Content warning: Kinda gross. Skip to the boldfaced part if you have a really weak stomach.
Today I woke up early and had to use the restroom. I had a loose stool. I had multiple loose stools before I left the Airbnb where I’m staying shortly before noon.
My first stop was a pharmacy. It was a Cruz Azul (“Blue Cross”) store, one of a large chain. In Ecuador, you don’t have the massive selection of food, drinks and general merchandise that you’d usually find in a CVS or Walgreens store in the United States. You walk in, and there’s someone behind the counter. I presume she was a pharmacist, since there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the small store.
I explained my problem and she sold me three things: A blister pack of pills to deal with the symptoms, another blister pack of what I presume were antibiotics to deal with any infection I might have to be causing this, and a half-liter bottle of grape-flavored PediaLyte. I’d brought along a bottle of water so I could swallow the pills right away, but since she recommended drinking the PediaLyte, I followed her advice and took pills with that.
She also told me to avoid eggs, cheese and milk. Oops. Eggs and cheese are a major part of my usual diet. So be it.
Thankfully, I speak Spanish well enough to explain my problem and to understand her instructions about how many of which pills to take at what time.
Gross part ends here
Next stop, the Quicentro mall. That’s where I went for my third attempt at getting a cellphone that will work here, and this time I think it worked. What happened was that I went to another store on Friday that sold me a phone, but because I didn’t have a “cedula,” or national ID card, they couldn’t give me a phone number. It took me a while to understand this, though; I thought they had come up with a workaround using my passport. I went back to that store and explained the situation. They told me I had to go to an office of Movistar (pronounced like “movie star”), the cell service provider, to get the number with a passport. At first they gave me directions to a place that was far enough away that I’d need a taxi, but then they remembered there was one in the Quicentro mall two blocks east.
So I went there and found the Movistar service center. I got a new chip for the phone and the young woman helping me told me it should be working in 10 minutes. I thanked her and went back to the Airbnb.
I couldn’t get it to work, so I figured I’d try again on my own the next day. I tried looking up information online and found a variety of suggestions, none of which worked.
So today I went back to Quicentro for help. This time it seems to work. The only problem is that I have a recycled phone number, so I got a lot of WhatsApp messages intended for someone else. Oh well. I messaged a couple of them back explaining the situation.
I’m not feeling well enough to go exploring, so I’ll see how I’m feeling tomorrow. In addition to what I described in the gross part above, I have been getting tired more easily than usual, probably due to the altitude. But it’s nothing serious and I expect I’ll get accustomed to the altitude fairly soon.