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Published: February 28th 2011
After Baños we boardeda bus en route to a town in the mountains called Queveda. We knew it was going to be a long 5 hr journey along windy mountain roads, but we had no idea at which the speed and confidence we would take these sharp windy cliffside corners. Our bus driver, donning sunglasses and an upbeat attitude blasted his favorite espanol albumn of the moment and busted through these mountains like a bat out of hell. I had taken a motion sickness pill so I had fallen asleep right away but jolted awake by feeling the bus literally hurling around the bends.Í´ll never forget waking up and opening my eyes to look out the front of the bus and frantically grabbing anything around me ( bobby, the window ect) The crazy thing about this spine tingling journey was that the scenery was so epically gorgeous. It was like being horrified and inspired all at the same time. We were passing through these untouched indigenous andean villages, capturing glimpses of traditionally clad women and children, alpacas, sheep ect ect
After arriving in Queveda we boarded another bus to a town called Puerto Viejo. We thought this would be a
short 1 to 2 more hours bc of the proximity on the map'but we found out it was another 5 hrs! That should tell you something about the roads, no express highway on this stretch...again. At one point the road was so bad that the bus or any other car for that matter couldn´t pass through, I think it was a new road, unfinished....we had to get off the bus,and there was another one waiting 100 mts on the other side to take us to our destination Don´t ask me how the first bus turned around and got back?¿
We couldn´t bear the thought of one more bus ( the final to take us to the beach ) so we spent the night in Peurto Viejo. We met an English guy on the bus and shared a cab to a hotel near the bus station and headed out for some food, we were all starving. The options were chicken and rice ( again ) or a Hamburguesa stand. We chose hamburgers. Halfway through our burger we found out that our English friend had just emerged from the jungle after a month long volunteering stint, and this was his first
real food. He had been eating yucca ( like potatoe) and plantain 3 times day. I´ve never seen someone devour salt and fat like that before !
In the morningwe got on the final bus bound for the coast and we were in Montañita 3 hours later.....ahh the life of budget travelling, most flights across the world don´t take this long!
We checked into a hostel located directly on the beach with a long patio with hammocks and hammock chairs all over. The place was crawling with beach bumbs and beach babes, music and sun. We paid for 4 days and settled into beach life.......ahhh it felt great!
This place had your typical characters, beach peddlers selling jewellery, fruit, drinks and ice cream, aussie surfers, fire thrower hippie types, tonnes of Latino and Latina beauties and other travellers. The name of the game was P-A-R-T-Y and there were dedicated followers. There was a lane by our hotel called cocktail alley ( our aussie surfer neighbors took us too ) where there were all these fresh fruit drink stands with blenders and ice booze. Tasty and nasty all at the same time. We went there for a
few drinks chatted and met tonnes of other travellers ( mostly from chile and argentina ) and then headed down the beach for a reggae bonfire beach party later. There wasn´t any reggae but there was a beach and a bonfire
The rest of the days were spent here beaching and relaxing which was what the doctor ordered. 4 days was the perfect time spent here, the party scene quickly seemed trashy and the sun was burning our tender Canadian skin like crazy!! We would put soooo much sun screen on, but the equator sun is savage......the tan paid off in the end though!
We decided we had enough of Ecuador, and enough of meeting people who kept saying that Colombia was their favorite S.American country that we decided to book a flight and check it out ourselves.........TBC
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suzanne, dave and indy
non-member comment
looks fabulous - and you look so happy!