Blogs from Canoa, West, Ecuador, South America
April 26th 2012
So this is the entry where you say "screw you man, I don't need to hear about all that sunshine, beaches and surf." But please wait, I promise it wont be one of those entries. Canoa was great but it had it's share of mosquitos, sun burns and locals who like to steal the gringos sandals and laugh because they don't sell anything in that town larger than a size 9.5. However to be honest, I didn't want to leave. Skipping the 2 weeks where we did nothing but enjoy the beaches in Ecuador I will write about where we are now, Peru. We took a big ol' bus from Ecuador through the expansive desert of northern Peru to the capital city of Lima. It was incredible to drive through such a landscape with the ocean ... read more
March 5th 2012
Alright, the first blog of our Central American Adventure. We started the trip by leaving from England and heading across to Madrid before boarding a flight across the altantic, bound for Bogota. We then had to change planes to get to Quito, Ecuador. We had an overnight stopover in Quito, then jumped on our last planes to the ecuadorian coast. Our friend Eddie who we met in Cornwall, had organised a guy to pick us up at the airport and take us to his town, Canoa. The car journey was a couple of hours and the driver didnt speak any English but was keen to tell us about things. So we did as best we could with our spanish phrasebook and Dinis iPhone app "Spanish for Dummies". I reckon we did pretty well for first timers. ... read more
January 25th 2012
Hello! So we haven´t really had a lot of time or the means to write a whole lot lately so I will try to fill you in on the latest. We are now in Canoa but got here by travelling up the coast after Vilcabamba. We had a hard time deciding what to do about Machu Picchu. It was much more expensive and time consuming than we had imagined. We had a long debate at a mexican restaurant in Vilcabamba (you all know we really wanted to make it to Machu Picchu) so we decided to flip a coin because the decision just was not coming to us easily (one of the downfalls of a loose itinerary...one move decides the whole rest of the trip, if we went to Peru that would mean only 4 days ... read more
January 23rd 2012
So here I am almost just past the halfway point in my travels. I am behind in blog posts but not in stories to tell. Maybe one day I will catch up, who knows. So 7 months in and I have been to only 3 countries. At the beginning of my trip I imagined I would have covered a lot more territory at this point . But I guess I have always been the slow steady type. If you were to ask me what would I have changed up to this point in my trip I say nothing. I spent almost six months in Colombia, never thought I would have been there for so long. Four of those months at Manos Amigas and Let's Go Volunteer working with the kids, which so far is the highlight ... read more
December 1st 2011
It has been a wonderful two weeks. After leaving Quito, I headed west to the coast. My destination was Canoa, Ecuador to reunite with some good friends who are teaching English here. A 10 hour bus ride dropped me square in the middle of town, where there was not only a carnival going on (sketchy ferris wheel and all!) but also an incredible number of people in town to party for the weekend. Canoa is a small beach town which is also a gringo surf destination. After making incredibly tentative plans to meet my friend Ryan (who lives in Canoa) at a hostel, I was sure he would not be there. But, as I rolled up to the hostel, he and his girlfriend Garrett were at the bar! I was so relieved to see them I ... read more
July 27th 2011
We spent a week at an "eco-farm" in a small valley called Rio Muchacho on the coast of Ecuador. We went there because there was a Spanish language program there where we all studied Spanish four hours a day (again!). Unfortunately, Dad didn't look too closely into the place that we were staying. On the one had, it was incredibly fun - we road on the back of trucks into the beach farm, made rings out of local nuts on big grinding machines, rode horses at a gallop down the valley to where we climbed through the jungle to see monkeys, took a canoe ride through a beautiful mangrove island called Isla Corazon where we saw thousands of red-chested frigate birds and red crabs nesting (and a huge boa constrictor sitting just above our heads), went ... read more
July 21st 2011
Hostal Cocunut is an awesome place. The Hostal is owned by 4 Canadian guys who just use the place to come party hard for 2 weeks a year and the rest of the year they allow people to stay there and run the place as a hostal. While I was there two awesome people from Germany were there, Thomas and Anke. They have been traveling South American in their camper van and ended up staying in Canoa longer once they found the opportunity to run this Hostal and make some money for more traveling. Anke can cook some amazing food that quickly became popular in Canoa and people were going there on great recommendations from their friends. Exactly how we ended up there. I spent most of my free time hanging out there with some of ... read more
July 20th 2011
The Sundown hotel was a great place to stay in Canoa. It is beach front about a 25-30 minute walk up the beach to the main town of Canoa. The Hotel is run by basically an entire family who are almost always at the hotel. It is a real family atmosphere and they really take you in and make you feel comfortable. I paid for breakfast and dinner Monday through Saturday, which the family also eats with the guests of the hotel. The food was very good but a bit repetitive with a lot of eggs, bananas, rice, camarones and bread. Very convenient to just roll down the steps in the morning for breakfast! I had a 2nd floor beach front room with a balcony that was the only one on the building so it was ... read more
July 19th 2011
Between Spanish lessons on Monday I went into Canoa to do a Kayak tour through the Surf Shak of some caves along the coast. Surf Shak is an awesome little place in Canoa. It's a hostel with American food and they have cave tours, paragliding, surf lessons, and a few other activities. http://www.canoathrills.com/ My tour guide spoke no English so it gave me a chance to work on my Spanish which was good. The tour begins an hour before high tide so we weren't fighting many big waves going out but it took about 40 minutes to kayak out to the beach where the caves are. Once I got out there I realized my camera was almost dead, well prepared right? I had my flipcam with me so used that for some stuff but the pictures ... read more
February 2nd 2011
We ended up staying a week in Cuenca. Both of us have been battling some kind of Ecuadorian crud for awhile now & it was starting to drag us down, So, we decided to just chill for a few days and see if it would help. Luckily it did. During the rest up period we managed to do a few things around town. I read in one of the guide books that even if you are suffering from church burn out you should visit the Cathedral Nueve in Cuenca, so we did. It was in fact amazing. The ceiling was so high. Huge marble pillars inside. While we were inside there was some kind of singing, chanting, ritual under way and the acoustics of the church were actually beyond comparison. I was spellbound by the ... read more
