Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  “Um, yeah. I couldn’t believe it myself! Shit, she’s so fast. I can’t believe how she got her whole arm through the bar! I was miles away. Well, far enough that I thought I was well out of reach. Unbelievable.”

  Yet the evidence was there, painfully obvious.

  “Johnny won’t be happy,” I thought suddenly.

  “Johnny?” Toby thought about it for a second. “He’ll probably piss himself laughing!”

  Just what I wanted to hear. Probably true though.

  “Only you, mate!” He went on. “I’ve never known someone get injured so much! Is there anything here that hasn’t bitten you yet?”

  “It’s not my fault,” I said defensively. “I don’t know why it happens to me.”

  “But seriously. I want to know – is there anything here that hasn’t bitten you?”

  I was forced to think hard for a response. Machita? Bitten me. Don Juan? Bitten me. Monkeys, cats, even my beloved Snotty McSnot. And as for the parrots… it did seem rather excessive.

  “Is there anything?” he prompted.

  “Yes actually, there is,” I told him. “The horse!” And with that I stalked off to bleed in the dorm room.

  Language of Love

  Life had been lonely since the girls left. Every once in a while I’d be invited to Jimmy and Nancy’s house along with Toby, and we’d sit on the edge of their bed and watch a pirated DVD from Machachi market. Maybe we’d share a beer or a bag of crisps, but apart from that our social calendar had been kind of bare. I worked with Toby, I hung out with Toby. I’d moved back into the dorm room as it seemed almost incestuous to sleep with him as well. We couldn’t really party together, as Johnny’s edict forbidding night time manoeuvres meant that anyone going to Quito would be staying there, and that meant they wouldn’t be around to feed the animals at seven the next morning. Sitting around the dining table, drinking the local rum whilst wrapped in five blankets, was about as exciting as life got.

  All that changed with the onslaught of the Irish. Emer arrived first, a tough lass from County Cork with wavy brown hair and a savage sense of humour. She talked fast, talked loud, talked constantly; occasionally she talked in Gaelic. She was a lot of fun, and in my opinion was a few bites short of the whole cracker. But meeting Emer was like a taster of the full experience; it helped prepare us for the arrival of her sister. Because Marie was insane. Her permed hair was wild, her chuckle wicked and her volume knob stuck in the ‘full’ position. She swore like a trooper, smoked like an active volcano and drank like a bottomless pit with lips. If she hadn’t already been engaged, I’d have been sorely tempted to ask her to marry me. Between them, the pair were a force of chaos to rival nature herself. Jimmy had better watch out.

  This meant that we finally had enough people to organise a massive night out. But first I had something else to attend to. After much prompting from Toby, and even more prompting from Alice (via Toby), I’d finally set up a date with Lady.

  I was about as nervous as it’s possible for a person to be. It was one thing to brag about having a stunning Ecuadorian girlfriend, but quite another to actually go on a date with her. The phone call earlier in the day had brought back all those fears of awkwardness. She didn’t speak English. I spoke almost no Spanish. It was as simple as that. And yet now I had to entertain her for a whole evening. I just had to hope that talking wasn’t a big part of her plans for tonight.

  Ha! I pretty much hope for that on every date anyway.

  I am, after all, male. Though on behalf of my gender I feel I should point out that this is a fairly simple, and by now surely quite obvious, intention. Whenever I hear someone warn a girl “Careful – he’s only after one thing!” I think – no shit?! It only took several thousand years of evolutionary evidence and a lifetime of precedent to make that giant leap of intellect. It is, after all, what we’re biologically programmed for.

  If, however, his one desire is eventually fulfilled, the average bloke is then immediately satisfied – he wants for nothing more and is happy to oblige his partner with almost anything s/he could desire in return. The average woman (speaking only from my limited experience of course), goes out on a date expecting a man to be strong yet vulnerable, tough yet sensitive, honest without being painfully honest, nice but a bit mean with it, funny yet able to hold serious conversation, not too desperate and clingy, yet to immediately agree to marriage and children as soon as she decides she’s ready, and – best of all – to know exactly what she wants, without ever having to be told. Thank God I was born a man. I don’t think my head is big enough to hold all the contradictions involved with being a woman.

