A disheveled man with a weathered face struck up a conversation with us in the bus station in Buenos Aires.

“I live in Oklahoma,” he said, his eyes wide and expecting, as if to say “What do you think of that?”

I tried to ignore him, but Thushan decides to humor him, and in the process we find out he was Ecuadorian, traveling alone, and had a peculiar train of thought that gave off the impression that he was either mildly drunk or perpetually confused. He said he ran a Spanish language newspaper in Oklahoma City. “It makes a half a million dollars,” he said. “But then, you know, I have to pay everyone.”

“This city’s nothing compared to Iquitos,” he declared, before revealing he had only spent one day in Buenos Aires. “I payed the taxi driver to drive me around all day. I saw the whole thing.”

“We liked Buenos Aires, a lot,” replied Thushan.

“Really?” he said, at this point almost laughing at us. “What did you like about it?”

His stories were confusing, rarely had endings, and were hard to believe, but just barely believable, like this one: “I lived in London a long time ago. I was the ambassador for Ecuador. But my wife is American, she wanted to live in the States. You play the guitar?” (more…)