Cuenca and the International Masters surf competition in Montañita

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From Mancora in Peru James and I caught an overnight bus to Cuenca in Ecuador. At first I was a bit apprehensive as a lot of the posts I had read online had talked about the border check points being quite far apart from each other and buses that were meant to be going straight through just kicking you off and leaving you to your own devices. It turned out however that due to certain degrees of corruption and passport theft the two countries have recently come together and at three in the morning we passed through a unified border where we were stamped out of one country and immediately into the next. The only delay in the process was with some of the highly intelligent individuals on my bus having the inability to fill out a form, however apart from that it was all smooth sailing.



We arrived in Cuenca the following morning which was a quaint mountain city in the south east of the country. We'd gone out exploring and on our way home we passed a hairdresser and I decided that it was about time that I got a haircut. I went in and was standing there trying to figure out how to explain what I wanted in Spanish when the hairdresser spoke to me in English. Win. So I explained that I just wanted only what was necessary to be taken off the ends and for my layers to be kept the same. The hairdresser was like yep so just two or three fingers. By the end of my haircut I had managed to lose almost two hands width of hair and there was not a single layer in sight! It was so annoying after I had spent so long growing out my hair to have it all just vanish in a matter of minutes.



Overall Cuenca did not have a whole lot to hold our attention and we ended up spending most of our time utilising the super fast wifi at our hostel to download movies and skype home. After a couple of nights we headed off early one morning to the surf town of Montañita.



Upon our arrival at Montañita we quickly discovered that the hostel that we had booked into was quite a way out of town and decided to go for the no show and stay somewhere closer in. A random scout on the street lead us to a dodgy hostel that was nothing but a room up a very steep set of stairs above a bar but seeing that there was an international surf competition on in town we didn't have much of a choice but to take it.



The town itself was pretty nice. It was set along a beautiful beach that was littered with beach chairs and umbrellas sporting the I heart Montañita slogan. At night time it turned into quite the party town with little booths lined up along the street serving $2.50 cocktails, which can be very dangerous.



The international masters surfing competition started on the last day that we were in Montañita so it meant I got to watch some of the first heats. The Hawaiians and the Australians were absolutely smashing it on the 8 foot waves and the Ecuadorians were unfortunately displaying poor sportsmanship as they would not only cheer for their competitors, but also cheer when anyone else would wipe out.



I decided to leave Montañita after just two nights as it was well and truly time to leave the hostel and I could not be bothered to look for another one in town. Also I didn't not want to fall into the trap of the town and end up never leaving. So I caught a late night bus that was the coldest I was yet to experience in my five months of travelling and I headed to Baños.

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