Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  An hour later he’d be back.

  Throughout the night he would come and go, always using my bed as a springboard, always scaring the shit out of me in the process. And always gone a couple of hours before dawn, allowing me just enough time to get into a nice deep sleep ready for the rooster to start screeching at six.

  Sleep deprivation, however was the least of my problems. It was Layla. In the darkest hour of the night, caught twixt cat and rooster, her caustic comments replayed over and over in my head. No matter what I did, or what order I did it in, I was wrong. Clumsy. Forgetful. My opinions were worthless, my ideas pointless. Even giving her a compliment by way of a peace offering caused her to look at me as though I was something unpleasant she’d stood in whilst cleaning out a monkey cage. Perhaps because she’d been here before she considered herself superior. Or perhaps she always considered herself superior. Either way it was starting to get on my tits.

  It had come to a head earlier in the day, during an epic attempt to construct a new tortoise enclosure from scratch. Johnny, in his infinite wisdom, had decided that Meldrew needed a new home. It required a vast number of post holes dug into the unforgiving rocky ground at the bottom of the valley.

  Layla had been delighting me with a running commentary of my shortcomings and mistakes throughout the morning, before deciding it was too much like real work and lying down in the sun instead. But the peace didn’t last.

  “Not like that!” she shouted as I wrenched the handles of the excavadora around. “You’ll break it!”

  I gritted my teeth against both the pain and the desire to beat her round the face with a shovel. “This is the only way it can be done,” I said quietly.

  “Jimmy didn’t do it like that,” she retorted.

  That was when I lost it. “You know, I’ve been here for a month and I’ve dug hundreds of these fucking holes,” I enlightened her. “But if I’m doing it wrong, please feel free to come over here and dig one your fucking self. Then tell me how it’s done. Okay?”

  Oh, it had felt good! Not quite as good as planting the moaning bitch head first into one of the completed holes and making a fence post out of her, but at least this method bore fruit. She’d grabbed a random tool from the pile and stormed off to misuse it on the other side of the river.

  Now, replaying the event in the silent darkness of the dorm, it became obvious just how small a victory it had been. I would never really win against Layla.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like the girl – more that I wanted to stab her eyes out with a fork every time I looked at her. When she wasn’t making a direct personal attack on me she was moaning incessantly about everything else. From the wind to the mud, the work, the house, the conversation – even Machita was too loud or too smelly. Had she been a supremely hot chick I might have expected a little of this – not condoned it, mind, but understood. Santa Martha wasn’t a good place for manicured nails and hot pants. Sadly. But Layla was a troll. She must have fallen out of the ugly tree, hit every branch on the way down, and then had the tree jump up and down on her screaming ‘Die bitch, die!’ As far as I could discern, Layla had absolutely no redeeming features.

  And in a few cold hours I’d be shaking off the miniscule amount of sleep and dragging myself out of bed to spend another joyful day in her company. The thought of it made me want to cry.

  Shots in the Dark

  It was definitely a gunshot that woke me. I’ve seen enough quality action movies to know. There’s something different about hearing one in real life though. It’s an ugly, evil sound; it freezes the heart. CRACK! Another gunshot rang out. Instantly recognisable, terrifying, echoing around the hillside. Our hillside. I leapt out of bed, nearly breaking both ankles in the process. God damn that top bunk! I limped into the lounge and met Toby running out of his room. He had a nice double bed, so didn’t need to sleep on the top bunk.

  “Was that a gun shot? It sounded like a gun shot,” his voice was hoarse from sleep and shock.

  “Should we go see what’s going on?” I asked.

  Toby looked at me like I had three heads. “What? Fucking hell no!”

  I reviewed the options. One – go outside – potentially get shot and die. Two. Stay inside and listen – well, it wasn’t hard to beat option one. The more awake I became, the dumber my idea sounded. “Okay,” I said. “So what do we do?”

  Outside another gun fired, louder and deadly deep.

  “Lets get knives,” suggested Toby. So we did.

  I’m not a massive fan of violence, particularly when it’s directed at me. I was therefore very glad when morning came and the house hadn’t been invaded. Toby and I were both asleep in chairs on either side of a dining table festooned with weaponry. I opened my eyes to see Layla, standing alarmingly close and staring at me.

