trip to the coast (that´d be the pacific coast if you were wondering...)
ok, i wasn´t going to update this till the end of the week, but i know you´re all sitting in front of your computers wondering what i´ve been up to. and i can´t keep my audience waiting after all, famous is as famous does. and famous updates his blog. (wow, i´m a loser)
so last weekend (it´s been a while since i´ve written anything) i impulse went to the coast. here´s some advice, take impulse trips. i´ve done a few and they always end up being some of the best times of my life. like when we went sky-diving, or the time i went to texas. actually, i´ve never been to texas, but i´ve met some people from texas and i imagine it would be a good time. anyway, my trip to the coast... (p.s. get a snack and a beverage cuz this is going to be a long post. but i promise you it´ll be worth it)
so i decide to go to the coast with some friends. there ended up being 8 of us and i couldn´t have asked for a better group, everyone was amazing-me, adam s, taylor, rachel, kaiti, courtney, joanna, and michelle. we were headed to a little fishing town with some amazing beaches that we read about in lonely planet called Puerto Lopez. it´s about 10 hours away by bus. well, it should have been 10 hours by bus. but we had some problemas with the bus companies... let me tell you about it. we planned on taking a bus from quito at 8.30 pm on thr night, sleep on the bus and eureka you´re at the beach in the morning. didn´t work out that slick. apparently you need to buy tickets for the bus in advance and we didn´t know that. so the 8.30 bus only had 3 seats left. so now 5 of us can´t go. or so we thought, until we found out there was another bus leaving at 11.30 pm that had plenty of seats open. so we bought tickets on that bus and waited in the SKETCHY (a lot of things are sketchy in ecuador) bus station. we sent one guy on each bus and i ending up on the 11.30 bus. now, there was another problem, we thought that our bus went directly to puerto lopez, but found out that it didn´t really. it went through portoviejo though and they (the bus people who sold us direct tickets to puerto lopez...) told us that there was a bus from portoviejo to puerto lopez. another lie. at about 7 am my bus arrived in portoviejo and met up with the other 3 and took a taxi to the other bus station in town where we got on a bus that went to jipijapa, where we could find another bus to puerto lopez. so fine. we do that. and in jipijapa we wait around for another bus that goes to puerto lopez in an even SKETCHIER bus station. finally one comes and they tell up it´s an hour to puerto lopez on this bus. now this bus was another adventure. finally we´re driving, and we remember, hey, isn´t there a guy on the roof tying his bike down? yes, there is. but 5 min later he climbed through the window of the bus and found a place to stand in the aisle (the bus was packed.) so two and a half hours later we end up in puerto lopez. i know this sounds like a lot to go through to get to a beach, and it was, but i´m actually glad that it happened like that. we got to go through RURAL RURAL ecuador and see things that we never would have seen on a direct bus. man, it´s a different world out there. these villages are sooo poor. the people live in little thatch roof huts with dirt floors, and there are wild dogs, cows, unknow animals roving around. but the most amazing part is that there are posters for presidential candidates (it´s an election year and there are 16 candidates) EVERYWHERE. people also paint the walls of their houses and the few cars that are there with messages of support for different candidates. they´re are so dedicated to these politicians, but the politicians will never do anything for them. never. i´ll write more about ecuadorian politics closer to the election in october, but they´re screwed up to say the least... i don´t know, life is so diffent for these people, it´s hard to see.
anyway, we FINALLY end up in puerto lopez and we meet two taxi drivers at the bus station who agree to take us to a hostel. these guys were awesome and became our unoficial guides for the weekend. they drove us around in these awesome little motorcycle taxis that vibrated like mad and always seemed like they wouldn´t make it. but they did. every time. our hostel was right on the beach and was more of a little resort that a hostel. it was 6 dollars a night and seemed like something out of swiss family robinson. it was awesome. we rented one 2 person cabin and one 6 person cabin. so now it´s about 10.30 in the morning and we decide to go to a beach in a nearby national park. the beach is called los friles and it was gorgeous. the water was amazing and the beach was clean and empty. we had so much fun swimming and screwing around in the water. we found out that marco polo in the ocean is both really really fun, and really really difficult! good times. anyway, since the beach was in a national park there were hiking trails from the beach up a cliff to a lookout point. half the group went on that trail, but kaiti, courtney (both from colorado) and i decided to walk to the far point on the other side of the beach. it was so fun, we hunted crabs, star fish and sea anemonies on some bolders farther down and finally made it to the far point which afforded some amazing views of the ocean and the park. so we spent the day there and then our cabbies came and picked us up and took us back to town. the park closes at 4 pm so we still had plenty of time.
