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Published: August 13th 2009
27/04/09
Walking around Cuenca looking for somewhere to have breakfast we soon noticed a few things. The beauty of the city. Its such an historical city lined with pebbled streets and old buildings. But that wasn't the first thing that came to our attention. We realised within seconds of leaving our hotel that it wasn't a destination used to seeing travellers. The amount of attention we were getting was unbelievable. To the point where we were walking around the streets and a group of young police girls came up to us and asked if they could take our photos. Locals in the shops and in cars passing by were laughing. After eating a huge breakfast we caught a taxi to the bus terminal and booked our bus tickets to the beach town of Montanita for the following morning. Only having one full day in the city we continued to explore it walking along side the incredibly clean river leading us towards the Inca ruins. After exploring them we headed back for dinner and a few beers. We finally had electricity in our room so we watched Die Hard 4 lying in bed.
28/04/09
We were at the bus terminal by 9.30am and our bus departed in the rain at ten. The weather may have been dull but our spirits were the exact opposite. We were all excited about hitting the beach. The bus journey in travelling terms was a short one and we were there around lunch time. Montanita is a small but expanding beach town. Due to the heavy rain the dirt streets had turned into long narrow mud pools. We found some awesome accommodation for $7 per person per night with a great sea view and balcony. We spent the day on the beach playing in the waves delighted with the bath like temperature of the water. We were up for a fun night out but the nightlife wasn't exactly pumping. We found a small Israeli party which we stayed at till 3am.
29/04/09
In South America when hostels advertise 'free breakfast' it normally consists of stale bread and jam. Our eyes lit up when they brought out fresh fruit and toast. A good start to the day. We wasted no time and headed to the beach making some more Happy Birthday
photos for my Mum. But today ended up being a day that will one day make the five of us very famous and rich. We were body surfing in the waves when we some how stumbled across a more intense way of enjoying the pure power of the waves. We all lined up facing the beach, standing where the large waves broke, all agreeing not to look back to see when these waves were about to crush us. Its sounds painful and im not going to lie, it was! I have never had so much fun though. We decided that who ever has the best wipe out wins. For example if someone gets injured, gets stamped on by one of his friends or even emerges last from under the water...wins. So obviously you need large waves to play this game and some crazy friends!ha We were trying to come up with a name over breakfast when Wee Man (Mike) came up with one that had us all sat there in silence nodding in agreement. The name, Back To Nature! So, if one day your sat on the beach and someone asks you if you want to play Back To Nature,
you know where it originated from!ha We spent the evening playing poker, drinking a few beers and relaxing on our balcony watching the sunset. Amazing times and what a great bunch of lads.
30/04/09
Seeing that all of us were on a tight time scale we decided to leave and head further up the coast. We were enjoying Montanita but seeing that the nightlife wasn't quite what we expected and that there were loads of road works going on making a huge amount of noise during the day it only made sense to hit the next beach town. Our next destination was Puerto Lopez. The small bus terminal was closed so we sat on the side of the road, on our backpacks and just waited for a bus to turn up. One eventually did but was packed to the brim. We didn't want to wait any longer so we squeezed on with our bags, standing in the isle looking at the smiling faces staring at us. Once again we were the only travellers on the bus. Poor Will came down with a stomach bug half way through the journey and had to stop the
bus so he could run into the bushes. We all felt so sorry for the lad but that's something that most travellers all go through. We arrived in Puerto Lopez by 5pm and checked into the hostel Sol Inn. The sun was still high in the blue sky so we walked to the beach. Reading the Lonely Planet before we got there we were very confused once we stepped onto the beach. To quote the Lonely Planet, 'Chipped blue fishing boats bob on a beautiful fishhook bay...' So needless to say we were expecting a fairly nice beach...it wasn't! Trying not to judge the beach straight away we walked the full length of the cove thinking that the beach would get cleaner the further away we got from the fishing boats. Sadly enough the beach didn't get any better. Desperate to jump in the sea we decided that we jump in as a group. all for one and one for all and all that rubbish. We took off our tops, slowly walked towards the waters edge avoiding standing on bottles and other garbage when we came across something that made all of us turn round at the same time saying
"no way am i getting in that water now!" Human poo! The town itself isn't much better so i would recommend that if you can, give this town a miss heading up the coast. We found a cool little Colombian restaurant for dinner and chilled out in the hostel for the rest of the night. I was in the shower when i heard Mike say to Mike, "Don't tell Barrie." I naturally questioned the boys and it turned out that the group of French travellers in the hostel were in the kitchen cooking a baby hammerhead shark. It took every ounce of strength i had not to slap the idiots in the face.