  “Morning,” she said sullenly. “Why are all the knives out? Are you making breakfast?”

  I slowly stirred in my seat.

  “Why did you sleep out here?” she asked.

  I wasn’t in the mood for criticism so I came straight out with it. “We heard gunshots last night. A lot of them, really close by. I think some people were outside.” I expected panic or terror. Both seemed sensible reactions to this news. I should have been more realistic.

  “Really? Oh, don’t be stupid. Is that why you’ve got the knives? Real mature, guys. I bet there was no one outside.”

  Oh, Layla! It’s a good job I’m not a fan of violence. I reluctantly put the tempting proximity of every kitchen knife we possessed out of my mind. “The body would be found,” I murmured to myself.

  Toby was stirring in his chair. He opened his eyes and looked straight at me. “We’re still alive then,” he noted. Then he glanced over at Layla. “All of us,” he added with a slight note of disappointment.

  Ashley it seemed, had slept through the whole thing.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Breakfast?”

  Toby went on a fact-finding mission as soon as we’d eaten. He wasn’t long with the news. “There were people with guns here!” He reported excitedly.

  “I knew it! They were definitely gunshots!” I was more relieved that I hadn’t been imagining it than I was scared about the implications. But then, it was daylight outside. “So what happened?” I pressed him.

  “Johnny just said that he heard some people moving around near our house-”

  “What? Our house? This place?” Layla was less than impressed.

  “Yes, outside here,” Toby drew the last word out as though he was trying to explain something obvious to a particularly dense child. I turned away to hide my smile.

  “He said there were three or four of them, and they had hand guns.”

  This was serious news. It wiped the smirk right off my face.

  “He said he heard them moving around, and came out on his balcony to have a look. He could tell they were planning on breaking in, so he got his shotgun.”

  The story got better! I willed Toby to go on.

  “He shouted down to them, and some of them pulled out guns and took some shots. He hid behind the wall of his balcony and fired back. I think they started to run away, so he took another shot – and he got one of them in the ass!”

  “Yes!” I enthused. Then the gravity of the situation hit home again. “Those guys were trying to break in here…”

  “Looks like. But fair play to Johnny! Shot one in the ass! Apparently the others dragged him away. He reckons they’re not likely to come back.

  I contemplated this for a few seconds. “How likely is not likely?” It suddenly occurred to me that if my mum knew about this, she’d freak. “I think I’m gonna buy a machete this weekend.”

  “Not a bad idea, that,” Toby agreed.

  Layla just looked vaguely sick. “What good is that going to do? If someone breaks in here, and they’ve got guns, you’d better just give them anything they want. If you try to fight them with a machete because you think you’re tough you’ll just get killed, and it’ll be your own fault
.” With her final word on the matter said, she stomped off into the bedroom.

  “She’s got a point,” Toby conceded when we were alone again. “A machete won’t scare ‘em if they’ve got guns.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve got a plan.” I beckoned him closer, as though someone might overhear us. “I’ll just grab Layla and hide behind her. If her face doesn’t scare the shit out of them, at least she’s wide enough to absorb a few bullets!”

  That evening Johnny came to see us. It was fairly rare for him to visit the volunteer house, the more so since the girls had arrived, and he caught us a bit by surprise. He just knocked on the open door and strolled in as we were sitting down to dinner. He didn’t stay long. We’d spent the day joking with Jimmy about last night’s events, imagining the reactions of the would-be thieves when one of their number took a bullet in the buttock. “I wonder who got to pull it out?” I’d said to crack Toby up, “And I wonder if he shit himself as well? I would have. Who got to clean that up?”

  But Johnny was here with the official word. He strode into the kitchen, turned a chair around backwards and straddled it, as being a man meant he didn’t have to sit on chairs in the way they were designed. As he talked, Toby translated for the rest of us. Some words I could pick out, but not nearly enough to make sense of the conversation. Only his tone told me just how serious he considered the matter under discussion.

