Savaged, Bossed and Seeing Red

Red gets up and stretches, then topples backwards off the cooler she’s been sleeping on. She falls three meters to the ground, hitting the makeshift rainwater collection tube on the way down. The cooler tumbles down after her. Vahşi and Boss race to the edge and look over while I bolt downstairs to see if she’s hurt. Red gets up and shakes herself. Slightly dazed she steps around the cooler and lets me pick her up. I run my hands over her, looking for sore spots; bruising or broken bones. None are obvious, although she displays a little stiffness later in the day, and has a sensitive back for quite a long time afterwards.

Vahşi and Boss are at my feet now, looking up expectantly. I put Red down and they sniff her, apparently conversing in indistinguishable cat-speak to see if she’s alright. It’s not the first time she’s fallen off the house. Goofy and sweet, Red is the clumsiest animal I’ve ever seen, always slipping off things and tripping over her feet. Ironically, she’s also the best hunter in the neighborhood. After the commotion settles, all three cats follow me upstairs and begin howling for breakfast.

“Red” for her blue eyes, red fur, and her passion for belly rubs and squeezy cuddles.

“Okay! Okay! I’m going!”

When I arrive at the beach with my yellow bucket, the fishing boats are just coming in. Efren’s black launch roars towards the beach then pulls up just short of the sand. Nerih swings the boat around, bow pointing seaward. Efren rolls a balsa log down the beach and two men nearby run to help him put the roller under the stern, using the breakers as leverage. The four men push the boat further up the beach. Patricio, Efren’s eldest son rolls the second log towards the boat. It’s also dragged under the outboard motor and placed under the stern. Another man joins the team and all six men grunt with the effort of pushing. The first log, now under the bow, is dragged out, pulled back to the stern and shoved underneath. This Flintstones-style maneuvering continues until the boat rests on dry sand. The rollers under the fishing boat are chocked with large rocks and the men begin sliding the nets over the sides of the launch to pick them clean. Two men work on each of the three nets, flinging prawns, fish, crabs and the odd lobster into the bottom of the boat.

“Can I take some fish?” I ask Efren.

“Grab them,” he says gruffly, short-tempered from tiredness and hunger.

He wakes at three every morning to go out to sea in the pitch dark and set his nets so people like me can swan down to the beach at a more respectable hour and sponge free seafood from him. I lean into the boat and scoop out a heap of finger-length fish for the cats. A few small catfish go into the bucket. A couple of plate-sized fish slip in on top and I’m done.

“Thanks, Efren!” I always say. “Have a great day!”

He grunts in response as I vanish with my stash to feed the starving menagerie at home. Next time, I bring him a bucket of ripe passionfruits from my garden, or a juicy ripe badea. It’s a daily routine. The fishermen are used to me begging small fish every morning. Usually I only take the ones they throw back. If there’s an edible fish or crab on offer I never turn it down. Sometimes, after a particularly bountiful catch, they’ll give me a handful of king prawns or some calamari. If I can afford it, I occasionally buy a legal-sized lobster when they’re in season.

“Vahsi” (pronounced vah-she) [Turkish for savage] The first time I touched this tiny kitten, she bit, scratched, hissed and howled and turned into a savage rage of fluff-ball.

When I arrive home, Vahşi, Boss and Red are waiting on the balcony. On seeing me with the bucket, they race downstairs and climb out their small door to rub against my legs and demand food. Slowly, I walk up the spiral staircase, careful not to stumble with three hungry cats wrapped around my ankles. The catfish lose their tails, which are tossed on the carton-lined wood floor and promptly pounced upon. The fish heads go into the vegetable patch. This gives me time to rinse off the smaller fish and put them in a pot with a handful of rice and some rainwater. While the cat food is cooking, I clean my fish and prepare breakfast; today it’s a small sea bass and a baby barracuda with grilled onion rings, sliced tomatoes and a halved maduro (ripe plantain banana). The blender whizzes bananas and passionfruit pulp into delicious juice. While I sit in a hammock and enjoy the catch of the day, unmolested by the cats who are still busy gnawing on catfish tails, I can roughly plan the rest of my day; usually gardening, sometimes writing, occasionally working to earn my broccoli with an English class for Miguel and Darwin, or baking a batch of oatmeal cookies or a chocolate cake to sell on the beach.

Apart from Red falling off the house, this is how we usually start the day. After breakfast there’s some tumbling, chasing and playful wrestling until they settle into their favorite corners for a long nap. Living with cats has been an eye-opener. Actually, I’m allergic to cats. At the time of writing, there are seven cats in the house. Now, at forty-six, I’m having my first ever kitten experience. As a kid, cats were banned from our house. But I digress slightly. Let’s go back and discover how I happen to be living with a pride of tame house-trained tigerettes.