so we walked around the town for an hour and stopped at a little panderia (bread store) that we nick-named the pan&porn becuase there was a large add for pilsener beer featuring a topless woman in the store. we´re not sure why. but it was funny. there actually a lot of adds like that for beer here. in the most random places. then we went to the liquor shop and picked up some alcohol that we´ve never heard of (which was terrible) and some beer. then we headed back to take showers before going to dinner. more good times. showers&shots. hahaha. ok, food on the coast is amazing. it´s all fresh seafood (i love seafood now.) it´s soooo good and sooo cheap. food like that would cost between $35-40 a plate in the US, and you can´t even order some of the sea-food they have here, but it´s only $5-6 here. wow. i had shrimp, fish, calamari, and i even tried a traditional dish called ceviche that has about every sea creature alive in it, and i loved it! then we went back to the hostel and struggled our way through mystery alcohol and beer on the beach. so that was our first amazing day on the coast.
day two. our cabbies also happen to work for a boat tour company and they set us up for a trip to la isla de plata a.k.a. the "poor man´s galapagos." so at 9.30 we got on a boat and set off with the cabbies brother who was our tour guide for the day. it´s about a 1 hour boat trip to the island, but we spent 2.5 cuz we went whale watching. more specifically, hump-backed whale watching. it´s whale season right now from ecuador to the middle of colombia. they come here for the warm water to mate and birth before returning to the antarctic. sirvirio (our guide) explained that they need the warm water to mate due to shrinkage of the males penis in the antarctic. sirvirio explained all this to us in spanish and everyone was cracking up and thinking about the seinfeld episode where george is trying explain shrinkage in a pool. hahaha. we have the explanation in spanish on video tape. lol. anyway, whales are amazing. and huge. they were swimming 20m from our boat and then they would randomly jump up. it was unbelieveable! eventually we made it to the island though and took a 3.5 hour hike around the island where we saw all kinds of rare birds and stuff. it was awesome. there were people from all around the world on the tour with us. including our newest friends carlos and his wife from spain. they´re around 40 and he does the budget for the defence department of spain it turns out! they were awesome. anyway, after returning to puerto lopez we hopped on a bus to montañita, which is about an hour away and the surfing capital of ecuador. sketchiest bus i´ve ever been on. didn´t feel safe. especially becuase carlos told us that he and his wife had been robbed on a similar bus at night. two guys with sawed off shotguns hijacked the bus and held the driver hostage while one of them took everyone´s money and beat up the money collector on the bus. yeah. that kind of thing happens on these busses. but not to us, thank the lord.
ok, day three of our trip (hang in there, it´s the last day you have to read about...) so we make it to montañita and go to another hostel. not as nice as the last one, but it got us through the night. we went to a resteraunt-bar called the chief. there was also a large dream catcher hanging between two buildings on main street. i´m not sure why. no one knew. hmmmm. but the chief was an awesome resteraunt and kaiti got the most amazing burger i´ve ever tried in my entire life. paired with the most amazing mojitos i´ve ever had, it was a good dinner. we also made friends with the chef, who´s name is boris. boris took us clubbing later that night. nice guy, looks like he´s about 16, is actually 27 and has a large tatoo of the statue of liberty on his forearm. the first club was fun, but emptyish, so we dicided to go to the other one in town that was only a block from our hostel. wow, never going there again. median age-14. there were also some really gross 40 year old women grinding with some 10 year old boys. what??? so we said, no, not cool, and left. boris was confused about why we didn´t want to stay there, and when we explained, he said, oh it´s probably the mom and her kid. yeah, that makes it better. not. so we went home for the night. got up in the morning and tood surfing lessons. soooo fun. $12 for 4 hrs with a private instructor. sweet. i can surf now. and half hour into our class, carlos from spain showed up and joined our class. we had no idea they were coming. we had told them it was our plan the night before but they were going to guiaquil the next morning to catch their flight back to spain. but they got a later flight and came surfing instead! hahaha. so later we went to a resteraunt that had been recomened to us by some french guys the night before called the burro loco (crazy donkey) and had some more amazing seafood. at the burro loco a mary kate and ashley movie was playing, followed by bring it on 3-all or nothing, both in english with bad spanish sub-titles. another entertaining meal. finally we hopped on a bus to puerto lopez where we had previously bought tickets for a direct bus to quito. traveled, safely, through the night and ended up in quito at 6 am. some of us had class at 8.30, but i fortunately didn´t have class till 12.30.
so that´s it! my UNREAL trip to the coast. one of the best weekends of my life. and i´m tan now.
