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Published: August 9th 2008
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Sunday morning, the girls and I woke up early to see the rest of our group off as they headed back into the jungle for another 3 weeks. That afternoon, we once again packed up our backpacks and headed to the bus terminal. We managed to get tickets for a 12:15 bus to Bahia, a town on the coast. Though we were told the trip would only take 8 hours, we arrived into the dark and deserted town of Bahia at about 10 pm. We had the name of what we hoped would be a good hostel, but when we arrived there by cab, the place looked closed. The three of us stared at the dark building for a few seconds, trying to figure out where in this dark town to turn next. Thankfully, as we started dragging our stuff from the cab, thinking we would just walk around and see what we could find, the door to the hostel opened and the owner peaked his head out. Though one would think this would have tough us to start making reservations before we got to our destinations, we didn´t make a single hostel reservation during our costal travels. This gave us
much more flexibility to find a hostel we liked, and we never had a problem finding a room.
The next day, Monday, July 28th, we took a water taxi from Bahia across the bay to the town of San Vincent. Here, we took a “taxi” (an open-air caboose attached to a motorcycle) 45 mins to the little surf town of Canoa. The town was only about five blocks by five blocks in total. Once again, we pulled the name of a hostel out of Annie’s travel guide and hoped for vacancy. We picked a good one this time, the Hotel Bambu was located right on the beach. The entire hostel was outdoors. The main area of the hostel was a bar/ restaurant filled with tables and a dozen hammocks. We ended up staying on the second floor of a bungalow whose first floor was inhabited by two Swiss boys who we later became great friends with. They were there traveling the coast for two months as part of their gap year. We spent most of our time with them, surfing, exploring, and going out to dinner each night.
Our days in Canoa were relaxing. We spent most of
our time on the beach or reading in the hammocks. We also met a number of the locals, one of whom gave me some free surf lessons- It only reminded me how bad I am at surfing. A few of the locals we met were girls from the US who had been in Canoa for three years building and working at the first local school in the town.
After three days in Canoa, we said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to Bahia. Here, we took a six hour bus ride to Cancun of Ecuador, Mantanita. The town was relatively small. The main road through Mantanita was lined with hostels, bars, restaurants, surf shops, and boutiques. Mantanita has a very authentic beach town feel. People walk around barefoot in their bathing suites carrying surfboards. The music in Mantanita is never, and I mean NEVER turned off. There is a constant buzz in this town that never sleeps.
Our first night there, we checked into a hostel called Tsunami and had our first flavorful meal in a week. Chicken sandwiches, salads, and pink lemonade. All of these things are luxuries on the coast. However, Mananita caters to
a large number of tourists, so the food is really good. We didn’t get much sleep that night, the music, the mosquitoes, and the rank stench that filled our room kept us awake most of the night. First thing the next morning, we switched hostels to the 5 story Montezuma Hotel. Our room had its own bathroom and a balcony with a hammock, AND the stench was not included. Our room was also facing away from the main street, so we were shielded from the music.
We spent our first day in Mantanita on the beach listening to Bob Marley and Jack Johnson playing from the bars. The only downside to Mantanita is that it is cloudy most of the time during the summer months. This makes for shorter beach days and earlier happy hours. The next day we met up with Ed and Lisa, a couple who had been in our group in the jungle. We spent most of the day on the beach and then relaxed in the Jacuzzi before dinner. That night, we bar hopped and met a number of interesting people. We saw Katie, one of the American girls we met in Canoe, as well
as a group of students from Ohio State who are spending the summer in Quito studying Spanish.
The following night, Saturday, was the night of the big beach rave in Mantanita. We spent the first part of the night socializing in the streets with all the locals and other tourists, and then headed down the beach at around 3am. According to the locals, the party didn’t get good until that time. We danced the night away and didn’t get into bed until 7am. Needless to say, the following day was pretty low-key.
Sunday morning we headed an hour south to the beach town of Puerto Lopez. During our three days here, we went on a whale watching trip, which included snorkeling, spent some quality time with the beach and the sun, and dined at a few American owned restaurants. We are such typical Americans. On our last day, we spent about 6 hours at the Whale Café until 7pm when we got our bus back to Quito. This was an 11 hour bus ride that got us back into Quito at 6am. From the station, we got a cab to our new apartment were we found that the landlord
was letting a few of her friends stay in the room for the night. Considering we hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep the night before, we rolled our sleeping backs out on the hard living room floor and passed out.
We have spent the last few days getting acquainted with the city. We took our first trip to the grocery store (Supermaxi) yesterday, and returned home with about 20 bags of food. We made dinner together last night and basked in our own glory and the fact that we had our own place. The layout is not ideal, one room for three of us, two shared bathroom, shared full kitchen, and living room, but we are happy non the less. Our landlord, Maria is very nice, as are the others living on our floor. We have the weekend to ourselves and then we start Spanish lessons and our new project Monday. Hope all is well with everyone and I will write again soon! Adios!
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