  I left to a chorus of jeers and ‘helpful suggestions’ from the new arrivals. Toby had taken it upon himself to enlighten the Irish girls about the circumstances surrounding my first meeting with Lady. He hadn’t spared a single detail – he’d even added a few to spice the story up. So when he asked if I ‘needed to borrow anything’ it was met with even more hilarity. Luckily this time I would be well prepared in that area.

  I hiked down the hill, trying not to exert myself too much as I didn’t want to sweat in my nice clean shirt. For weeks I’d wondered why the hell I’d been stupid enough to bring nice shirts to work in a zoo. Now at long last one of the pair had been liberated from my rucksack, shaken out, and was currently trying its best to absorb every scrap of moisture from my skin, so it could cling to my back and smell.

  It was a beautiful day. Damn that hot, sweat inducing sun. As I carefully climbed the odd barbed wire fence along my route, I pondered the ordeal ahead. Belatedly I wished I’d done what I promised myself I would do, straight after agreeing to this date – study more Spanish. I’d always meant to, yet somehow events always conspired to keep me from doing any.

  Okay, so that’s a bit of a lie. The truth is I just couldn’t be arsed. Damn my laziness! And damn my cowardice. If one of them didn’t screw up this opportunity for me, the other one would. Because as I reached the foot of the mountain, where the highway marked the border of Tambillo town, my dream woman was nowhere in sight. And the voice in my head screamed “Run away!”.

  I took a deep, calming breath. I could wait, I decided – for as little time as possible – before bolting back up the hill to safety. I’d tell the others I’d arrived late and must have missed her. Everyone would commiserate with me; Toby would tell me it was her loss for not waiting, and that she obviously wasn’t worth worrying about, the girls would agree with him and secretly think I was a bastard for being late and standing her up; and everything would be all right. The world would carry on turning, each new day bringing me closer to finding that perfect woman. Who, knowing my luck, would only speak Chinese.

  Hard to believe, but after ten minutes I was literally preparing to run for the hills. In fact it was more like five minutes.

  I was seriously on edge. When a car horn beeped nearby I jumped about three feet into the air. Along with everyone else on the planet, when a car beeps I automatically assume it’s meant for me. But unlike everyone else, this time I was right. Lady beamed at me as she jumped from the passenger seat of a tiny square car that looked decidedly pre-cold war era.

  I grinned back, and she approached until we were face to face. Good God she was gorgeous! In all my panic over the language barrier, I’d almost forgotten. Her smooth, coffee-with-cream complexion, big brown eyes, sensuously full lips and long, straight midnight black hair – and yes, she had a body to die for, but do you really think I’d forgotten that? Not likely. We gazed into each other’s eyes like they do in movies, and all of a sudden it didn’t seem that awkward.

  “Quito?” I said.

  “Sí,” she agreed, and smiled again.

  Luckily there was a bus there at that exact moment. Two of them in fact, with a third on the approach. But staggeringly, amazingly, this bus wasn’t full. It had to be fate, I thought as we took two seats together.

  We said nothing as the bus pulled away, just looked at each other. I can only imagin
e that my expression must have matched hers perfectly – she looked at me like I was made of the tastiest chocolate in the world. Emboldened by her silent attention, I reached up and brushed the side of her face with my fingers. She closed her eyes just briefly. I leaned towards her and kissed her.

  Half an hour later as the bus bounced through Quito, we stopped kissing long enough to look for our stop. Amazingly we hadn’t even missed it. The driver slowed down so much to let us off that he very nearly stopped completely. Without a doubt, it had been the best bus journey of my life.

  I wrapped my arm around her, and we set off through the streets of Quito. I had no idea where we were, and no idea where we were going. Though I suspected Lady knew our current location, I was fairly sure that she didn’t have any particular destination in mind either. We hadn’t exactly talked about it on the bus. My mind had been on other matters, and I have enough difficulty speaking with one tongue in my mouth.