ok, i wasn´t going to update this till the end of the week, but i know you´re all sitting in front of your computers wondering what i´ve been up to. and i can´t keep my audience waiting after all, famous is as famous does. and famous updates his blog. (wow, i´m a loser)
so last weekend (it´s been a while since i´ve written anything) i impulse went to the coast. here´s some advice, take impulse trips. i´ve done a few and they always end up being some of the best times of my life. like when we went sky-diving, or the time i went to texas. actually, i´ve never been to texas, but i´ve met some people from texas and i imagine it would be a good time. anyway, my trip to the coast... (p.s. get a snack and a beverage cuz this is going to be a long post. but i promise you it´ll be worth it)
so i decide to go to the coast with some friends. there ended up being 8 of us and i couldn´t have asked for a better group, everyone was amazing-me, adam s, taylor, rachel, kaiti, courtney, joanna, and michelle. we were headed to a little fishing town with some amazing beaches that we read about in lonely planet called Puerto Lopez. it´s about 10 hours away by bus. well, it should have been 10 hours by bus. but we had some problemas with the bus companies... let me tell you about it. we planned on taking a bus from quito at 8.30 pm on thr night, sleep on the bus and eureka you´re at the beach in the morning. didn´t work out that slick. apparently you need to buy tickets for the bus in advance and we didn´t know that. so the 8.30 bus only had 3 seats left. so now 5 of us can´t go. or so we thought, until we found out there was another bus leaving at 11.30 pm that had plenty of seats open. so we bought tickets on that bus and waited in the SKETCHY (a lot of things are sketchy in ecuador) bus station. we sent one guy on each bus and i ending up on the 11.30 bus. now, there was another problem, we thought that our bus went directly to puerto lopez, but found out that it didn´t really. it went through portoviejo though and they (the bus people who sold us direct tickets to puerto lopez...) told us that there was a bus from portoviejo to puerto lopez. another lie. at about 7 am my bus arrived in portoviejo and met up with the other 3 and took a taxi to the other bus station in town where we got on a bus that went to jipijapa, where we could find another bus to puerto lopez. so fine. we do that. and in jipijapa we wait around for another bus that goes to puerto lopez in an even SKETCHIER bus station. finally one comes and they tell up it´s an hour to puerto lopez on this bus. now this bus was another adventure. finally we´re driving, and we remember, hey, isn´t there a guy on the roof tying his bike down? yes, there is. but 5 min later he climbed through the window of the bus and found a place to stand in the aisle (the bus was packed.) so two and a half hours later we end up in puerto lopez. i know this sounds like a lot to go through to get to a beach, and it was, but i´m actually glad that it happened like that. we got to go through RURAL RURAL ecuador and see things that we never would have seen on a direct bus. man, it´s a different world out there. these villages are sooo poor. the people live in little thatch roof huts with dirt floors, and there are wild dogs, cows, unknow animals roving around. but the most amazing part is that there are posters for presidential candidates (it´s an election year and there are 16 candidates) EVERYWHERE. people also paint the walls of their houses and the few cars that are there with messages of support for different candidates. they´re are so dedicated to these politicians, but the politicians will never do anything for them. never. i´ll write more about ecuadorian politics closer to the election in october, but they´re screwed up to say the least... i don´t know, life is so diffent for these people, it´s hard to see.
anyway, we FINALLY end up in puerto lopez and we meet two taxi drivers at the bus station who agree to take us to a hostel. these guys were awesome and became our unoficial guides for the weekend. they drove us around in these awesome little motorcycle taxis that vibrated like mad and always seemed like they wouldn´t make it. but they did. every time. our hostel was right on the beach and was more of a little resort that a hostel. it was 6 dollars a night and seemed like something out of swiss family robinson. it was awesome. we rented one 2 person cabin and one 6 person cabin. so now it´s about 10.30 in the morning and we decide to go to a beach in a nearby national park. the beach is called los friles and it was gorgeous. the water was amazing and the beach was clean and empty. we had so much fun swimming and screwing around in the water. we found out that marco polo in the ocean is both really really fun, and really really difficult! good times. anyway, since the beach was in a national park there were hiking trails from the beach up a cliff to a lookout point. half the group went on that trail, but kaiti, courtney (both from colorado) and i decided to walk to the far point on the other side of the beach. it was so fun, we hunted crabs, star fish and sea anemonies on some bolders farther down and finally made it to the far point which afforded some amazing views of the ocean and the park. so we spent the day there and then our cabbies came and picked us up and took us back to town. the park closes at 4 pm so we still had plenty of time.
