We (4 others and myself) took a night bus from Quito to Coast, which meant leaving at 8:30pm and arriving around 6 in the am. The ride was not bad at all and I think that most of us were actually able to sleep quite a bit. When the bus stopped, we stumbled into the morning coastal air that immediately clung to our bodies through our clothes, and walked immediately in the direction of the waves. We started to regroup and decide where to go from there when we were bombarded by a pack of stray dogs and shortly thereafter, an extremely intoxicated Ecuadorian man and his somewhat less intoxicated friends. It was kind of a startling introduction to Puerto Lopez that none of our groggy brains could really deal with, and we ended up making the decisions to hop on the next bus to Montanita, a tiny little surfer town about another hour South. We got ourselves a hostel here and joined the multitude of other extranjeros on the sandy white shores for a day of sunbathing and swimming in the brilliant blue waves. Later on, the guy who ran our hostel took us on a short hike up the road to a lookout with this cute Catholic church where we watched the sunset. I couldn't think of a better place than watching the sunset over the pacific ocean to spend my 21st birthday. Of course, that was only the beginning of the night... ;)
Our adorable little bungalow/hostel
The next morning our group split up. Some remained for a lazy day on the beach while Kraig and I returned to Puerto Lopez in hopes of visiting La Isla del Plata. Unfortunately, by the time we had all eaten our delicious breakfast of fruit and yogurt and real coffee (!!!!!), and then said our goodbyes, it was already too late in the day and all of the tours had already left for the island. But only a few short minutes after coming to this realization, we were approached on the street by two men who wanted to take us on their boat to another island where we could swim and snorkel and see animals for only $15. We, of course, were down. So we followed these guys to the beach, handed over our money and hopped onto this rickety little wooden boat (just the two of us) with our costeno captain who was nearly impossible to understand. What we did understand was that every time we saw a pelican or blue footed booby (and there were A LOT of them) he would point and say the name over and over again until I took a picture. So I took a lot of pictures of birds hahhahah. It was really really beautiful and we got to snorkel and see some pretty rad fish. I happened to lose my snorkel on the swim back to the boat, and the guy jumped in and looked for about 45 minutes before he found it, while Kraig and I sunbathed in the boat. It turned out he was going to charge me $75 bucks if I had lost it, so thank the sweet baby Jesus that he was able to scrounge it up from the ocean floor. After the triumphant return of my snorkel, we hopped over to this island where he dropped us off and we swam to shore. Not knowing exactly how long we were supposed to be there or what we were supposed to do, we just did some more sunbathing, and eventually returned to the mainland where we got to shower and read and eat and be really lazy until we met up with the others again to take another night bus home to Quito, where I sat next to a really interesting guy from Santiago who luckily spoke better English than I speak Spanish.
This is a really crappy picture, but the side of that cliff was covered with Blue Footed Boobies
Upon arrival to my house at about 6am, I was greeted by my mamacita who told me that it was my Grandma's 87th birthday party later on that day and that after I slept, she would come pick me up and we would go and eat and dance and partayyyy! My dad is one of 11 siblings, so this party was HUGE! There was a live band consisting of some drums and then wayy too many brass instruments. They basically played the same song, or part of a song, over and over and over again all afternoon and we danced and ate tons of food. There were all these crates of beer and really classy boxed peach wine that various people would carry around with a tiny little cup and shove at peoples' faces while they were dancing until they chugged the cup, handed it back, and the pourer would move on to a new victim. My tiny little mom was the one who seemed to be in charge of this for a large majority of the time, although I never saw her drink a drop of the stuff herself. It was a lot of fun, but I checked out early to do homework and sleep some more. Here she is pretending to chug a glass of Pilsener.
Mi abuela, the party animal
All in all it was a fantastic and exhausting weekend, although my Spanish suffers from all of these gringo adventures. Tonight after dinner, my brother, in typical older brother fashion, informed me that I used to be able to speak better Spanish when I first got here. Ouch. Jaja. But it is true that the transition from a weekend of speaking English to trying to converse with my whole family is pretty rough. Time to buckle down, I suppose.
Anyway, goodnight all. xoxoxox
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