My first feline incident is Mascara, Roberto’s cat. Dumped when the Italian surfer returns to his homeland for the second half of the year, Mascara decides to come and live with me. I don’t want him. He’s persistent. In the end he wins me over with charm and good looks; his super-cat mask and cape are hard to resist. He purrs like a Harley Davidson and loves peanut butter. He hunts rats and keeps the cockroach population down. As long as he stays outside, all is well. Mascara is popular. He’s quite a character. After teasing a dog into a fight which he inevitably wins, he goes to Morongo’s bar Punto de Encuentro in the evenings and sits in girl’s laps purring and preening. They adore him. In the mornings, he steals fish from the boats.

Mascara (The Mask) “Give me peanut butter now or I’ll do psycho-cat!”

“Does he kill rats?” growls Efren one morning after Mascara makes off with a small bream.

“Sure does,” I reassure him.

“Alright then. If he’s paying his way he won’t be killed for thievery,” he jokes, half serious.

We’re lounging in a hammock one afternoon, Mascara and I, when a friend stops by with a couple of tourists in tow. They want information about Mompiche; where to go, what to do.

We’re chatting when one of them asks, “What do you do in Mompiche?”

My friend Marie laughs and says, “She sits here in her hammock scratching her hot throbbing pussy!” She leans over and rubs Mascara’s ear. The laughing tourists can hear him purring from the other end of the balcony.

When I’m asked to work in the Galapagos Islands for a month, the people supposedly caring for Mascara poison him with rat pellets because he searches for me everywhere and cries every day. By the time I return he’s maggot fodder.

“He really missed you,” whispers Nerih, trying to console me.

Heavy-hearted, I miss Mascara too. “I’ll just have to get another cat.”

That afternoon I’m sitting on the balcony when a small black cat appears. She rubs her head against my feet, purring and sniffing my skin. Abandoned by her previous owners, she needs a home.

“How did you know?” I ask her. “You must be a witch.”

Bruja lives with me in the cabin for most of the year, keeping the rat count manageable. When I move to the newly built house she refuses to stay. Obeying Efren’s wife’s orders to retrieve my cat, I bring Bruja to the new house ten times. She leaves each time, and returns to the cabin. Her two month old kitten stays. That’s Vahşi, so named because the first time I touch her she gives my finger a nasty bite and scratches my hand to ribbons. Vahşi [pronounced vah-she] is Turkish for “savage”. She’s still not particularly friendly; only occasionally when she feels like a scratch.

A few weeks after we move, the neighbor’s cat becomes Vahşi’s best friend. She comes over every day to play, steal Vahşi’s food and sleep on her pillow. Several times I chase her away. She’s undeterred. Eventually, she refuses to go home. The lack of food and affection from the alcoholic neighbors drives her out. Red, for her rusty fur color and blue eyes, is super-affectionate and loves nothing more than a vigorous belly rub and a back scratch.

Immediately, I put both cats in a flour sack and wheelbarrow them down to Fabiola at Casablanca to be vaccinated against worms and pregnancy. The injections last six months. Meanwhile, the Canadian who’s building a house and struggling to take care of himself, begs me to take care of the tiny kitten he’s prematurely adopted. Apparently, its mother ran off, or was poisoned.

“She’ll die here by herself all day. It’s just until I’m set up,” he promises, overwhelmed with cleaning up cat poop and vomit every night after a full day on the construction site. “Just for a few weeks.”

Feeding the baby cat is beyond him. At this point, living in a house with no running water and sporadic electricity, the Canadian still finds feeding himself a daily challenge.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.” He pets the four week old kitty in his palm.

We toss a few names back and forth.

“Boss,” I say.

“Why?”

“She’s ruling your world.”

“I like it.”

“Boss” rules! Get in her hammock and she will throw you out!

Red takes one look at baby Boss and falls in love.

“Oh, look! A kitty! Can I keep her, please! Please! Please! Please!”

Now pregnant, Vahşi hates the kitten on sight.

“What is that?! Get it away from me!”

Red takes care of Boss just like a mother; all but the suckling. Now I have a smitten kitten, a pretty kitty and a fatty catty. We don’t see much of Vahşi for the gestation period. She stays upstairs on the unfinished third floor – in her own private penthouse – only descending the ladder to demand food. She hisses and spits when either Red or Boss approach. The rest of the time we are all ignored. I have to find a new bowl and put it at a distance from the other cats’ feed bowl or Vahşi won’t eat. Who knew pregnant cats have raging hormones? A revelation to me.

With the house full of hunters, all new incoming beneficial creatures are duly warned:

“You’re welcome here. Live long and multiply. Just don’t let the cats see you.”

Spiders, lizards, iguanas, geckos, frogs, butterflies, birds, grasshoppers and beetles take their chances inside the fence line along with everything else. Red is sick for two days after trying to eat a cane toad. I’m not sure how the toad fared. Sometimes I save a frog from the rainwater cistern only to watch in dismay as all three cats hunt it to death. The last time, I wait until they’re sleeping then sneak downstairs to save the drowning frog; a species I haven’t seen in the garden before. I hope it survives. I’m constantly snatching hapless tree frogs from their mouths and leaving them on the windowsill to escape into the mandarin tree right outside. However, when an opossum shows up to steal the cats’ food, it is left alone for several weeks until Boss becomes indignant and scares it away. Sunning itself in the mandarin tree, it seems the granadilla snake has never been spotted.

