Not Exactly As Pictured

Once it dawned on my massive intellect that, when the essentials like the fridge, stove and bed were taken away, I would need to somewhere to stay for at least one night prior to my departure from Ecuador, I looked into spending my last night in a hotel. But then I thought about other factors.

I hate waiting. My paintings and some rugs had gone. Hanging around in an apartment with no colour and no purpose made the waiting worse.

I have mentioned in other posts (I think?) that Cuenca is suffering a historic drought. Cuenca has four rivers, but they were dry. The years long drought has resulted in increasingly lengthy daily blackouts, many times for as long as fourteen hours. A good day was ‘only’ seven hours without power.

Then and now.

These sights were scary. Not even the oldest of Cuencano residents had seen such a thing

But not the blackouts and not even the announcement of the imminent possibility that potable water would be rationed, stopped people from washing their cars, and in this case, the street.

While my apartment building had a generator, it was never intended to take the place of the power grid for hours and hours, day after day, week after week and month after month. The building management decided to run the generator only for a few hours per day, trying to preserve its life and efficiency. I understood, but this meant that I was without power for up to half the day. I was searching for housesits, and communicating with people about that by video call, sometimes with big time differences. I was fielding inquiries from people about buying furniture. All without reliable, predictable internet much of the time.

However, there was a small area of the city, around the provincial and municipal government offices in the historic centre, which was exempt from the blackouts. I decided to contact a local second hand furniture dealer who was prepared to buy everything I had left, and then spend my last week in Cuenca in an Airbnb in the no-blackout zone. I knew I would get less money than if I continued to try to sell things individually, or have a sale, but I was just done with people traipsing through the apartment, fingering all my stuff and always looking for a bargain. It was depressing enough to see all my beautiful things go. Better to get the agony over with all at once and then decamp to an Airbnb in the non-blackout zone.

I would treat my last week in Cuenca as a little holiday, and enjoy being a tourist.

There wasn’t a lot of choice in Airbnbs, as the unaffected area was only about eight blocks long and three or four blocks deep.

It came down to two choices. Both apartments were about the same price and both were on Calle Larga. I was not surprised to read reviews for both which mentioned noise, as this area is a hotspot for night life, especially on weekends. I knew the area was noisy, as I had lived near there when I moved near Parque Calderon after John died. It’s not just the nightlife, but the motorcycles without mufflers and the constant blaring of car alarms. But I figured I could deal with it for a week.

One place was more or less a studio. Cute but small. I chose the other, bigger place. It had an actual couch. I figured, this being Cuenca, the couch would be hard as concrete, but the studio only had a few smallish armchairs. The couch tipped the scales in favour of the larger one.

The furniture went. I said goodbye to my settled life in Cuenca, took my suitcase and headed out to the future.

And hit my first glitch. First, the bigwigs were still in town for the IberoAmerican conference and there were all kinds of road closures. It seemed to take forever to get into Centro. It was hotter than the hobs of hell, which has been increasingly the case in Cuenca. I was tired and stressed, but we finally arrived.

Then, the Airbnb presented disappointment after disappointment.

The apartment was dark, kind of dirty, shabby and dingy. Only the bedroom had windows. I’d known that from examining the listing. But I thought the apartment would be brighter, as the bedroom had a big door leading to the living area. This is the photo of the bedroom on the Airbnb listing.

Yeah, this was not the bedroom I was presented with. I apparently did not take a photo of the bedroom as it was when I arrived. Maybe I was too traumatised, or maybe it was too dark. In the bedroom I entered, the Stygian gloom was profound. The 1970s era red window shades would not go up. This left the living area to rely for light on the dim overhead fixtures, and the bedroom to swim in red-tinged darkness like a suburb of hades.

Again, no photos of the apartment in real life, but I do not much blame myself for choosing this one when I look at the listing photos.

This looks pretty bright, right? In actuality, no.

It was cold that night. I think it went down to 8 degrees. Cuencanos do not heat their homes. Until recently, the temperatures were never too hot or too cold. In addition to the ambient cold, the windows were letting in a freezing wind. The blinds were actually blowing to the point I thought the window was open.

If, as Dante had it, the lowest circle of hell is a frozen – well, hellscape – this red-tinged bedroom was the anteroom.

That bed was missing both the pretty duvet and the fluffy pillows in the listing photo. It boasted polyester sheets and a rough blanket that had to be the same vintage as the blinds. The mattress managed to be both hard as a rock and lumpy. The bed frame creaked alarmingly.

I flashed back to a night we had spent in John’s old single bed at his parents’ house soon after we were married. I swear we hadn’t been doing anything other than trying fruitlessly to get comfortable, but the entire bed collapsed under us. The parental units, always disapproving, were not at all sympathetic.

The kitchen was inviting in the listing photo.

In reality, it was grimy and dark. That big fridge had disappeared to be replaced by a bar fridge. I swear most of the light fixtures in this photo must have been without bulbs when I got there. Or it’s a completely different place.

The dishes consisted of one small glass and a couple of plates. The sandwich press still had remnants of the last cheese toastie that had occupied it.

The frying pan felt greasy. Ugh.

The bathroom had been re-done, and did actually look like the photo.

But that little towel in the photo? That was it. There was only the one. The floor was highly polished tile. There was no bathmat and it was slippery. When I noticed this, I immediately envisaged myself getting out of the shower and falling. Okay, my brain supplied, so I would put down a towel. Wait, only one towel.

There were no hand towels in either the bathroom or the kitchen to dry your hands. There were no dishtowels at all. How were you supposed to dry the dishes?

I sent the host a message and asked if I had somehow missed other towels. No. She would bring some in the morning.