  “Last night some men tried to break into this house,” he began. “Not good men. Maybe from the village, I don’t know.” He paused a little while Toby gave us the English version, then continued in his slow, flat monotone. “From now on I don’t want you to be out after dark. Don’t leave anything outside at night. Not even washing. If they see things to steal they might come back.” He paused again to let Toby catch up. “I’ve got Danielo patrolling the grounds at night. If there’s any trouble he’ll find it. But don’t go outside. I don’t want him to shoot any of you by mistake.”

  That seemed to be all. He stood to go, and I clearly recognised him politely declining Toby’s offer of eating with us. As he directed a general “Gracias” around the room and headed for the door, Ashley looked vaguely sick. I don’t think she’d believed our stories until that moment, but there was a grim tension in Johnny that quashed all doubt. I trailed him, not knowing if I should say anything for fear of sounding foolish, but wanting him to be aware that I understood the situation. He stopped at the door with a few last words for Toby.

  It was now or never, I decided, and blurted out possibly the stupidest thing I could have said, under the circumstances. “Este fin de semana, quiero comprar una machete.” (This weekend, I want to buy a machete.) Argh. Good Spanish. Nice sentence structure. Bad, bad content. What had possessed me? He looked at me and cracked half a tolerant smile. But it never reached his eyes.

  “Buena idea,” he said, then added something rather lengthier towards Toby. Then he did smile, as though to soften the words he’d just spoken. He clapped me on the shoulder, nodded at Toby and delivered a last “Gracias” between us at the girls. Then he turned and left, purposefully closing the front door behind him. As always it gave a hell of a screech.

  “What was that last bit?” I enquired of Toby. Toby didn’t look too happy. “What did he say?”

  “He said it was a good idea. To get a machete, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I got that part. Then what. Why does he think it’s a good idea?”

  Toby seemed to be thinking back over the conversation, trying to put his words in the right order. “He said it’s a good idea because around here people don’t break in and point a gun at you until you give them your valuables. It’s too much trouble. Here they just break in and kill everyone straight away. Then they can take their time robbing the place.”

  We had a quiet evening after that.

  A Wise Move

  I was really grateful for the chance to get out of the dorm room. Toby and I had been in hysterics watching Machita’s new trick – now roughly the same size as the cat, but still obviously too scared to confront him face on, she’d discovered the most bizarre way of standing up to him either of us had ever seen. When he threatened her she would turn around, presenting her bum, run backwards at the confused creature and sit on him. The cat didn’t have a clue what to do about this, with the result that Machita, arse first, had been chasing him around the living room since we’d let her in half an hour ago.

  Seeing Don Juan on the receiving end for a change had inspired me to rant about his night time depredations. Toby’s answer was as welcome as it was simple: “Come and sleep in my room if you want.”

  I did felt slightly guilty about leaving poor Ashley alone in the firing line. Not enough to stay though. My paranoid mind had been starting to play with the theory that Layla had recruited Ashley to Team Torment Tony and that the pair of them were ganging up on me. Until one lunch time when Ashley approached me with a cheese sandwich and a heartfelt plea for help. It turns out Ashley was worried that Layla was ganging up on her.

  Machita was waiting for me as I moved my blankets into Toby’s room and prepared for luxury. I chased her out and started distributing my few belongings between the wicker shelves in the corner and the small square table next to my bed. Toby had a lush double bed with a single bunk above it – the usual construction, tubular steel and springs – and I had a real, one storey, pine single bed. I lay on it and luxuriated in the silence. No rusty springs. No shriek of tortured metal accompanying every inhalation. And no Layla moaning at me for breathing too loud. Paradise.

  I chatted a bit to Toby as we lay in our beds. He was telling me about a girl he’d been hanging out with in Quito.

  “Alice!” He said the name with relish.

  “Skinny and blonde huh? How come we never get volunteers like that?”

  “Alice was a volunteer here,” he enlightened me. “Ages before you came. I fancied her then too, but never… y’know.”

  “Mm.” Guy talk. This was much more like it!

  “Have you farted?” He asked suddenly.

  “Nope.”

  “Oh. Something stinks in here.”

  “Sorry, I’ll have a shower tomorrow.”

