Tuesday 13 March 2012 - The prodigal returns

I had a leisurely day: breakfast, laundry and Internet before making my way back to La Hesperia, treating myself to a lovely lasagna for lunch (almost the cost of the bus trip out to Lago Agrio).

Back at the "ranch," I found that Anya, Eva and Gabriel had gone to Atacames for the weekend. Not only that, but a lot of things had occurred and everything had changed: Anya had decided that she had had enough and wanted to go home if she couldn´t get her card and she didn´t want to have to carry large amounts of cash around.

Eva and Gabriel, whilst at Atacames, were mugged by three black guys (there is an Afro-Ecuadorian population on the north coast). It was at night-time (10 pm) and they had walked away from the bar area, even though it was apparently still very close.

Meanwhile, Eva had changed her flight to Sunday, cutting short her volunteer stay by four weeks. Whilst Eva had been very shaken by the incident (she and Gabriel returned a day early), she also had an additional reason to go home: her mother was due to have an operation on Tuesday and she wanted to be there.

Joel, the fashion photographer, who had cut his feet in the small manmade lagoon at La Hesperia, accompanying the Danish tourist group last week, had ignored the hospital´s orders to keep as static as possible, and gotten his foot infected. So, he´s having to leave, too! As Michael is due to leave this week, too, there are five of us all leaving at virtually the same time.