I’m not a big TV watcher, but the choice was to sit at the desk in the bedroom and listen to the increasingly loud noises from the street, or to sit on the stone ledge – I mean couch – and turn up the TV loud enough to drown out the voices filtering through the thin walls, and the sounds of the neighbours’ TVs.

I sat down on the slab of rock – I mean couch – and turned on the TV. Nothing. I sent another message. Perhaps I was doing something wrong? Perhaps there was another remote or two around, as this often seems to be the case. After an hour or so, the host replied. She thought maybe the remote was out of batteries. She would try to get the janitor in the building to bring some up.

“This deal is getting worse all the time!” – Lando Calrissian, The Empire Strikes Back

I sat in the living room and read, while listening for a knock on the door to signal the arrival of the janitor with batteries. After a few hours, the knock came. I opened the door to a smiling, middle aged lady who didn’t have any batteries in her hand. She made to hug me. I was confused but accepted the hug, because, ya know, it’s Ecuador and strangers hug. Maybe she was the host’s mother? As I stepped back though, my belief that this was my TV saviour, was fading by the second. Before I could inquire what the hell anyway, she pushed past me into the apartment. Talking a mile a minute in idiomatic Spanish, she kept looking around and inquiring for someone. Then she turned around, looking a bit bewildered. I’d see her ‘bewilderment’ and raise her to ‘nonplussed’. I asked her name and told her mine. We looked at each other in a moment in fraught silence. Then I told her this was an Airbnb and I was pretty sure she was in the wrong place. She was started speaking in an agitated way and was still expostulating while I herded her down the hall and back out the door, which I shut in her face. I could hear her plaintive, inquiring cries like the damned souls of hell pleading for salvation. Like I said, thin walls. Plus, hell.

Alrighty then. I retired to bed, huddled under the old blanket against the cold.

I had been prepared for noise, but this noise was extreme. There was a night-club right underneath the window, with stadium levels of racket going on til 4:00 in the morning. I would doze off only to be awakened minutes later but an even louder burst of electronic bass or drums or people screaming. In laughter or pain I couldn’t tell, but this being hell, my bet was on the latter. And then there were the car alarms and roaring motorcycles.

The last straw was getting up to pee in the middle of the night to find the toilet was not re-filling to more than a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.

The noise went on until 4:00 a.m. Then, ironically, I had difficulty getting to sleep in the quiet. Hardly a problem as by 6:00 the regular noises of the street had commenced. Conversations under my fourth floor window sounded like they were taking place in the room next to me.

I got up and contacted the host at the second choice Airbnb, further down the street. My relief was extreme when I heard back from him right away. Not only was the studio available, he was happy for me to come as soon as I liked.

I contacted the host of this awful place, detailing the problems, her lack of response and telling her I was leaving. She was full of all the trauma happening to her and in her life and excuses why she hadn’t been able to come over before I arrived to make sure everything was okay, or to come the night before. She assured me she was on her way. I said she shouldn’t bother. I was leaving.

I fully expected her to say there would be no refund for the week I had already paid for. It was a pleasant surprise to hear that she would refund me for the remaining time.

I packed up yet again and lugged everything down to the street. It took twenty minutes for the cab to get three blocks. But when I arrived, it was like coming out of hell to daylight. The guy who ran the little café next door had the key. He took me up in the tiny repurposed freight elevator.

I was amused by the emergency signage.

Note that it’s ‘when’ the elevator fails, not ‘if’. I can also see why phone numbers are handwritten at the top. Can anyone reading this figure out why pushing buttons for ‘Inspection’ whether ON or OFF, would help you in a stalled elevator?

My guide opened the door to beautiful vistas and brilliant sunshine.

There was a little balcony, too small for furniture, but nice to step out onto anyway.

The bed boasted a snowy white duvet and big pillows.

It was small; not much more than one room, a small kitchen area and a large bathroom.

But it was well laid out. The small counter jutting out from the wall served as both a desk and a table to eat at.

There was no couch (boulder consistency or otherwise), but the three armchairs were all comfortable.

It was warm, the bed was great, the shower pressure was strong and the water was hot. And the TV worked.

It was exactly as shown in the photos in the listing.

Bonus, not only did the toilet function properly, it was also a bidet!

One can’t help but contemplate the difference between a ‘posterior wash’ and an ‘enema wash’.

Back a hundred years ago in my law school days, we had studied a negligence case, where some idiot sat on the top of a big public fountain, where the water rushed out in force. It didn’t end well for the asshole’s actual asshole. This is not as uncommon an occurrence as you, an actual rational person, might think. Here is a case from last year, although this guy decided to put his face on the jet, not sit on it. No word on whether this man decided to sue.

In any event, I decided not to try my luck.

I got into the comfortable bed that night, bracing myself for noise. And yes, there was some, but the superior quality of the glass made it tolerable. As did the fact that this Airbnb was down a little alley with no vehicles allowed except those that were staying at the hostel further down.

I spent a happy six days there, completing arrangements for housesits, availing myself of the tourist areas, and having final lunches with friends.

At 5:00 a.m. on the last day, I headed out to a red sunrise, up to the street to meet my guy Vincente, who took me to the airport.

I had a problem free journey to Quito, then Madrid, then was on to Dublin.

There, I found that my carefully preserved Irish SIM, which I had had the foresight to load with €20 before I left Cuenca so as to be able to contact the people I was housesiting for) would not function in my phone.

Trusting to fate, I boarded the Wexford bus for a tiny hamlet called Oylegate. Where, I hoped, the ladies I was housesitting for, would meet me.

Because otherwise, in a tiny hamlet, late on a rainy Sunday night, I had no idea how I would find a place with wifi that was open so I could contact the ladies. I had visions of sleeping under the hedgerows, like the homeless person I had been determined to be.