Feeling slightly loney, I went to my regular hangout spot at Lauran´s Helado-ria to seek out some enlish speaking friends. Eventually two stereotypical hippies walked in with dreaded hair and loose fitted natural clothing. I strained to listen if they spoke English, and eventually got the nerve to introduce myself. The woman was Hungarian and the man from Belgium. They had just met on a bus ride from the touristy town of Baños and were passing through Tena with no particular schedule. We accompanied the woman, Diana, to get her nose pierced at a place down the street. I showed then around the area of Tena that I know best before journeying to find a place for them to organize a rafting trip. With a mixture of our three different native languages we communicated in a mixture of English and Spanish. At one of the tour offices to organizer commented on how odd of a group we were. A tan stout man who had long dreaded brown hair, a tall white woman with shorter blond dreaded hair and a new studded nose piercing, and an even whiter young North American girl that did not fit in with the other two at all. The tour agent laughed as he commented that the man looked like a white version of Bob Marley. Diana also made him laugh with here commentary, and the man was utterly confused about how I fit into the picture.
Many people avoid interaction with "hippies" here because they are stereotyped heavily for drug use. They have become my first foreigner friends that I have made on my own.
