Montañita, Ecuador

We are still here in Montañita and unfortunately the weather has not changed. We have not seen sunshine the whole week or so we have been here and there has been more or less a constant light drizzle of rain that is enough to get you damp and keep you that way. Braeden has enjoyed surfing every day despite the cool temperature but I have yet to get into a bathing suit. If you´re not a surfer and can´t lay out on the beach, there really isn´t that much to do around here. For this reason, I´m pretty sure we will be moving on to Peru on Monday. Mancora is supposed to be beautiful with sunny weather all year round (more like the beach weather I´ve been hoping for). I believe Matt will be coming along with us for a week or so as well.

The long weekend here was crazy! This little town filled up and everything (of course) doubled in price. For this reason we moved out of the guest house we were staying in and into something a little less expensive ($10 USD/person/night was way better than $18/person/night). It was an interesting place to stay as it was a little shack up on the top of a family´s house. The people were friendly but they had a large duck, roosters and chickens roaming around freely and it wasn´t the cleanest place. Also, the town ran out of water so for 2 days we had to pour water into the back of the toilet tank just to flush it and we weren´t able to take showers for the last day or so. The town turned into a rather smelly disaster as people just littered and urinated in the streets and on the beach. And as for the noise...it was LOUD! We now know what it would be like to try and sleep in the middle of a night club, only with about 5 different types of music playing at the same time until sunrise and The Black Eyed Peas´¨I´ve Got a Feeling¨ playing ever forth or fifth song (seriously never want to hear that song again!). Let´s just say we are glad the weekend is over and the town has gone back to normal.

This morning I had an unfortunate case of bug infestation in my purse that I didn´t notice until I had put it around my body and had hundreds of tiny spiders running up my sweater. Throughout the night they had found a few candies I had in there and managed to get into everything. Aside from me absolutely hating bugs, the worst part was that there was no power or water in the town so I wasn´t able to get in the shower in order to rinse them off my body and out of my hair. After an hour of killing spiders and cleaning out my belongings I still felt like they were all over me. At least now I think I have figured out what has been eating us at night. We use mosquito nets, coils and bug spray and we´ve still been getting eaten alive. It has to be the spiders living in the beds - they are tiny, hard to see and move really fast. (Have a close look at the picture of Braeden´s feet below to get an idea).

Not all has been bad here though. As I mentioned earlier, Braeden has really been enjoying surfing and usually gets in at least a few hours every day. We have met some really nice people from all over the world, even a few from back home in Calgary. Also, there is a surf competition taking place here this weekend so that might be interesting to check out. There are some incredible surfers around here!

So all in all, not great beach weather but certainly better than the snow back home :)

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