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Published: July 13th 2011
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So, I know this is coming about 3 weeks late. After a crazy final few weeks in Ecuador, and a close-to-disastrous trip home I am finally wrapping up my blog with my final posts. Bear with me (and thanks for your patience).
So, Saturday morning I woke up in shock to find the time to be nearly 10:30 am. Why was I not woken up 2 hours ago? Where was the call to breakfast? Have I been abandoned? Nope. I was simply in Puerto Lopez. This was vacation time.
Here, I stayed with Elsa, the host mother living in this small and simple fishing and tourist vacation spot. She is a super nice woman, totally laid back and very welcoming. After a lovely breakfast of rolls, eggs and juice, Royal and I slowly and leisurely got our bathing suits and other beach essentials and flagged one of the quirky taxis that run like little insects throughout the village. The taxi (a motorcycle sawed in half with a brightly colored and small buggy attached) took us down the unpaved roads and hills to the beachside. And there we relaxed for the afternoon. Though admittedly not the cleanest beach, the sights
of the fishing boats, and brightly painted houses lining the beach-side road made one girl we met there describe the town as “run-down chic.”
While many tourists prefer the much more popular beach town of Montanita, (about an hour away) some just describe it as being the beach place that offers all the cookie cutter attractions that make a spot “touristy”.
After returning for a delicious lunch and epic nap we returned to the main street where a huge parade had begun for the important Whale Festival. Apparently it was a huge deal (even the president’s sister had arrived) although no one could really tell me what her name was. The street was so jammed that we couldn’t quite see what was going on, so we just enjoyed a beautiful sunset on the beach and returned a few hours later to see fireworks kick off a huge concert by some famous Columbian band. We walked around the town with the son of our host family there, Angelito, having just recently had a long talk with him about his life there and his many, many sex exploits, and to no surprise did we find that he was the it
boy of the place. After all, he himself declared that in Puerto Lopez, “ is famous like Coca-Cola”. At the end of the night, after running into a few too many drunken people (and taxi drivers) we made it safely to our beds.
Happy Father’s Day! Sunday was another day of swimming, drinking, and relaxation. We originally planned to take a bus to a private beach near Puerto Lopez, but were kicked off, basically for being gringos, so we just stayed in town. The whole gang returned to Elsa’s for dinner and, soon after, packed and headed to the bus station to take the 9 hour ride back to Quito. Little did we know, it would be one of the worst bus rides anyone of us had ever experienced.
Such a nice vacation couldn’t have ended more abruptly. Nine hours of THE bumpiest bus and ride that dangerously veered and swerved the entire time (some of my bags were found on the other side of the vehicle by the time we got off) somehow passed. We were unable to use the bathroom in the back because not only would it be simply dangerous to go (Stephen attempted once,
but was unsuccessful), but about a half hour into the ride the piece of toilet paper lodging the door in place flew away, leaving the bathroom necessity hanging and banging on its hinges. Just our luck, our seats were right at the back of the bus as well. The windows barely opened, so the bus heated up to suffocating degrees whenever we came to a stop or nearly froze us to death as it flew down the roads.
Needless to say at 4 in the morning, the sound of chirping birds out the window, we welcomed our beds with at least what I recall were cries of joy.
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