Canoa - Day 3 - Shoe Fetish

Well, last night when I was typing about being a smart tourist and not doing dumb tourist things to get ripped off, I had a one of those jinx feelings that we sometimes call the "kiss of death".  Sure enough, when we woke up this morning, our shoes that were on the front porch were missing.  Not a big loss for me (except that I only have one other pair), but Dana was not happy that here new Teva's were gone.  Of course Dana was all "I'm sure they really needed the shoes" and I was thinking, " I hope they get the same big blister on their foot that I did from those cheap beach shoes".

Had breakfast ($7 for two egg dishes, toast, tea and juice) and headed to the pharmacy.  I did have a big blister on my left foot from walking around town last night that was already red and showing signs of infection.  We found a little shop with a banner that said FARMCIA that was about as big as our kitchen.  The lady there didn't speak English, but how hard is it to buy a band-aid?  Well, band-aid didn't get a response, so we started a game of charades trying to say bandage, adhesive and finally we got a roll of gauze and some surgical tape.  Tried to also sound out antibiotic, but nothing.

We remembered that Randy, the guy from Kennesaw that we had lunch with yesterday, told us there was a FARMCIA with a Pharmacist behind a glass window in town.  So we trouped around town and finally found that place - thinking that an educated Pharmacist might understand English.  Once again we went through charades trying to communicate that we needed antibiotic cream or ointment.  The young female Pharmacist whipped around and produced a pair of nail clippers.  When Dana said "close", she thought she said "dos" and started to grab another pair.  After some more charades, the Pharmacist produced a bottle of alcohol. Close enough!

Bandaged (however you say that in Spanish!)

We spent the rest of the day in hammocks reading.  Not to miss today's sunset, we got to the beach early and really enjoyed the surf and views.  Here are some photos...

 Looking North - Check out the Bluffs

 Looking South down the beach

Going 

Going

 Gone!

Since we hadn't eaten since breakfast, we stopped at another hostel (there must be about 20 in town) that was grilling burgers.  We had two burgers, two Pilsners, and Dana had a glass of fresh pineapple juice.  It tallied up to $10.

When we got back to our hostel Baloo, we ran into Phillip, the Brit who owns the place.  We told him about our missing shoes and you should have see his face!  He asked "what day is this" and muttered "this has happened before".  He called out into the dark in Spanish and a young Ecuadorian worker emerged.  Long story short - this fellow evidently hides tenant's shoes under the porch when he finds them sitting out.  Phillip fussed at this young fellow in Spanish for a while and he ended-up getting a broom and fishing out our shoes from deep under the porch.  Best we can surmise is that he hides the shoes, supposedly for safe keeping  and eventually collects them after the occupants check out.  Genius, I say.  Technically (in his mind I guess) it's not stealing and he keeps the shoes that the customer's leave.

So, we got our shoes back - which is better luck than most stupid tourist have when they lose stuff.  Not to push our luck tonight, we knocked all the sand off our shoes and locked them up in the cabana.

Tomorrow our plan is to travel to Bahia - a larger town about 30-minutes south.