Moonlight fell unencumbered on the city street around us. Our animated conversations were illuminated in the brisk night as we bounced on the balls of our feet and rubbed the back of our crossed arms in an effort to fight of the slight Andean chill that tickled the parts of our exposed skin. We spoke in our foreign language of our foreign thoughts as we waited for the light to show us the yellow glow of an Ecuadorian taxi.

Earlier in the day my companion and I had been sitting in a low ceiling classroom, attempting to digest the significance of modern Andean artwork. We came to realize that a six-inch clay baby Jesus, lying on his back and pointing his elephantine penis towards heaven, was symbolic of the artist's anger at the inadequacies of Catholicism. While I focused on the phallus, I churned the idea of the artist's desire to illuminate inadequacies, and how he sought to do this with a giant penis.

After our dose of enlightenment we capped our pens, thanked the lecturer, and with our fifteen other classmates, turned towards the door. Putting penises out of our mind for the rest of the day proved easy enough, following the course of our artistic studies, the penis discussion was no doubt to be replaced tomorrow by Picasso inspired Cubist breasts.

As with every Wednesday after class, our thoughts were directed towards the after class occurrences. The obvious rhetorical question that arises when studying overseas is: who travels all this way to learn from the books you brought?

As we pushed back the doors to the classroom, a bright sun tapped light on our eyes as the ¾ beat of Salsa music echoed throughout the schools high-windowed entrance room. Floored in hard wood and sparsely furnished in moveable couches, this spacious room would today double as our dance floor. From penis to party, we were to begin our Salsa lessons. One full hour of foot-crushing practice before later that night volunteering to immerse ourselves in the newly formed tradition of piling into a taxi, and directing the cabby in practiced Spanish to conducirnos a “La Mesa,” (drive us to La Mesa) a gringo familiar salsa club.

This is why my companion and I stood bouncing on the moonlit corner waiting for a cab. We attempted a learned salsa move while we waited for chance to bring a taxi by. After successfully butchering the footwork, but accomplishing the hip action in our pseudo-latin style, a yellow chariot bounced over the pot-holes toward us.

Quickly rolling down the window, the driver asked us in Cuenca’s exceptionally understandable Spanish: “Donde quieren ir?” (Where do you want to go?) “To La Mesa,” we answered in Spanish, “how much?” The equation of seeing two foreigners, probably American, discerning from the accent, bouncing in the chill of the Andean night, and going to a dance club, prompted the fare meter in the driver's head to tack on two extra dollars to the usual three dollar fee. “Five,” he said to us in Spanish. Having already been inoculated to the rate hikes in accordance with our obvious foreign status, I was ready for the rate-hike, and had already formulated my haggle pitch, it went something like this: “Cinco? Pa manejarnos a La Mesa? No sea maldito.” Having uttered my practiced speech, I was surprised to see the cab driver raise his eyebrows, widen his eyes, slowly roll up the window, put the car in gear, and pull away. I was so surprised that he had pulled away without even hearing my new offer, that even after the cab had turned the block I was still bent at the back with my hands on my knees, half expecting him to turn around any minute. “Any minute now,” I said, “any minute now. I’m sure he’s coming back. He’s a hell of a negotiator, I’ll tell you that.” Only the he-haw laughter behind me, voiced by my dance partner, brought me erect. I turned slowly on the balls of my feet, imitating a salsa turn in order to see my one person audience. “What?” I asked. Kind enough to stifle the donkey bays in order to get a sentence out, she let me in on the joke. “You basically called him a damned man, a little damned man actually.” Again came the laugh emulating chortle. “What?” I countered. “The last thing you said?” the statement came with the intonation of a question. “’No sea maldito.’ Yeah, well, that means, you shouldn’t be a little damned man, or a little son-of-a-bitch, or a little bastard, or…well you get the idea. You meant ‘no sea malito,’ don’t be a little mean person. No ‘d’.” “Oh” I gave her for her concern. “You do the talking next time.”

Five more minutes of waiting procured a different cab that rounded the same corner the first one dissapeared behind. After my partner did the negotiations, we headed out to the pint-sized salsa club to dance among the smoke and sweat of the synchronious moving mass on the dimly lit dance floor of La Mesa.

The next time I would see the cabby I inadvertantly offended would be on a riverbed doing an impression of a soccer field (the riverbed was doing the impression, not the cabby), but that’s another installment…