Random Observations From Ecuador

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I have overcome my reservations about surfers all being posey wankers who talk like they´re retarded (knarley dude? fuck off), and decided to give it a go. At first I hit myself in the face with the board repeatedly, and blamed Kit. This is strangely remeniscent of what happened when he was teaching me to snowboard. Pretty quickly though, in fact on my THIRD wave, I managed to stand up and ride it all the way in. Unfortunately this was just beginners luck and I rapidly became shit again, but I admit it´s kind of fun.

Word of advice - never go surfing wearing disposable contact lenses. The salt in the water fucks with the osmolarity or something, and dehydrates them into thick, sticky blobs that glue themselves to your cornea and never come off.

We took a boat trip to Bahia yesterday, on a voyage to find a cash point that would cooperate with us, since the one in San Vincente doesn´t like forgieners. As we were wandering around minding our own proverbial buisness, around the corner came a van towing a trailer containing three fully grown lions. They were housed in a cage which appeared to be made entirely out of chicken wire, certainally not a materal that I imagine would stand up well to sustained attack by giant, angry predators. I imagine they had been sedated. Maybe they were an advert for a circus, or perhaps just some guy showing off his pet lions. Either way, it was a sad sight to see, especially when I realised they had a little cub in there as well. We decided to head back to Canoa, where the only thing we have to worry about being eaten by is mosquitos.

My one main problem with this place is that everything here wants to feast on my tasty exotic O Neg flavoured blood. Sandflies, mosquitos, various types of weird beetle. At one point Kit had over 100 sand fly bites on his ankles. We both regularly wake in the night clawing at our skin screaming ´"I´M SO ITCHY".

My current food obsession is Ceviche - raw prawns in acid broth. It´s nicer than it sounds. Lemons and limes are used to make the soup, and the acidity sort of cooks the prawns, but they stay very soft and juicey. I have had this for both lunch and dinner today. It´s only 2 quid for a big bowl with a portion of fried banana chips. All food here is banana based. Imagine everything we make out of potato, and substiture green banana. Again, a lot nicer than it sounds.

I have noticed that in Ecuador many cars have two horns. One is very loud and means (roughly translated) MOVE BITCH GET OUT THE WAY. The other is a high pìthed "eehe eehe" noise which means "Ayeee, Guapa!". If the two are used together it means "Ayeee Guapa, MOVE!".

Ecuadorian men are nothing if not pesistant. Even though I´m here with my boyfriend, even though they´re mostly a foot shorter than him, often a foot shorter than me, even though he´s taken to telling them all that we´re married, they will STILL have a go as soon as he has his back turned. I admire the tenacity.

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Comments

[meakah]

Small world!
Just came across your blog (I did a search for Canoa...my favorite stop in Ecuador) and read about your 'lion' incident in Bahia. I saw the lions too! Looked at your date and sure enough...we were there at the same time! It was an advert for a circus and I think they were so mellow because it was over +30C. Those poor things had zero shade and were dying in the heat...likely dehydrated. :( Definitely tainted my view of this so called "Eco-city".