so we walked around the town for an hour and stopped at a little panderia (bread store) that we nick-named the pan&porn becuase there was a large add for pilsener beer featuring a topless woman in the store. we´re not sure why. but it was funny. there actually a lot of adds like that for beer here. in the most random places. then we went to the liquor shop and picked up some alcohol that we´ve never heard of (which was terrible) and some beer. then we headed back to take showers before going to dinner. more good times. showers&shots. hahaha. ok, food on the coast is amazing. it´s all fresh seafood (i love seafood now.) it´s soooo good and sooo cheap. food like that would cost between $35-40 a plate in the US, and you can´t even order some of the sea-food they have here, but it´s only $5-6 here. wow. i had shrimp, fish, calamari, and i even tried a traditional dish called ceviche that has about every sea creature alive in it, and i loved it! then we went back to the hostel and struggled our way through mystery alcohol and beer on the beach. so that was our first amazing day on the coast.
day two. our cabbies also happen to work for a boat tour company and they set us up for a trip to la isla de plata a.k.a. the "poor man´s galapagos." so at 9.30 we got on a boat and set off with the cabbies brother who was our tour guide for the day. it´s about a 1 hour boat trip to the island, but we spent 2.5 cuz we went whale watching. more specifically, hump-backed whale watching. it´s whale season right now from ecuador to the middle of colombia. they come here for the warm water to mate and birth before returning to the antarctic. sirvirio (our guide) explained that they need the warm water to mate due to shrinkage of the males penis in the antarctic. sirvirio explained all this to us in spanish and everyone was cracking up and thinking about the seinfeld episode where george is trying explain shrinkage in a pool. hahaha. we have the explanation in spanish on video tape. lol. anyway, whales are amazing. and huge. they were swimming 20m from our boat and then they would randomly jump up. it was unbelieveable! eventually we made it to the island though and took a 3.5 hour hike around the island where we saw all kinds of rare birds and stuff. it was awesome. there were people from all around the world on the tour with us. including our newest friends carlos and his wife from spain. they´re around 40 and he does the budget for the defence department of spain it turns out! they were awesome. anyway, after returning to puerto lopez we hopped on a bus to montañita, which is about an hour away and the surfing capital of ecuador. sketchiest bus i´ve ever been on. didn´t feel safe. especially becuase carlos told us that he and his wife had been robbed on a similar bus at night. two guys with sawed off shotguns hijacked the bus and held the driver hostage while one of them took everyone´s money and beat up the money collector on the bus. yeah. that kind of thing happens on these busses. but not to us, thank the lord.
ok, day three of our trip (hang in there, it´s the last day you have to read about...) so we make it to montañita and go to another hostel. not as nice as the last one, but it got us through the night. we went to a resteraunt-bar called the chief. there was also a large dream catcher hanging between two buildings on main street. i´m not sure why. no one knew. hmmmm. but the chief was an awesome resteraunt and kaiti got the most amazing burger i´ve ever tried in my entire life. paired with the most amazing mojitos i´ve ever had, it was a good dinner. we also made friends with the chef, who´s name is boris. boris took us clubbing later that night. nice guy, looks like he´s about 16, is actually 27 and has a large tatoo of the statue of liberty on his forearm. the first club was fun, but emptyish, so we dicided to go to the other one in town that was only a block from our hostel. wow, never going there again. median age-14. there were also some really gross 40 year old women grinding with some 10 year old boys. what??? so we said, no, not cool, and left. boris was confused about why we didn´t want to stay there, and when we explained, he said, oh it´s probably the mom and her kid. yeah, that makes it better. not. so we went home for the night. got up in the morning and tood surfing lessons. soooo fun. $12 for 4 hrs with a private instructor. sweet. i can surf now. and half hour into our class, carlos from spain showed up and joined our class. we had no idea they were coming. we had told them it was our plan the night before but they were going to guiaquil the next morning to catch their flight back to spain. but they got a later flight and came surfing instead! hahaha. so later we went to a resteraunt that had been recomened to us by some french guys the night before called the burro loco (crazy donkey) and had some more amazing seafood. at the burro loco a mary kate and ashley movie was playing, followed by bring it on 3-all or nothing, both in english with bad spanish sub-titles. another entertaining meal. finally we hopped on a bus to puerto lopez where we had previously bought tickets for a direct bus to quito. traveled, safely, through the night and ended up in quito at 6 am. some of us had class at 8.30, but i fortunately didn´t have class till 12.30.
so that´s it! my UNREAL trip to the coast. one of the best weekends of my life. and i´m tan now.
posted by Adam (ebby) at 3:36 PM
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