
“I’m going to be here for two years,” I said.
“Oh, right.”
“But I can carry it if it’s too much.”
He handed the bag back to me. Juan and I hitched a ride in the back of a pickup heading out to La Segua and pulled into the long driveway in the dark.
The population of my host family had grown to almost twenty since my previous visit. One more of Juan’s cousins—a single mother of three in her late twenties named Sandra—was now living there. She was pretty and kind and recently divorced.
And then there was Esteban, another of Juan’s relatives, a slightly cross-eyed guy in his midthirties who had a big potbelly. Juan referred to him as an uncle, but based on my understanding of the family tree, he was actually a second cousin. I could describe this man in several ways, but the day I met him I wrote down one word about him in my notebook and underlined it: dangerous .
The room next to mine on the bottom floor now belonged to a man in his eighties who wasn’t related to the family and never spoke a word to me. No one ever gave me a straight answer on who he was or why he was there. He had old, leathery skin and walked around muttering to himself. Whenever he saw me, he waved his hands around in an odd, made-up sign language.
That first night I dragged my two duffel bags into my room and began to settle in. Right away in my dungeon-like quarters, I was jockeying for real estate with spiders, moths, and cockroaches. Within the first week, I reached my breaking point and bought some chemicals to smoke out the critters.
Before heading to the outhouse one night, I sprayed down the room with the bug spray and turned on my fan to create a cyclone of toxic air while I left. When I returned and opened the door, I was hit by an exodus of bugs toward the threshold, like when pepper spray hits a group of rioters and they scramble for the exits. The fumes from the spray were so bad I sat wearing the face mask from my medical kit as I wrote in my journal.
At night I could hear rats crawling above me in the rafters. During breakfast the next morning I mentioned the rats, and Esteban flashed me a smile, exposing several missing teeth and a lazy eye. He was overjoyed to help me with my problem.
That afternoon, he came back to the house with a box of rat poison, complete with a skull-and-crossbones warning label. He got up on a ladder and scattered the pellets about. And then we waited.
During the night, I was awakened by the sound of rats asphyxiating and vomiting to death above my head. I would hear some raspy screeching sounds followed by a plopping noise. For several mornings after that, I’d get up and sweep dead rats that had fallen from the rafters out the front door. When the old man in the room next to mine saw me doing that, he used his sign language to insist that I leave the rats by the front door for him to take care of. He would scoop them up and walk off, muttering to himself.
CHAPTER 12
A s a survival mechanism, I constantly assessed the people I met and categorized them into
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