On the big night, Vahşi gives birth to four kittens. She hides them in the darkest corner of the storeroom downstairs. I wrap them in an old t-shirt and bring them upstairs. Under the kitchen bench, in a large cardboard box lined with a mat, the t-shirt and a “Te Amo” pillow that Miguel gave me, they spend the first three and a half weeks of their lives. Naming them is dangerous, but after four weeks I do anyway. The yellow female with fine stripes becomes Tigga. Tickles won’t leave my feet alone. Then we have Buddy, as in Holly because he’s very quiet. Finally, there’s Burke, the mottled one, named after the explorer that kept getting lost in the wild northern Australian savannah

“How can I live with seven?” I sometimes wonder, teary eyed and sneezing my way through the morning.

All the cats have dark tiger stripes and leopard spots with background colors ranging from dark brown through rusty red, creamy and white. Cute as they are, they’re banned from my bedroom. They have hundreds of places to sleep – though I think Red may have crossed the cooler off her list – and I have only one. Bed equals dead; or at least a spanking and sent out scolded. The current cat arrangement is temporary. The four kittens are to be adopted out after the veterinarian has sterilized them. Vahşi, Red and Boss will also go under the knife. Seven times four equals twenty-eight more kittens, three times a year – or more. Not if I can help it!

Volunteer vets from the Animal Protection Foundation visit Mompiche once a year to sterilize one hundred animals. I’m there. After three days working as the volunteer veterinarian’s assistant we have performed eighty-two operations, fifty-five on female dogs and cats. Unfortunately, Red was pregnant. At home she becomes a baby-stealing psycho-cat, depressed and mooning around the house. After some initial concern, Vahşi lets Red take care of her litter so that she can pursue more pleasurable activities. The lucky kittens have two mothers and Boss is the best playmate ever.

“Tickles” feeding from “Red”. “Vahsi” is his mum, but let’s “Red” take care of her brood.

It’s been more than three months now, but maybe one day the Canadian will reclaim the irrepressible Boss. Honestly, I doubt it. It appears she’s been dumped. Aptly named, Boss rules this house too. You definitely know when you’ve been Bossed. Fearless, Boss never gives up trying to play with Vahşi. After motherhood Vahşi calms down and concedes Boss’ lively cuteness. Despite her obvious adoration, Red takes occasional Boss-breaks, retreating to a secret place in the garden for an hour or two of solitude. Every night the four kittens, Vahşi and Red curl up in a hammock to sleep. Fiercely independent, Boss sleeps alone.

Meanwhile, as the newest fluff-balls bounce all over the house until they are independent enough to be adopted out, the fish bucket is filled each morning, the sneezing and itchy eyes come and go, and life purrs along at a gentle pace, until Ginger comes along . . .

Dumped at 3wks old, “Ginger” is a street rescue kitten. “Red” feeds and cares for him.

Wet Dreams…

I’m naked, standing under a waterfall. Lush tropical foliage surrounds the small lagoon. I raise my face to the sun, letting cool fresh water splash my cheeks. A trickle of cold water runs into my ear. I open my eyes, confused for a moment before I realize it’s just a dream and the water is coming from a hole in the grass roof. I’m in bed and I’m getting wet.

Rainwater cascades into the room; a natural water feature I hadn’t noticed when I’d rented the cabin a week earlier for $60/mth on a warm sunny day. Now, a stream races down the rotting floorboards, past my mattress on the floor, and surges underneath the protective plastic sheet. It trickles down the rope fastening my mosquito net to the roof beam. Mold attaches itself to my damp possessions. After the storm, in the pre-dawn silence, I can almost hear another microscopic mushroom sprouting from my Italian wool greatcoat. First thing in the morning, I puddle-skip across the yard to tell Efren Garcia, the owner, that I have a water emergency.

“There are cascades and rivers inside my cabin.”

“Okay,” he says, his wrinkled pirate-like face still sagged with sleep. “I’ll come and look. Ya mismo.”

At the sound of those two words, I am disheartened. “Ya mismo” means anytime in the near or distant future, or possibly never. There is nothing I can do.

“Okay,” I reply, resigned to wait, albeit just a tad impatiently

Alone, I return to my cabin to assess the damage. Everything is wet. My clothes. My laptop. My camera. The mattress. The floor. The whole place reeks of damp mustiness. This morning I’m supposed to go to Quito one last time to organize my life; pick up the rest of my belongings and hand over my Mariscal house keys, making the move to Mompiche permanent. Postponing the trip for one more day, I decide to stay around to make sure the roof is repaired. One more day doesn’t matter. This trip has already been postponed for two weeks after the horrific fiasco of being arrested and sent to prison.

Nearly an hour after I spoke to him, Efren comes by to inspect the cabin.