  “Ha! Ah well. G’nite mate!”

  “’nite.”

  I was woken in the middle of the night by a violent outburst of swearing. Toby was poking round the corners of the room with his MagLight. “Hey man, what’s up?” I asked.

  “I dunno mate, that smell is back again. There’s something… Dunno, but something really stinks!”

  I could smell nothing. I left him to it and fell straight back to sleep.

  Next morning I lay awake for a few moments trying to place a strange sensation. Rest! Contentedness. I’d had a good night’s sleep for the first time in ages, I felt energised and ready to meet the day. I glanced at Toby’s clock on the bedside table. Quarter to seven! Which meant… The rooster! I hadn’t heard him. Somehow this room was insulated from the little bastard! That was well worth Toby’s night-time stink hunt. I’d give anything to be free of that rooster.

  Toby himself was just coming awake. “What time is it?”

  “Quarter to seven. We’ve got a few minutes yet.”

  “Yeah, sweet.” He was quiet for a few seconds. Then “Oh my God, that bloody smell! What the hell is it?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I was wondering if he did this every night. We were living on a farm after all – the air was often what one would politely refer to as ‘wholesome’. But Toby was on a mission. “I could smell it every time I woke up. Ugh! Man, it’s rank!” He leapt out of bed and started pulling back his bedclothes. “Can’t you smell anything?”

  I considered this a rhetorical question. Then Toby swore. He grabbed the steel frame of his bed and dragged it halfway across the room in one go. I sat up for a better look as he came round the side to see what had been revealed. There on the floor beneath his bed, directly under where his head would rest on the pillow, was an enormous day-old turd.


  “Ah, fucking hell!” He shouted. “A big fucking shit! Look at the size of it!”

  It truly was impressive.

  “How did the cat —” There was a pause as his brain caught up. “That bloody dog! How did she get in here?”

  “Um, dunno mate,” I lied.

  “All night… I could smell it all night… I can’t believe it!”

  “Wow. It’s a good job she lives outside now.”

  “I can’t believe it!” He repeated. “That shit is bigger than she is!”

  Just Desserts…

  I loved feeding the big cats. Every week we’d take delivery from a local chicken farm of all their birds that had died since the last delivery. Wherever the place was, either it was fucking huge or there was a frighteningly high mortality rate. I never bothered to ask, since without it Santa Martha would be in big trouble. The dead chickens were free, thereby saving us the single biggest expense our refuge would otherwise face: meat. Fruit and veg, cheap enough even in vast quantities, were also supplied free by various market traders Johnny knew. He was doing them a big favour I guess, taking all their spoiled produce off their hands and feeding it to customers who weren’t quite so picky about things like ripeness and colour. If any of these arrangements were to dry up, even for a few weeks, Santa Martha would go under. Johnny worried about it continually, or so I would learn later. All his money was tied up in land and machinery and the profits from the dairy farm went into his staff or his gas tank. This was the reason why all our tools were so decrepit, patched up and welded back together by Jimmy in an endless program of recycling. Some he even made from scratch, like his prize hand plough which had blatantly started life as a road sign. Somewhere in Tambillo the speed limit would forever remain a mystery so that Jimmy could turn soil. But the best example of his enterprising DIY skills had to be our two matching ladders. Bearing in mind that a large part of our day job involved erecting tall fences, decent ladders could be considered essential items. Now, I appreciate that aluminium was expecting a bit much. One of those multipurpose numbers would have been nice, the ones that fold into peculiar shapes so you can use them on the stairs. But this was taking the piss. Jimmy’s ladders could well have been recently discovered proof that early man could use tools. They were made of sticks, nailed (and sometimes tied) to a pair of chunky logs. The power to weight ratio left a lot to be desired. Each ladder weighed close to what I did, yet both were noticeably shorter than me. To say that they were falling apart would suggest that the disparate bits even belonged together in the first place which was a stretch of the imagination. Carrying them from the galpón to the car was an exercise in endurance. Using them at all required courage, and the suspension of disbelief. Going higher than the middle ‘rung’ felt somewhat akin to climbing the steps to the gallows. You have no idea how badly Tambillo needed a B&Q.