Ecuador

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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.

So we arrived at Eddies Cabanas in Conoa and was greeted with "Duff Duff" music from the last day of Carnival. We decided to join in the festivities and had a BIG first night. Conoa is a really chilled beach town, visited by many backpackers with a bit of a night party vibe. The surf here was not excellent but still had the odd long ride.

After chilling for a couple of days, a swell came and we decided to hire a van and do a day trip down to Playa San Jose. We got up early and left around 5:30 to make the 2.5hours mission to Playa San Jose. Eddie had borrowed his girlfriend Mannu's board which came loose in the straps on the roof and flew off not far the destination. That was a bit unfortunate but the mood lit up when we arrived to pumping over head high waves. They were some of the best waves i have seen in a long time. Everybody got loads of good barrels, so good that we decided to return the next day only to find that the waves were not so good but we still had a good surf anyway.

The next couple of days we chilled in Canoa. The prawns we had on numerous occasions for dinner were amazing. Done a variety of ways, from crumbed and fried(Apanado) or added to spicy coconut soup (Encocado) with rice.

We also met a couple from Cornwall, Richie and Catherine who were travelling around Ecuador and decided to head down the coast a with them for a bit. The first stop was a very small chilled town called Ayampe where we stayed for a couple of nights. We got some waves and had some beers with the locals. You cant get enough of the beers in this hot and sticky climate.

Then the four of us headed south towards Montanita, a renowned party town of Ecuador. The previous night we had terential rain which flooded parts of Ayampe. On the bus ride through the mountains we saw mud slides which had taken large trees down with them. Once we arrived in Montanita and settled into our nice hostel, we headed into town for some lunch. Montanita was like the Ecuadorian version of Kuta!! Bars, restaurants, (cheap) food stalls, handmade jewellery,
and Australians!! We enjoyed fresh fruit cocktails by the beach that night and took advantage of the cheap food stalls. Unfortunatly, Andy was coming down with something and had a terrible fever that night which made him stay in bed the next day. Feeling rested, and slightly better, we headed to Guyaquil where we jumped on a plane for the Galapagos Islands!!!

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