“Hmmm,” he says. Nodding thoughtfully. “We’ll have to replace the whole roof.”

That seems extreme, not to mention a little late. We’re in the heart of the wet season. Roof replacements should be done in the dry season.

“Why not try covering the roof with black plastic?” I ask, stating what I think is the most obvious immediate solution to keeping the rain out. Almost every other thatched roof in town has large sheets of plastic stretched over it.

“Well,” he explains, “the roof is very old. It should be replaced.”

One of Efren’s five sons, Morongo, built my hut over ten years ago when he was a teenager. It was famous as a place to create babies and was fondly nicknamed “The Loveshack” by everyone.

It’s a crooked structure now, with wonky walls and a lopsided floor. It’s just one room. The cold-water shower is across the yard, over the mud puddle. The nearest toilet is a bucket which is emptied over the lime and banana trees.

“But a new roof will take time. And my things are already wet.” I try to make Efren see sense. “If we put plastic on it now, we can keep the rain out straight away.”

“We’ll do a new roof fast,” he assures me.

By lunchtime, there is still no sign of activity on my roof. It’s pouring again. I try not to despair, mentally calculating the damage. At this rate, my clothes and the new mattress will be trash by the end of the week. I don’t even want to think about my camera and laptop. Not trusting when “ya mismo” will be, I pile it all in the driest spot in the middle of the room; on an ever decreasing island awash with refreshing indoor rain.

Then, putting the problem out of my head, I go swimming in the rain, letting the waves wash over my body, immersing myself up to my neck in the sea. It doesn’t help. I should be in Quito. I have things to do, people to see, problems to take care of, a chapter to close so the new one can open. I’m feeling stressed. By mid-afternoon, there is still no roof-action.

“Ya mismo,” Efren tells me when I ask what’s going on.

These are not encouraging words.

“But ya mismo can be a long time,” I tell him, smiling, making a joke, trying not to scream in frustration.

He laughs. “Ya mismo. I have to go to the hardware store first.”

Unable to hang out in my damp cabin, I try to find things to do, people to talk to. Pajaro the cow-horn jewelery-maker notices I’m tense, tells me to relax. I wish I could. I don’t tell anyone about my problem. That circle of good friends I can trust are still non-existent. I tell myself it’s out of my hands, that I have no control over it, that I just have to accept it. It’s tough. If they’re destroyed by water and mold, I can’t afford to replace my overly treasured material possessions.

The Love Shack, circa 1998. I lived here 1 Jan 2010 – 1 Oct 2011

Heading back to my cabin towards late afternoon, I find Efren putting a large sheet of black plastic on my balcony.

“Help me cut it,” he orders somewhat gently.

With pleasure! Finally, something useful is about to happen, but first we have to eat the mangoes he bought on his way back. Mangoes are available just three months of the year, only sold in season from January to March.

“Give me your knife,” he says.

I hand over the large kitchen knife and watch him peel a mango. When he’s done, he leaves the knife and the other mango on the table.

“That one is yours,” he tells me, mango juice dripping from his chin.

“Thanks,” I say, bemused at his gentlemanliness, and begin peeling the other mango.

He outlines his plan to cover the roof in black plastic to keep the rain out.

“The whole roof will be replaced in the dry season. It’s easier then,” he explains.

The man is a freaking genius! I wish I’d thought of it!

After we’ve washed sticky mango juice from our hands and faces, Efren runs the scissors down the crease as I stretch out the plastic tube. When it’s cut, we unfold the sheet and Efren measures the cabin with outstretched arms.

“Four meters.”

A rickety old ladder made from bamboo is leaned against the roof slats. Two rungs are missing. They’ve been replaced with synthetic rope. Efren climbs up the creaking ladder emitting a series of grunts and sighs. Without speaking, he descends, then vanishes.

I wait a moment, then realize he won’t be back for a while. Settling in the hammock, I hang out as Efren discusses the pros and cons of larger industrial cement mixers with the tenants across the yard. Nerih, one of Efren’s workers, comes over and assesses the situation. Nodding, he goes to the pile of gravel and picks out four small stones. Placing them on the balcony, he leaves without a word. Who knows what they are for, or when he’ll be back. An hour passes. I hang out in the hammock listening to waves crashing onto the beach. I hear a gecko making a territorial claim. A dog barks. A voice in another cabin. A baby cries. It soon settles back into silence. Only the music of the sea. And my amplified tinnitus.

“Now we’re ready,” Efren announces as he approaches, unraveling pieces of cord.

Nerih shows up and ties cords onto each corner of the plastic, using the small stones inside to secure them. Efren goes back up the protesting ladder. Nerih stays on the ground. He ties a longer rope at one end of the sheet. They stretch the sheet over the roof, tying it down on the corners.

“There! All done!” Efren announces as he comes down the ladder.

“What about the other half of the roof?” I ask.

“Sure! Nerih is going to buy more plastic, ya mismo.”

I’m not convinced. He leaves. Stretching out in the hammock again, I wait.

“Roni!” Efren calls urgently, approaching fast.