1/05/09
We caught the first bus out of the town at 8am, had a quick bus change at Portoviejo and arrived at Canoa by 3pm. Once again we didn't see another traveller but i'm not complaining. I love being sat on a long bus journey, surrounded by locals getting on with their every day lives. Watching parents interacting with their children and seeing their undying love for one another in their eyes. They might not have a penny to their name
and live day to day but they look so happy. It does make you think. I recon i looked through about 1500 old photos on this day. At one point i had someone sat next to me who gave Asdas idea of a fresh chicken a kick in the arse. The bloke had a live chicken tied up in a plastic bag with its head poking out!ha The bus window was so dirty i managed to write a Happy Birthday message on it for my Mum. Canoa had a great vibe to it. We did have some trouble getting accommodation but we finally found a place that could accommodate all of us. We had lunch in the Bambu hostel where we also reserved a room for us for the next day. The hostel even advertised a free cocktail for anyone who brings back a full bag of rubbish collected from the beach. Something that more beach hostels should do. It was overcast but we still spent a few hours playing in the sea. Back at our hotel, we all jumped into the cold showers provided and started singing 'Mamma Mia' at the top of our voices. I'm still confused to
how we ended up singing this song?! Being a Friday night we were all desperate for a fun night out. We started off in a beach bar where we witnessed a 40 year old American man marry a stunningly beautiful 25 year old local girl. I'm not an expert on body language but watching her, i'm pretty sure she isn't marrying him for love. After that we hit the clubs on the main strip and had a wicked night. Will and Mike jumped in the middle of a dance circle and made everyone laugh and cheer. One girl caught my attention. She was wearing a blue top and looked amazing. I couldn't stop looking at her. With the help of Matt and Alex, i eventually worked up the courage to ask her to dance (in Spanish). To my delight she spoke great English. A great girl who had the looks to match. Her name was Alex who lived in Quito which was our next destination. We swapped details and arranged to meet up in Quito when i arrived. A great night, just what us boys needed.
2/05/09
Along the coast of Ecuador most of the
hostels supply you with a mosquito nets and this one was no different. But there were other pests that this particular hotel should have concentrated more on...mice! I'm saying mice because it sounds better than rats. I woke up to find mouse droppings all over my bed sheets and even on my pillow. So basically i spent a romantic night, trapped within my mosquito net with some Ecuadorian rodents!ha As planned,we checked out anyway and moved into the Bambu Hostel which is situated on the beach. We even got our own cabin since there were five of us. Two single beds downstairs, and a double and a single upstairs. So yes, if you do the maths in meant that two of us were going to have to share the double bed. We played paper, rock, scissors and shortly after Mike and I were arguing about who got what side of the bed!ha We all rented surf boards but Alex, Will and I spent more time trying to paddle out and getting knocked off our boards than we did sat on the bloody things!ha We were not complaining though. There a seriously hot local girl surfing as if she was a
pro and i think every lad out there enjoyed watching her more than they did the waves. Later on in the evening it became apparent that the sunset was going to be an awesome one so Mat and I rushed back to get our cameras. What happened next was so random and this is why I love travelling. We ran back down on to the beach to find three girls taking photos of each other with the sunset in the background. Mat and I started doing the same and within a few minutes the girls asked us if we could be in their photos. The girl from Argentina was slightly mad and now bearing in mind there were other people sat on the beach watching the sunset, they had us doing a proper full on model shoot. We loved it though. It was a geat laugh. Could the day get any better?! That night Mike wasn't feeling up to another night out so the four of us left him in our cabin reading one of his Andy Mcnab books. We found a beach bar to start the night off and whilst drinking our first drink we noticed a few jeeps
