#2 - Connotation

Tumbes, Peru is a border town. It is no stranger to backpack toting wanderers, even the ones that arrive after midnight exhausted and disoriented from six hour international bus trips. I speak from personal experience.

We originally made reservations at a hostel in Zorritos, about half an hour outside of Tumbes, but because of our late arrival, we opted to try to find someplace closer to the bus station. Easier said than done, we soon found out.

For starters, although it is plastered all over the city, the word “hostel” meant nothing to the men working the desk at the bus station. At this point I really just wanted to brush my teeth and fall asleep. Enter Jeremy to save the day. Roughly translated, he said something along the lines of :

“We’d just like somewhere inexpensive to stay, sooner rather than later.”

All well and good. But they were giving us some pretty funny looks. It took me a minute to realize the connotation attached to two young people traveling alone together asking for a cheap room late at night.

Oops.

My natural response, of course, was to insist :

“Two beds. We need two beds. Or two rooms. Two rooms is great. Two beds though, that’s important.”

The men laughed, but one appeared to know of somewhere that fit the bill. So he hailed us a taxi. I use the term “taxi” loosely. It was a motorcycle with a bench attached to the back, covered with a sort of vinyl tent. We learned the next day that they’re the most common form of transportation in Tumbes, but at midnight it looked pretty strange. It was our chariot to real beds though, so I climbed in without complaint. The surprises kept coming though, as not only Jeremy, but the man from the bus station as well, crammed themselves onto the bench with me.

Not only did the bus station man come with us in the taxi, but when we got to the hotel, he and the taxi driver both climbed out and came up to the room with us. We confirmed that it did indeed have two beds, and paid both the taxi driver and the hotel clerk, and the bus station man and the hotel clerk left. The taxi driver stayed behind to try to convince us to let him take us island hopping the next day, which we were obligated to decline several times before he left and I got to brush my teeth. Finally.