I sit up in the hammock. Maybe we’ll get it done after all. Now I’m more optimistic.

“Yo!” I call back. “What’s up? Do you need me to help you?”

“The hardware store is closed. We’ll have to do it tomorrow.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Except that I can’t put my trip off any more. In my heart, I know that I have to stay to make sure it’s done. I also know I have to get to Quito to sort things out.

“I’ll get plastic first thing in the morning and do it straight away,” he promises.

“Please,” I beg. “All my stuff is wet.”

During the night I don’t dream about lush forest and waterfalls. Between listening to the large drips on the floor and the rain splattering my face in the night, I get hardly any sleep at all.

At first light, I take off on a mission to Quito. I’m there and back in twenty-four hours, the least time possible via public transport and a little thumbing. When I get back, my cabin is filled with water from the violent storm the night before.

“You didn’t fix my roof?” I ask Efren, exhausted from yet another sleepless night after a nightmare trip on the bus from Quito. By now, I am on the verge of tears. I’m so upset my face is red hot.

“I couldn’t do it. It was raining hard all day and all night,” he says, laughing at his own joke.

I’m pissed. This is no longer acceptable. It was never acceptable to begin with. I head towards my cabin to check out the moldering ruins of my belongings, and to consider alternative accommodation.

“This is not okay with me,” I say quietly as I walk away.

“Okay. I’ll fix it today. Ya mismo,” he calls out after me, genuinely contrite.

By the end of the day, the whole roof is covered in the black plastic that will keep the rain off me and my belongings for the next year and three-quarters. Let the dry dreams begin!

Hell Hath No Fury…

From a string hammock on Roberto’s terrace, I watch with a group of friends as waves crash into the adjacent buildings, tearing down in minutes the reinforcements it’s taken a dozen men several days to build. A large chunk of driftwood slams into the wooden pylons beneath us, rattling the wood and bamboo house where we jokingly speculate on how long it will take to topple the building into the sea.

“I don’t own land!” wails Roberto, an Italian street sweeper-slash-surfer, as huge breakers bite into the sand beneath his house, eating away the foundations. “I bought a piece of the Pacific Ocean!”

Roberto spends six months of every year doing a mindless job in Geneva so he can live in Mompiche for the other six months. Twelve years have passed in this leisurely way. The locals call him Gallo (Rooster) for his long narrow face and large chicken-beak-shaped nose, and his penchant for surfing.

“I come here to surf,” he states when I first meet him. “If I can’t do that, I’d be better off somewhere else.”

Gathering speed on the crest of a wave, the loose piece of driftwood smashes into the wooden stairs, catching and ripping off the banister; the rounded side of a long sawed-off log. Washed into the sea, the banister begins pounding at the house, its rusted five-inch nails threatening deadly harm to anyone who tries to stop it. Powered by the ocean, the banister and the driftwood rush at the pylons. Somewhere below, wood cracks loudly. The whole balcony shudders.

“Look on the bright side,” consoles Fabio as foam surges over the steps. “We can go fishing right off the terrace!”

Fabio is Roberto’s best friend of twenty-plus years. He looks like a French painter; pointy nose, thin mustache, sparse goatee. A beret and palette would not look out of place. Throwing a pretend line into the water, he reels in an imaginary marlin.

“If the water gets too deep,” quips Johnny, readying his bicycle for the ride to Bolivar, another village southwards down the coast. “You can always build an island.”

After quick farewells, Johnny waits a moment for the receding wave, then carries his bicycle down the wobbly stairs on his shoulder.

“If you can’t be good, call me!” Johnny shouts as he rides away.

An hour later, at the peak of the first of eight massive king tides, surrounded by bubbling seawater, the house becomes a fragile mini-island as water races underneath and across the road, disappearing into the vacant lot on the other side.

Further down the beach, palm trees are ripped out by their roots and hurled onto the sand. Bamboo stilt houses topple into the sea, their foundations standing naked after being stripped of planks and cane. The porcelain toilet in Mustafa’s rental cottage makes a brave stand, staying in place while the rest of the two-story house disintegrates around it. Crashing waves break up the cement walls and the floor caves in.

The remains of Mustafa’s house after two days of high tides smashing the walls.

Uprooted trees litter the sand. Buildings sit askew, torn from their foundations. Upended grass-topped umbrellas are strewn randomly along the shore. Despite tireless efforts to save them, Figu’s wooden stairs stand vertical in the sand.

Is this Mother Nature’s revenge? I wonder. For the needless destruction of the mangroves, for the relentless deforestation, for the super-hotel developments, for the air-pollution, for stealing ton upon ton of sand from the beach, for illegal fishing, for man’s ignorance of nature, for the arrogance with which man has ravaged Mother Nature for so long? Or is it a cyclic weather pattern that we are experiencing, up close and personal, that we have no control over?

