What you can't find in Ecuador

Since I arrived in Ecuador, I have tried finding two simple items: a notebook and butterfly band-aids. The first incident happened when Taryn cut her finger up pretty badly so we had used up our stock of butterfly band-aids. When we arrived in Baños, we figured we could find more in any of the pharmacies in the city but oh were we so wrong. We stopped in the first pharmacy when we first arrived at night. It was empty with three women behind the counter. We asked for band-aids (bandajes) and one woman returned very confidently with a roll of medical tape. Taryn held up her open wound and said that we needed actual band-aids, which we held up for them to see. The mean woman told us briskly that those don’t exist… as we’re holding one up for her. Another woman retrieved cotton wads and proceeded to show us how we could put the cotton on the wound and then wrap the tape around it. Taryn and I looked at each other, confused, and tried figuring out how this wasn’t just a complicated band-aid. Finally we held up the band-aid again, pointed to it, and said “simple bandage.” They seemed to understand this and one of the women brought out a small plastic tray filled with assorted band-aids. None of them were larger than two inches- not to mention anything fancy like a butterfly one- but they would do the trick.

Another incident where I couldn’t find something simple was when I was trying to buy notebooks for class. I didn’t think this would be hard. In fact, I had been in several papelerías (paper supply stores) and thought I would be able to find a cheap, simple spiral notebook. But once again, I was very wrong. I walked around with my friend Erin and first we went to a larger chain store inside the mall. Sure, they had plenty of notebooks but they all had ponies or robots or boy bands on the front. I knew I didn’t have to stoop this low, so we kept looking. We walked along a few main streets and couldn’t find any of the papelerías that seemed to be everywhere until you needed one. We ended up at the MegaMaxi (think Target) and they had plenty of notebooks, too, but none with a cover that wouldn’t make me seem like a star struck 9 year old girl. Shouldn’t a simple notebook be easy to find?? As I’m writing this, I still haven’t found one. I guess I’ll just suck up my pride and dignity and buy a Justin Beiber spiral notebook.