Notes from the Panamerican

So, this time around, I´m gonna go a bit more nuts than usual with the fancy descriptive writing. In that spirit, here´s what I was jotting down, stream of conciousness, as the bus wound from Durán to Puerto Inca, through banana country towards Cajas National Park.

7-04-2010
Bus ride from Guayaquil to Cuenca, past the sex motel shaped like an apple, through the insane humid lushness of green on both sides, past a scrawny herd of cattle going the wrong way down the Panamerican. Corn grows, implausably, in one of the fields, bookended by banana trees and coconuts. Ticket taker tapping gently on the forearms of the sleeping men, solicitous as a new father as he waits for them to wake up and hand him their slips. Past reed houses, thatched with rusted tin and set on stilts above the seething, swampy ground, egrets on the front yard and clothes flapping on the line. ¨Cristo Vive¨ is scrawled in chalk on one of the facades. We weave through a banana town, all luscious fruit and poverty: a half dressed boy sits proudly on a mountain of woodscraps and sugar cane. And on my iPod as I stare out the window, the sudden, perfect lyrics: ¨Show me how pretty the whole world is, tonight.¨