From day to day, for weeks, months, the villagers battle nature. Within minutes, a full day’s work is destroyed and buildings are left naked to survive the elements. Everyone stands by and watches, helpless as seawater invades every crevice. News crews flock in to interview the locals. Mompiche will be on the national news by dark. It will be international by morning.

On the water, a handful of surfers take advantage of the unusually large beach break, dropping off before they crash headlong into shore front buildings. Towards The Point, kids on body boards skim out of control over the foam until the fierce waves dump them back onto the beach.

As the water recedes, four men begin to rescue Roberto’s stairs. Heaving them over bare shoulders, they carry the fragile staircase around the house, leaning it against the side of the house. Less than an hour later, a vehicle smashes against the stairs. They’re askew and broken.

“Gonna turn the house into an aquarium,” says Roberto as the sea surges under his house. “Put in a glass floor and go scuba diving off the balcony here.”

Roberto and Didi, a friend from Portugal, mime scuba divers preparing to roll back off the side before they drop into the water.

By mid-afternoon, there is nothing in the bay. The tourists vanish. Cars disappear. The beach is awash. As waves recede, the red fireball of setting sun reflects brightly on clean wet sand.

A dozen fishermen gather to pull their boats back from the waterline, rolling them over thick balsa logs. Shoulders push into bows, neck and arm muscles become rigid, chest muscles pump, as the green and blue fiberglass boats rumble awkwardly backwards up to higher ground.

“Twenty years ago,” muses Pichi, taking in the devastation around him, “this beach was at least one hundred meters wide.”

Now the sea is on his doorstep. The two bottom stairs are buried under sand.

“In twenty-three years in Mompiche, I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says, awed by the force of the Pacific Ocean.

The eight-point-eight earthquake in Chile has rattled everyone. Some believe the higher waves are the result of a tsunami bounce-back from the Humbolt current crossing paths with another current. Others shrug and say that the sea rises a bit more at this time every year.

“When I was born, Mompiche was over there on The Point,” says Doña Sara, indicating the tips of the jagged rocks peaking out from under the breakers. That was sixty-five years ago. The sea has gradually risen every year that she can remember. Twice, the village has been moved back and rebuilt on safer ground.

Now, the village is under threat of being swamped once again. Torrential thunderstorms and exceptional high tides over several weeks leave Mompiche inundated. At high tide, the rocks on The Point disappear, the occasional spout is the only indication that they exist. Fallen trees and broken fences line the shore. Debris from the rivers at each end of the village litter the beach. Palings and driftwood line the edge of the surf, threatening to break the ankles of tourists strolling along the waterline. Optimistic swimmers find their bikinis and speedos filled to bursting with sea-blackened wood chips. A newcomer to the scene could be forgiven for thinking the village has been hit by a hurricane.

“Help me!” demands a man, handing me a shovel.

He steps out of the hole he’s begun and gestures towards the growing pile of sandbags. His effort is futile, but I can’t refuse. We are all in this together. Taking the shovel, I begin filling sandbags. A man wearing an orange Civil Defense t-shirt holds the sacks open while I spill in the sand.

“Do you speak English?” Civil Defense asks, keen to impress by counting out eighteen sandbags in English.

On the beach, twenty men work at filling sandbags, pouring more lost time, more lost money, more lost hope into each white sack. Every day, they take hours to build their barriers, and every day, twice a day, the sea tears them down in less time than it takes to fill one sand bag. The king tides hit morning and evening. Carefully hammered planks are torn asunder, bamboo poles ripped from the sand, the sand-filler washed out, sandbags flung around the beach. Large blocks of cement are strewn into the sand as if they weigh nothing. Each morning, the villagers gather the debris and spend the day putting a semblance of safety back together, preparing for the evening tide.

Out in the bay, several boatloads of people cruise by on the high tide to watch what happens to Mompiche as huge waves crash over the shore. Disaster tourism; a whole new economical angle for Ecuador.

Six men strain to move a fallen coconut tree after seawater washes it over the sandbagged bank. First, it has to be pulled from the ruins of the previous day’s reinforcements. Broken planks and poles are pulled from around the tree, still swinging with the current. A rope is tied around the middle. Two men pull from the water. Four push the root end of the tree. They shove their shoulders in, plant their feet in the sand and push. Nothing happens. Grunting loudly, they try again. Nothing happens. Another man joins in and they slowly turn the tree over. Over twenty-five feet long, swaying wildly under the waves, the trunk threatens to bash the pylons holding up the house. It’s like a missile in turbulent water. After a huge effort, seven men successfully float it into the water. They push it into the waves and let it go. By the time the waterline recedes, the trunk is back on the beach in front of someone else’s house.

The next day, waves froth over the sandbagged bank, thick with foam the color of cappuccino. The air around Roberto’s house becomes foul with a strange stench. Fabio screws up his nose.

“It smells like crap,” he states. “It’s probably leaking from someone’s septic tank.”

We gape at the foamy water, horrified. The contents of every septic tank along the beach front is floating in the water all around us.

“Typhoid shot, anyone?”

