The town that could not tell time

“What time is it?” I yell. Tired and recovering from a small case of altitude sickness the last thing I felt like dealing with at that particular moment was the situation at hand. Carl and I could not figure out what time it was. I mean, it seems simple enough, right? Four wrong clocks and about 2 miles lugging our packs through Guaranda trying to catch the next bus south to Riobamba proved to be a bit more challenging than we had anticipated. Carl and I purposely travel without a watch, I guess as a peaceful protest against our lives back home. Ruled by our day timers and to-do lists, the freedom one acquires by simply telling Father Time to “bleep” off for a little while can be quite exhilarating. Of course, this only works when I do not actually have a need to know the time. At this junction though, we need to catch a 2pm bus. I know that when we arrived in Guaranda it was 12:30pm. Since then I have seen clocks for 11:00am, 4:30pm, 2:25pm and 6:45am and my phonetically perfect, “A que hora es?” has only gotten me a few shrugs.
As I trudge up and down streets huffing and puffing, feeling somewhat lost without a plan, a schedule and a universe that is making it harder than usual for to dip in and out of reality as I choose, Carl (who is on an eternal holiday as far as I’s concerned sometimes) just laughs at me. He just laughs and walks up on ahead, looks around the corner and points to the bus station.