dangerously close to the waters edge. We knew the tide was coming in as well so we went over to investigate. There were three local couples in three different jeeps. They openly admitted they parked up on the beach to have some adult fun when they realised the tide was coming in. They went to leave but one of the jeeps was stuck in the sand. By the time we got there there were loads of kids trying to help with no prevail. So this is where the bad boys came in to save the day!ha After about ten minutes with the help of some local children we managed to get the jeep out. The couples were so thankful they asked us if they could buy us some drinks. They joined us at the beach bar and there we stayed for hours. They kept pouring cocktails down our throughts and asked us to dance with their wives. They were a great laugh. We swapped emails etc and it turned out one of the lads owned his own club in Cuenca. He told us if we went back to Cuenca, he would close the club for us and he would make
sure we had about twenty girls each!ha It was tempting but we were all on a tight time scale so we had to decline his kind offer. This big bloke was for sure a member of the local mafia but in a wierd way that would make him a very safe man to be around. We were dancing away on the beach with the six of our new friends when we noticed a European looking gril staggering in our direction. It was obvious she was blind drunk but the worrying thing was the fact she had about four local lads harrassing her. We grabbed her and sat her down with us to the disgust of the lads following her. At one point we thought they were going to kick off but luckily they decided not to. Her friends turned up and took her away shortly afterwards. We eventually said goodbye to our friends and hit the clubs. We were all drunk and that night Will dissapeared. We split up looking for him and that's when my night ended. I also ended up getting lost. I can remember walking around for about an hour when i stumbled across a huge man
size hole on the sidewalk. I recognised it (even though i was far to drunk!) and found my way back from there and jumped into bed...alongside Mike!ha
3/05/09
I got some answers this morning. Turned out that William dissapeared to the beach with a girl he met and Alex spent the night with a girl who he met whislt looking for his brother. I thought i'd missed out till Alex told me that when the girl left in the morning she stole $40 out of his pocket. Awesome!ha We checked out with the intention of leaving but after walking to the bus terminal with all our bags we got told that the bus got cancelled because there wasn't enought people. So, we walked back and checked back in again!ha We spent the day playing Back To Nature and took the piss out of Alex at every opportunity!ha We had an early night and Mike read us all a bed time story out of his Andy Mcnab book!ha
4/05/09
We checked out again knowing that we had to leave today no matter what. Where there is a will there is a
way. It was very overcast and being a Monday the small beach town was dead. The bus had been cancelled again so we found ourselves in the Surf Bar, where we spent much of our time, trying to decide what to do. The owner there helped us out big time. He told us to get a taxi in the evening to San Vicente, get a small ferry across to Bahia and then from there we could catch an overnight bus to Quito. So the plan was set. We spent the day playing the board game Risk in the Surf Bar. I've never played the game before but what a game! I got my arse kicked by Alex but it was worth it. We stumbled across a new travel companion in the process. One of my men kept putting up a huge fight and even though he was out numbered, he managed to hold back Alexs invading army again and again. In the end he died bravely but not before earning the name, Andy Mcnab. If you don't know, Andy Mcnab is a famous x SAS soldier. We left Canoe that evening with a new travel companion who we vowed to
take with us every where we went. Mike was happy as that meant he wasn't the smallest in our group anymore!ha Everything went like clock work. We all squeezed into one taxi (God knows how!), got a ferry acorss to Bahia which only takes ten minutes and waited for an hour for an overnight bus to take us to Quito that left at 10pm. Happy days!
On the bus travelling to Quito we all knew deep down that it was going to be the destination where we were all going to have to say goodbye to each other. The brothers, Will and Alex, were catching a flight within a few days. Mike and Mat were in rush to get to Colombia as their time was running out and as for myself, well , i planned on spending some time with Alexandra who i met in Canoa. I was in no rush!ha But we knew more fun was to be had before them goodbyes came around.
The coast of Ecuador provided us with so many laughs. More importantly though it was the origin of Back To Nature and the birth place
of Andy Mcnab (who now has his own Facebook profile!ha). No wonder why i'm addicted to travelling!ha
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