The Spanish guy at Tzunun’ Ya’ Hostel, who had just totaled his third phone in just over a month, decided to cook all the backpackers staying there that night a large dinner of loaded nachos and vegetable risotto; chicken and beef sell out by early in the morning and there’s no reliable refrigeration to make sure they keep until dinnertime, hence the risotto would be vegetarian. The building and grounds that housed the hostel had primarily functioned as a restaurant up until a week ago, before chaos in the kitchen between the restaurant cooks and the hostel guests—who had both been forced to share its limited amenities—caused the restaurant to shutter down until the next holiday rush of hungry diners trickle back into town.
After dinner when we had cleared and done the dishes, the ten or so of us that remained around the table tried our hand at playing a card game called “Cambio!”. Half of us had been smoking, and the other half had not; separately, half of us had played the game before, and the other half needed to be explained the rules in painstaking detail. It turned out that one of the South Americans was familiar with a slightly modified version of the game as played under a different name, so those differences had to be ironed out and a level-playing field established. It was decided that each experienced player would be paired up with a novice player. I was lucky enough to be paired with the brave soul who took it upon himself to educate us in both the theory and practice of “Cambio!” He had been smoking, as had I.
The game purse contained 50 centavos that literally fell into my neighbor’s lap from the rafters of the bamboo roof, a crumpled piece of aluminum foil, two pieces of rolling paper, and the rather attractive but tiny plastic bag into which all of these other prizes were placed.
It just so happened that, during the very first hand that we played once the explanations had concluded and the game began in earnest, I lucked into having a card I could play and had the momentary clarity and presence of mind to actually do so before someone else beat us to it. My instructor and game partner, however, was so flabbergasted by my successfully doing exactly what I was supposed to do that he nearly screamed and then just stared at me, leaning back in his frail plastic chair in the process of performing his double take just far enough that the chair collapsed and its leg promptly broke, amplifying the comedic value of his reaction severalfold. I would have been insulted by his exaggerated shock at my proficiency if I hadn’t been so amused by its aftermath.
To my own surprise, I went on to win the round, after which the game promptly ended since we all had to take our very full bellies to bed, and after some mild protestations, I happily claimed the winner’s purse on my team’s behalf, and my instructor/partner and I split its contents. I kept the tiny plastic bag that had served as the purse for myself.