Suddenly, one of the steps from Morongo’s bar, a thick trunk about three-feet long crashes against the pylons right below where we are standing. The house cracks loudly and shudders. Fabio pulls me back towards the kitchen, as if we’ll be safer there when the house falls down. I go back to the railing in time to see the same log careening straight through the center of the two pylons at the front of the house. A lethal projectile that misses its target.

While the rest of us are at the rail, our attention focused on the unstoppable force of nature, Roberto sits in his hammock and strums his guitar.

“When the tide starts going down, the surf will be really good!” he says, resigned to whatever fate destiny has in store for him and his house.

A motorboat, stuck out in the bay during the rising tide, catches a wave and rides in on the crest, letting the water carry it to shore. The driver pulls up the motor and lets momentum take the launch into a perfect parking spot on high ground. The neighbors cheer as the vessel speeds past the side of the house.

“I’m gonna replace the house with an old boat,” muses Roberto. “When the water comes up, we’ll float. We could have a party here while the other houses fall down around us.”

Roberto’s sarcastic optimism makes me laugh out loud. Going in search of food, I clamber down the rickety stairs, which are now at the back of his house, on the street side. They’re crooked, sloping scarily upwards, and I have to hang on with my toes to get down safely.

As the sun sets brilliant red on one end of the bay, ominous black rainclouds gather on the other. Battle-weary residents straggle to the shore front to survey the damage before retiring for the night, gazing along the beach littered with the detritus of human desperation; rocks, planks, bamboo poles, busted sandbags. After a silent survey, they go home to rest, to get ready to start over again in the morning.

The Magic Circus Disco Bus

A banana peel flies past my face. It hurtles out the open window and lands on the hot tarmac before being crushed to pulp under the wheels of an oncoming vehicle. Lively Salsa music blares from the speakers, scratchy and static. A group of teenagers on their way home from the public high school in Tonchigue wiggle their hips and tap their feet in time to the music. The conductor makes a small offering to the shrine of the Virgin of Cisne, then crosses himself as he leaps back onto the moving bus.

A man with a tray of chilled watermelon slices and salted green plums appears. A boy selling peeled oranges pushes through the crowd, offering the cool refreshment, then disappears again on the edge of town.

A gaggle of chirruping young women with enormous breasts pushed up to their chins get on at Estero Ancho (Wide Stream). Fluorescent hot pants stretch tight across bottoms as round as ripe melons. Cropped t-shirts stretch tight across their bosoms, leaving plump brown muffin-tops exposed. Their hair is so thickly gelled that cold air blasting in through the open windows fails to disturb a single strand. Painted and perfumed, perched on precarious high heels, the girls preen and pose. Men of all ages smile and wiggle their eyebrows with obvious approval.

A sign on the front wall of the bus says NO SPITTING. Below that, another sign states that THE WINDOWS ARE NOT TRASH CANS. The ubiquitous NO SMOKING sign is absent.

The bus rattles along the winding road, blasting its horn at top volume, stopping frequently in the middle of nowhere to pick up and drop off passengers. Boarding passengers are flung down the aisles at high speed, sometimes complaining, mostly just clinging to their children and their bags until they find a seat. Breastfeeding mothers expertly balance themselves in the aisle as the bus rounds sharp hairpin bends. Three old ladies, each holding three live chickens tied at the feet, get on at Bellavista (Beautiful view).

Just when it seems no more people can possibly fit inside, several others squeeze in at El Salto (The Leap). A stream of vendors pours down the aisle selling llapingachos (yucca and cheese patties), empanadas (cheese-filled pastries), pan de yuca (yucca bread), corviche (fish balls), iced tamarind juice and grilled pork with barbecued green bananas. After a ten minute break, the bus rumbles back to life. As it rounds each bend, elbows hover precariously close to noses. Backpacks swipe lipstick from pouting lips. Knees press uncomfortably into thighs. The women are jammed so tightly against the men it’s a miracle they’re not pregnant by the time they get off at their stop. The mobile disco roars along, bumping over potholes and speed bumps. Passengers on the back seat howl angrily at the driver to slow down as they are flung towards the ceiling. The man in the seat behind me begins singing out of tune to music I can’t hear.

“Excuse the disturbance!” booms a voice through the crowd. “I just want to take a minute to tell you about ginseng!”

The vendor launches into his rehearsed speech, competing with the unrelenting stereo, the bus horn and the non-stop high-pitched chatter.

“Ginseng will help you achieve a longer-lasting erection!” he shouts at the top of his voice.

A box of day-old chicks at the front of the bus cheep loudly in protest. In a rumpled pinstripe suit and mismatched paisley tie, dirty white socks poking out through holes in his shoes, the salesman screams his pitch to the throng in the bus. No one is listening.

The Amazonian Negress sitting next to me wiggles in her seat, juggling the four small children she’s carrying on her lap. Her brightly colored clothes are so tight they appear painted on. I’m crushed between her massive posterior and the window. My right elbow threatens to poke through my left rib cage. Leaning closer to the window to gain a little breathing space, I find a nano-second of relief before the vacancy is occupied by four small black legs, all kicking for more room.

