Dear Ecuadorians,

You’re nice people in general, very agreeable. I’ve grown fond of you. Therefore I don’t understand why all of sudden you appear to need a helmet and a bucket to drool in the minute you enter a bus. That goes for the bus driver as well.

It’s 2 a. fucking m. and the salsa music and some shitty movie even the director didn’t go to pay and see are on full blast. I mean: really?

I do not give a damn that someone broke Juan’s corazón. And that C-list actor can go and buy a strap on with an extended dildo that bends at a 270 degree angle to go fuck himself with for all I care. It’s 2 a.m., I’m on a bus, I paid money to travel by night, hoping to catch some sleep and not consciously endure the full nine hour ride.

To be fair, bus driver, you’re only part of the problem. Your fellow countrymen accompanying us seem to be swimming in chromosomes as well.

They decided to take the seats behind me in a vehicle that’s seventy percent empty. All good, however their decency seems to be boxed in somewhere on a graveyard far away.

From the minute the bus drove off they’ve been talking. Also, one of them keeps on kicking against the back of my chair. They’re 4’3”. Their feet don’t even touch the ground. How is this physically possible?

All I long for is rest and courtesy. But all my sleeping pills are able to accomplish is cause drowsiness and make the usual nightmares more vivid. These can’t seem to overcome this giant Ecuadorian middle finger against common sense.

Is it lack of education? Poor upbringing? Pure indifference? Lack of oxygen during birth? Or is this the spot where two cultures clash? In that case I’d like to have a word with the Ecuadorian minister of culture.

How to explain to them that they’re acting like that what’s hanging in between my legs? I wish I could tell them in Spanish, but I’m fairly sure that’ll result in me ending up with a huge stack of empanadas on my lap.

Minutes evolve into hours and nothing changes. My travel companions do not seem to understand my weird tendency of wanting to sleep at night. At this point I’m hoping for the bus to drive into a ravine. So at least these two, the bus driver, Juan with his corazón and the C-list actors die and shut up. I’ll happily consider myself collateral damage.

The journey continues. Both the bus driver and my amigos behind me turn up the volume. They’re determined to make me salsa dance tonight. Juan breaks his corazón once more and I break my silence.

I get up, run to the front of the bus, slam open the door to the driver’s compartment, see a microphone, grab it and shout: “Buenas noches, here’s your captain speaking. Cierra tu boca o chingaré tú madre. I repeat: Cierra tu boca o chingaré tú madre.”

The bus driver turns down the music and stops the movie out of respect for my profound, decent words in fluent Spanish. The two men start crying, apologise, beg me to not actually pay their mother a visit and jump out of the window. A truck just so happens to pass by in the opposite direction.

I head back to my seat, put my legs in an abstract position to fit in it and feel the sleeping pills taking over. I doze off and whisper: “Oh dreamworld, how wonderful you would be.”

More music, more movies, more conversation. I glance out the window and see the sun rising. Two more hours to Cuenca.

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