Given my time here, I thought it was important that I write one final ode to this country that has been my home for the past eight months. Right now I am sitting in the airport, not even beginning to comprehend that when the plane leaves the ground, the look I get at the ant-like city below me will be the last for at least a couple of years. And what has this year meant to me? Right now that is difficult to say. Through sleepiness, and illness and a failure to grasp that I am leaving, I have come to the conclusion that what this year has been for me and all that I have learned will become apparent only when I have left.
I spent the last couple of hours of my time in Ecuador with a lovely Scottish woman I had met in my hostel. She had been travelling for the last year all throughout latin america. Her name is Lily. We talked while she filled up her hot water bottle and while I made myself some toast and peanut butter. We watched tv together for a while, but not before exchanging my peanut butter, jam and bread for some of her hardboiled eggs and mayonnaise. We were both very happy with this trade.
My last taxi ride in Ecuador was with a man named Luis. He asked all the familiar questions; where are you from? what were you doing here? where is your boyfriend? He didn't overcharge me for the ride.
Now in the airport, I was befriended by a woman from Quebec who saw the Canadian patches on my backpack. Though I am sure that after this journey to Miami we will have been nothing more than passing acquaintances in each others lives, it is nice to have company, even if its just for a little while.
I am not heading back to Canada just yet though. I will be stopping (more like back tracking) to Costa Rica to visit a friend for three weeks before the final stretch of my journey is realized. Until then, consider me airborne, in between other places and home.
So I suppose that this is the final post of my journey in Ecuador.
All I can say is that it has been an incredible, valuable and challenging experience.
I can't have imagined spending my year anywhere else.
Thank you Ecuador.
Un abrazo. Nos vemos.
-Sarah
