Day 17—NY Bagel Shop & Back to Gorgona

This statue is very close to the NY Bagel shop. 

We woke up bright and early, and Sean was off to the bagel shop again.  (Those bagels rivaled Noah’s Bagels in Berkeley!)  We had a quick breakfast, and then packed up our few belonging, and hit the road.  It was Saturday Morning, so I figured the traffic would be lighter, and it was, but it still took us at least three circles before we could find our way out of the city.  I was so happy as we were crossing the Bridge of the America’s because I knew from here on out there were only two lanes of traffic in each directions, and if we just stayed the course, we would reach Gorgona in a little over an hour.  It was such a relief to reach the villa, and what actually felt familiar and home-like.  I think it took me all of 30 seconds to dump my bag, put on a swim suit and jump in the pool. “Ah, now this is a vacation!” I thought as the sound of the waves crashing, mixed with a  flock of parakeets flying above the pool. 

In the afternoon, we were sitting at our outdoor table, the only one we have, and the hippies started to walk by and you could tell they were shocked to see people here.

Sean pretending to be a hippie walking behind where we eat our meals.

Who are the hippies you may ask? Well, after Ernesto and Simone left,

Bye Ernesto and Simone!

not 24 hours had passed before we saw two 20 something backpackers, being lead to the unit behind ours.  "Ugh. Will there never be privacy?" we groaned.  Sean was in middle of doing some laundry, and we have to schlep across their patio to get down to the scary, mildewy laundry room (that’s why I send Sean, it is beyond gross down there.)  

You have to walk in front of this window to get to the laundry.

Here are the stairs down to the laundry room.

Gross, stinky laundry room. (Please note mildew on wall behind washer).

So after about a half an hour, Sean needed to change the laundry (because remember, we needed clean clothes to go to the city—Keep up with me now, I’m doing that time-warpy thing).  So after a few minutes he comes back beet red, and he says, "They were going at it, completely naked,  with the curtains wide open!"  Oh god! How totally embarrassing!

****

“Hey Moonflower, look at the groovy view, let’s have wild hippy sex RIGHT NOW! WITH THE CURTAINS OPEN! And become one with Mother Gaia!”  

“I love you Thad!”

****

“Did they see you?”

“Well the curtains were closed when I came back upstairs.”

Again, how embarrassing.  And then, well you know me, I was irritated at the people who rented the place out, because they don’t warn anyone about the complete lack of privacy here.  So when the hippie back-packers saw us the the day we returned to the villa, I felt I had to warn them, but unfortunately it came out like I was totally mad at them:

Hippie backpackers: “Uh, hi?”

Me: “Oh hi, I just wanted to warn you there is no privacy here at all.  As you can see, you have to walk past us as we eat,” and I waved in the direction of the laundry, “and we have to walk down that way to do laundry, so I just wanted to warn you.  It was a surprise to us too.” 

Yeah, it came across just that nicely.  They stood there speechless, and looking uncomfortable.  The weird thing is I wasn’t really irritated with them, just the landlord, but that is not how it came across. 

“Well, Ok, thanks for telling us,” they said as they backed away slowly. 

So an hour later, I was feeling positively horrible, as they tried to sneak past the crazy middle aged lady (yes, that would be me). So I said, “Can we start over?  My name is Lisa and this is Emma, and I’m sorry if I came across as rude.”  And then we had a lovely conversation, where I learned they are Peace Corp volunteers, just taking a much needed, much earned weekend off. 

And because the entire conversation was in English, it was very clear to me that I was the asshole in this situation.  As I've said, I just like to be clear about that.