We stop briefly in Salsipuedes (Get out if you can) and I wonder why I don’t. Suddenly, the seat in front of me drops back, painfully crushing my knees. The dandruffed scalp of the man in front settles under my chin. Squeezed between the window and the Negress, my lungs press into my spine. Someone sitting behind me grabs the top of my seat, painfully pulling a handful of my hair.

“Ginseng will cleanse your blood!”

My senses are simultaneously assaulted. My sense of direction is lost. My sense of self is challenged. A tiny fist lands in my ear. The Negress shrieks at her fighting kids. The vendor squawks. School kids howl and push. The chicks cheep. The teenagers giggle. The lousy singer behind me gets louder. We whizz through Puerto Nuevo (Newport) and slow down at the turnoff to Tortuga (just like in Pirates of the Caribbean without the whorehouses) to pick up some farmers with long sharp machetes strapped to their trousers, the pointed tips tucked into their rubber boots.

A plastic drink bottle brushes my nose on its way out the window. The stereo blares. The horn honks. The bus screeches to a halt then restarts, peeling the yellow lines off the road between each stop. The conductor pushes through the over-crowded bus collecting fares, yelling over the top of everyone. I drop the correct fare into his hand. He presses his luck, trying to charge me more. Refusing to argue, I ignore him and turn back to the window. He gives up and moves on.

The squash and the crush and the noise and the din and the smells are overwhelming. Barely able to breathe, I try to focus on the tropical jungle rushing past the windows. The singer thankfully alights. The relief is momentary. A child sitting on his mother’s lap begins kicking the back of my seat.

Tell me again: What the hell am I doing here?

I’m on my way to Mompiche, a tiny remote fishing village on the northern coast of Ecuador. Until recently, it wasn’t even on the map. It used to be a long white sandy beach with some bamboo huts scattered along the waterfront; home to a few fishermen. A lot has changed since the day I arrived.

A friend in Quito had told me about Mompiche.

“You should go there. It’s paradise,” he’d said.

I hope so, because getting there is hell! The Negress moves again, decreasing my hip size by several inches. All four of her kids are crying. She shrieks at them to shut up, slapping at their arms and legs, almost busting her seams. The school kids become more raucous, pushing and shoving each other around the aisle.

“Ginseng will increase your libido!”

Somewhere along the way, another vendor has snuck onto the bus and begins screeching with a painful high-pitched whine. Honestly, I’d rather rub cheese graters over my ears than listen to his awful voice. After reeling off his spiel, he shoves a handful of colorful candy under my nose. Refusing the offer of ten for a dollar, I try to drag my gaze back to the window.

The music becomes Reggaeton. It’s louder now. The teenagers wiggle and grind their hips. The jungle flies past. Plants that cost a fortune to buy in my own country grow wild on the side of the road; bright red orchids, huge elephant ears, tall yucca, colorful birds of paradise. An untamed tropical garden. The wild papaya trees are pregnant with fruit. Stands of banana palms point yellow fingers in all directions. Hummingbirds hover, feasting on flower nectar. Black howler monkeys sit high up in a zapote tree.

Gradually, the bus empties. The students vanish. The vendors find other buses going in the opposite direction; and a whole new audience to harass. The Negress and her four kids get off at Tres Vias (Three Ways). My bones relax back into their normal shape. I can inhale. Just for a second. A withered old man with breath that resembles a sewerage outlet sits beside me. He wants to chat. Holding my breath doesn’t help. The stench is so foul that I’m forced to change seats.

After a few minutes, we turn onto a narrow dirt track. The Reggaeton is overwhelmed by the squeaking and rattling of the bus. Large rocks and deep potholes pepper the road. The vehicle slows, navigating carefully around each obstacle. The driver turns down the volume on the stereo, as if it will help him concentrate. I open the window. The air smells different. Fresh. Salty. Jungly.

“Is it much further?” I ask the conductor.

“Ya mismo,” he replies, pointing ahead with his lips.

It takes almost half an hour to travel the seven kilometers (four and a half miles) from the turnoff to the village. Winding down the track, from the highlands to the beach, thick jungle closes over the road from both sides. Families of howler monkeys perch high in tree tops. A flock of toucans flit from one tree to another. An iridescent green iguana basks in the sun on top of a fence post. The bus stops to let people off a couple of times. At the top of a rise, a glimpse of the beach, large breakers crashing over the sand, appears through a break in the trees. Nearly there. We cross the narrow rickety bridge, where women below scrub and rinse their laundry in the river. Finally, the bus pulls into the village of Mompiche.

As I alight, I suddenly realize I am the only passenger left. Throwing my day pack over my back, I climb down the steps and gaze along the stretch of fine white sand. Bamboo huts . . . palm trees . . . hammocks . . . long deserted beach . . . warm azure sea . . . Oh, yes! This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

I head straight for the beach, taking my first step into paradise.

Little did I know that the next step would take me straight to hell.