  Sooner or later though, the question would have to be asked. And since I probably wouldn’t understand it if she asked, and couldn’t answer it in any case, I decided to be the one to broach the topic.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Where do you want to go?”

  This was not going to be easy. I didn’t care though – I was ecstatic that I’d understood her! Okay, she’d used almost exactly the same phrase as I had, but we were communicating baby!

  “It’s very cold,” she mentioned. She was right.

  “I’m not cold,” I said, by way of proving my resilience and manhood.

  “I am,” came the reply.

  A complete exchange of dialogue! With the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. My feeling of triumph made me bold. “Its warm in bed,” I said.

  She let out a surprised gasp, then started to laugh. “Bandito!”, she told me, “You are bandito!”

  “I’m not!” I protested. It wasn’t hard to guess what I was being accused of.

  “Sí, sí, estás bandito! You are very bad!”

  The truth will set you free.

  “Yes, a little,” I admitted.

  She stopped in the road and turned to face me. “Good,” she said, and kissed me. “Let’s go.”

  There was a hotel nearby. I steered us towards it, through the doors and into an incredibly expensive looking foyer. Marble floor, wood panelled walls, brass fittings everywhere. The hotel was called ‘El Ambassador’. I felt a sudden pain in my wallet. It was far from the first time my eagerness for sex had gotten me into trouble. I very much doubt it will be the last. But this had all the hallmarks of bankruptcy. If I blew my entire bank balance on one night’s accommodation I wouldn’t be able to eat for the next two months. Or worse – I’d have to call my parents for a loan, and explain to them I’d spent all my money on sex. I could think of few more embarrassing things to do in the whole world, but I was going to have to apologise to the concierge, who was now staring expectantly at me, and to the beautiful woman on my arm, plead poverty and walk back out into the night. In Spanish.

  Lady had other ideas.

  “How much for a room for the two of us?” she asked.

  “Twenty-five dollars,” I caught the reply.

  What? Really? Lady glanced back at me, uncertain what to say.

  “Twenty-five?” I asked her. She nodded.

  Pretty cheap.

  “We’ll take it!” I said, perhaps a little too triumphantly. I didn’t care. I felt powerful again! Ug! Man strong. Man make fire. I paid up and handed over my passport for the concierge to examine. He gave me a check-in sheet and slid my passport back to me. Bold again now that the problem was over, and feeling cheeky as I anticipated what was to come, I pocketed my passport and signed us in as Mr and Mrs Smith. I’d always wanted to do that!

  Lady had been asking questions, and I think she’d established that we had our own bathroom. I took her hand and led her off up the wrong staircase. A shout from the concierge brought us back to his marble counter, from where he pointed us in the right direction. Not caring in the slightest about looking foolish now the goal was in sight, Man took Lady back to his cave. Ug.

  And what a cave it was! Enormous double bed, delicate little table lamps, thick carpet and a complete en-suite bathroom the same size as the bedroom! A TV with cable. Wouldn’t be needing that. And a stack of towels on the bed.

  “You want a shower?” I asked her.

  She did.

  The next couple of hours I will leave to the reader’s imagination, save to mention that we had to call room service when our hot water ran out. I enjoyed that evening immensely.

  We nipped out for food a bit later on, holding hands and not saying much. I have no idea what we ate, or whether it was good or bad. We returned to our room for the night, and the morning found us very happy and very tired.

  Lady had to work, so I kissed her good-bye and put her in a taxi. I promised to ring her later on and she disappeared into the city. I turned to head for home.

  Or would have, except I still had no bloody idea where I was.

  Several hours later I returned to Santa Martha. I didn’t know what time it was, but I’d obviously missed the feed. I’d been in for about ten minutes, trying to decide whether or not to get changed and go looking for the work party, when they arrived outside and started to take off their boots. Oops! I’d skived a whole day’s work.

