A shirt form a complete stranger

About three years ago I was bag packing with my sister and a friend through the coast of Ecuador, during the summer holidays. Around the second week of our trip we arrived to a little town called Canoa; it was a very quiet place, with nice local people and a very large portion of sea line. You could hear the sea from anywhere in the town, and at that time of year there weren’t many tourists around, so I got a really mystic sense of Canoa. We camped in the simplest camping we could find, and the next morning we started meeting some of the people that were also staying there; there were all sorts of people, but a specific couple caught our attention. They were Europeans, I don’t remember from were exactly, but they didn’t talk Spanish nor English. At first I thought maybe they just had a particular look, but they were different from anyone I know. They didn’t talk to each other, at least while being in public, and were always together. They would look at each other very intensely and would touch each other’s hands very expresivly, like communicating without words and with their bodies. They didn’t talk to anyone but smiled at everyone and gave away a good vibe, so it wasn’t awkward either.

There was a night during our stay that we desperately needed water to kook but it was too late to buy some and the kitchen was broken. Spontaneously these young couple offered some to us. We were very grateful and promise to give it back the next day, and so we did. That same day they were living the camping and arranging all their stuff. Suddenly the girl came close to us and handed over three shirts. We didn’t understand what was going on, and so she tried to explain that she was giving them to us, apparently she wanted to travel more lightly. We were very surprised but gladly accepted the gift.

I have never used that shirt because it’s way too little for me, but I steal keep it in my closet as a nice memory.