Listen to the Flower People

I´m done with Montañita. It´s nice, but after four days, I´ll be happy to be on the 1000h bus out of here. In the morning, I stop by the cash machine for a hundred buck reload, then set off for the bakery for breakfast.

In the bakery, I handover a twenty to get change to repay my travelling band for last nights rum. As with most shops and bars in South America, they don´t have change. This is just a part of South America´s non-existent service culture and popularly held opinion that they have better things to do than exchange goods and services for money. I set down my wallet and dig for change.

As I´m walking into the next restuarant looking for change, I reach into my pocket for the twenty. My wallet isn´t in my pocket. It´s not in my lower pocket either. Uh-oh. I sprint back to the bakery where I´m sure I left my wallet on the counter. My wallet isn´t on the counter. I ask the guy behind the counter if he has seen my wallet. He doesn´t have my wallet. He asks the girl behind the counter if she has seen my wallet. She doesn´t have my wallet. I pace back and forth a few times as the degree to which I´m fucked sinks in. I´m pretty fucked.

Yesterday, my travel card had failed to draw cash from the machine, so I´d taken my backup card from my bag and only set it back down as far as my wallet. I´d been keeping that backup seperate on best advice, but in reality, I never anticpated loosing my wallet. Who looses a wallet? Not me. That´s not the sort of thing I go in for.

I´ve got a couple of dollars in change. I´m pretty angry with myself, but I´m still just about able to hold onto the a realistic sense that this isn´t quite the end of the world. Though, I certainly am pretty fucked.

I ask a girl in the cafe if she´s seen anything. She, Jess, is English and has seen nothing, but is very sympathetic. So much so that she insists to give me ten bucks. I try to insist that I don´t need it, but it quickly occurs to me that I do need it, very much so.

At the Police station, my tenuous grasp of the language is very obvious. The policeman pulls in some passers-by who speak Spanish and English. The policeman is offering no more than advice to report the loss in the next town over. The passers-by are a tourist couple. They walk me back to the bakery to see if they can help. As half-baked as my Spanish is, as I listen to the conversation, I´m able to fill the gap between the Spanish, "imposible" and "impossible".

The guy that runs the hostel helps me put out a Montañita wide APB for my lost wallet. I´m not exactly sure how that works, but I´m understand everyone will know about my loss shortly. I want to be hopeful, but I´m not. When Liam Neeson lost his daughter, he was given a nintey-six hour window to find her. I´m guessing my window has already closed. Nevertheless, I ask myself: what would Liam do in this situation. I soon accept that don´t have a great many of his skills and give up that train of thought. I ask myself: what would Columbo would do in this situation.

Back at the bakery, I´m examining the spot where I lost my wallet, the entrances, the exits, and the surroundings. I go so far as to hover my hands around like Tony Shalhoub. I search the bins, pace the streets around the shop in the hot sun, and poke around in the nearby bushes and shrubs. I imagine what it would be like to find my wallet, but I´m trying not to expect to find it.

I spend twenty-five cents to check for a response to an earlier email to my parents, cc´ing my brother, with instruction to send me money by Western Union. I´ve got two responses, but both my brother and dad have replied on the basis that it´s probably a scam. With another buck spent on the phone, I´m able to get hold of dad to verify the ugly reality.

Come the afternoon, my detective and all-action-hunter-killer skills have failed me. I find a few pals on the beach and join the beach football. Beach football is tough.

In the evening, I´ve rejoined my travelling band, and we´re wandering about town looking for a good time. I don´t expect to be out long tonight on account of having less than five bucks. At midnight, I find myself sitting in a circle on the beach with my band and a group of Columbians. A Columbian girl with dreaded hair, loose clothing, and a guitar, is playing bit´s from Bob Marley´s Exodus. Sure, I like Exodus too, but this is dirty, smelly hippie crap is exactly why I wanted out of here this morning. God damn it.