  Toby walked in first and did a double take when he saw me standing in the middle of the living room. “Alright mate!” he said, “Been workin’ hard?” He went past me into the kitchen as the girls walked in one at a time behind him. They each wore a sly smile and had a couple of comments for me, though none witty enough to be memorable. I had that strange combination of profound embarrassment and heady pride that can only result from your mates taking the piss out of you after you’ve pulled.

  “I’m going to bed,” I announced to no-one in particular, which caused laughter all round.

  “Will you be up for the afternoon feed?” Toby asked.

  “Oh, yeah sure,” I said. “I’ve got to ring Lady anyway.”

  And with that my blood froze. Sex was all well and good, but now we were back to square one. And I had to call her.

  The Fear followed me into the dorm room and climbed into bed beside me. How had I gotten myself into this ridiculous situation? I hadn’t been thinking. At least, not with my brain.

  Eventually I fell asleep.

  Shocking Behaviour

  On the day we were due to return Osita to her proper enclosure, Leonardo arrived bright and early. He’d decided to weigh and measure her as part of his ongoing monitoring of her development, and to give her a few precautionary shots. The darting was routine, as Osita knew him well; he didn’t even need to use his primitive looking tranq gun. We took her in the back of Johnny’s car, slowly, and it took six of us at full capacity to carry her in a sling of tarpaulins and blankets.

  We deposited the sleeping bear just inside her enclosure. Leonardo immediately grabbed his gear to check her vital signs as the rest of us scurried around trying to make her comfortable.

  Johnny stood back from the chaos, presumably thinking deep thoughts as his eyes roamed around the perimeter of the enclosure. With all hands on bear, I was feeling a bit surplus to requirements, so I took the opportunity to wheedle a few answers out of him. If knowledge is power, there could be no doubt about who held both. And Johnny was not big on sharing. I should have known it would not end well.

  “So was the electric fence broken then?” I asked. It had been the subject of much debate after the escape, since Osita had blatantly climbed out, yet as far as I knew there had been no attempt made to find and fix the problem. The fence no longer gave off its ominous clicking. Had she known? Or had she managed to jump from one of the trees in spite of our earlier efforts to reduce them?

  “I don’t know if it’s broken,” Johnny told me. “This is what we must find out.”

  “Sí,�
�� I agreed. “But how?”

  He grinned at me. “Easy. Touch it.”

  I laughed at the joke. Johnny smiled. And beckoned me towards the fence. He was serious.

  “Chooch!” I swore. “You touch it!”

  Johnny roared with laughter. I loved to surprise him, and vulgarity was rather more likely to do the trick than dazzling him with my expanding vocabulary. It didn’t sway him from his plan though. “Touch it there,” he gestured.

  “No way!”

  “You can do it,” he told me. “Be a man.”

  And that was it. The one challenge that could not be refused. Any threat to one’s masculinity had to be immediately negated, no matter the cost. I’d worked very hard to build up my current level of respect, losing a fair amount of blood and skin in the process. But this? I’d never live it down if I refused.

  I contemplated the wire. There was no way out for me now; it was obvious that I’d been called on to prove myself, and had no choice but to see it through. I wondered briefly what a bear-repelling jolt of direct current would do to my manhood. Give my pubic hair an afro at the very least. Slowly I extended both hands, palms open. The threatening wire was now only centimetres from my unprotected flesh. I shrugged a few times to loosen my shoulders and took a deep breath. Then another. “Okay,” I announced, “here goes!”

  But then I did nothing. False alarm.

  “Okay, this time I’m gonna do it…”

  One more deep breath. Hopefully not my last.

  A wiggle of the fingers (very important).

  And I grabbed it.

  Nothing happened. No blinding flash, no searing pain. I was alive!

  “Not working,” I reported to Johnny, who had been watching my preparations with a tolerant smile.

  “No,” he frowned in response. “Not working. Hm.” Johnny looked thoughtful. “Then we must find out where it is broken. Touch the next section.”