Bus&Taxi Montañita, Gringo Tan, Pisco Sour & More

Hola todos,

So the first weekend I was in Ecuador my new house-mates already asked me to go with them to the coast of Ecuador, so enough said I went with them. After a small party at the house we had to catch the bus at 10 o’ clock at night to get a 8 hour ride to Guayaquil which is already at the coast but, presumably not that nice. So we hopped onto the bus, put some music on and drove towards Ecuador’s beautiful coast. So on the ride I did not get a lot of sleep as the Latin/indigenous women sitting next to me just decided she needed 1.5 chair. Well enough… After a few hours we stopped because there was something wrong with the tire pressure (or similar). After a we were already standing beside of the road for 45 minutes the woman next to me decided it was time to go and make comments about what the bus driver and the mechanics fixing the bus were doing. This actually delayed us for another 20 minutes, never the less the problem got fixed and we were on the road again. On our way to Montañita, so since I could not really sleep anyway I decided that when it got a little bit more light I went just staring outside, to find the most beautiful mixture of (semi)-jungle like forests, banana, rice, cacao plantations. Next to this of course we came along typical Ecuadorian villages and believe me they are not rich there… Moreover they are poor, poor, poor, as the bus kept on driving on one of the most beautiful highways I ever saw we passed some “richer” towns but also towns that were completely abandoned, or it just seemed like it. Since Quito lies at about 2800 meters and the air there is really thin I started feeling really relaxed the lower we got, it is as if you were to be able to breath in for 2 minutes straight and didn’t have to breathe again for another 5. But as we came closer to Guayaquil I just wanted the bus ride to get over as it was too long anyway. So once we finally arrived at our stopover destination the first thing to do was to go and eat something, at the real Ecuadorian… . . . . . . . . . McDonnalds (what else) so once we had our stomachs full, were ready to continue we found out there were no busses going to Montañita that day. Funny thing about Ecuador anyway is that you cannot take up money from your rabobank account as I found out from at Guayaquil airport/bus-terminal. So after not taking out any money we met this cab-driver who offered to take us to the town of Montañita… hence this was to become an epic cab drive, with 5 people in a 4 person cab, and with people stacked on top of each other, we still had 2.5 hours of driving ahead. So this meant of course that the cabdriver put some regaton on at volume +100 so that’s how we filled our two hours driving to Ecuador’s coastline, in a cab with the music way loud and 5 people excited to see the beach the sea and of course the sun… As Quito hasn’t been very sunny lately.

Montañita

So after arriving in this splendid… town we still had to find a hostel as we didn’t find one the night before, but after the second hostel we were lucky already and we had a place to sleep which was actually quite nice. It was a two floor apartment with place for 6 people and mosquito nets above the beds so there was no real need to worry about these vile creatures attacking us. So after storing our stuff in the kitchen of the hostel first, because the room we were supposed to have was still occupied, we went to the beach as that was where we came for anyway. So finally beach time and it was really nice, even though I got the complete gringo tan with it (meaning burnt like hell) despite using a factor 50 sunscreen! But the beach was really nice and it was really, really good to have a swim in the nice and really warm sea. The sand on the beach was so hot that I had almost burnt my feet, so I should have known that even though I used the sunscreen multiple times and been on the beach for only a few hours and spent my time for 90% in the shadows, I would get sunburnt. When we were at the beach we also decided to have a cocktail just to give us the feeling we were really living the good life :P and to be quite honest, yes we were! I ordered a Mojito, and the guy that was making my drink asked me “quieres mucho rón” or if I wanted much rum in my drink… to which I replied “normalmente” to which he decided it meant very much. So I got myself a nice strong Mojito for only 2 dollars. And what the great thing about Ecuador is, the fruit is very cheap so a big fruit-salad is not expensive at all. When the evening fell and it was time to go back to the hostel to shower and the change clothes for the evening we decided to take one more cocktail when I saw on the cocktail menu there was Pisco Sour on the menu, highly recommended by my friends from Perú when I still was in Korea. Bye the way guys, It was a really nice cocktail! So after having showered very Frío or in plain English just stone-cold we went out in Montañita’s beautiful beach. So at first we went somewhere to eat something at a vegetarian restaurant which only had like 2 out of the 10 dishes on the menu so that was kind of a bummer. After this we went to the beach to drink some beer and talk a little, but soon it was decided that we had to dance so therefore we went to a kind of club which was a whole new experience. When we got into the club we there were some Ecuadorians talking with some people of the group which turned out to be girls who wanted us Gringo’s to dance with them. After dancing with a girl for about 1,5 hour I tried to explain to her that it was enough and I needed a pause but she didn’t understand, so I went to look for my friends again, and when I found them, once again I had to dance, to my surprise it just didn’t end. So after a long and tiring night we finally went back to the hostel to have a nice night sleep. So the next day it was market time in Montañita so we went for some food and look at the market before went back to Quito.

Spanish Class

So the next day when we got back into Quito, I had Spanish classes with a new Dutch girl, but she wasn’t there the first day. So I had a private lesson with my teacher Martín, which was nice anyway to get used to Spanish again and to work on my personal weak points. For the rest the Spanish lessons are okay as they are quite hard, but nothing compared to Korean as these lessons I can actually follow and understand and the homework is only like 1 or 2 exercises .
With Spanish class we went to see a village with a church we could climb again, but this not like the churches in Europe you can climb because it is a little bit more steep, no rails and squeaking hardboard or iron-plate floors. After the very interesting church we went to see the local market, so first there was a (non-animal) food-market and it was like nothing you have ever seen in Europe. We tried some Ecuadorian delicacies, like avocado with hot sauce and salt, snails with union, lime a some liquid, fried white-beans, half-popped-popcorn, so the popcorn is still in the shape of corn, called Choclo locally and we tried some very sweet Ecuadorian fruit. When we went further down the market we also tried some kind of cake in banana leaf. Everything except for the snail which I personally don’t really like but the worst thing to me was still to come a small bus-ride later, to eat Cuy, or in English Guiney-pig. I only tried a little piece because it was like very bad spare-ribs.

Virgen de Quito

The day before eating Cuy, I went to visit the historic center of Quito together with the new Dutch girl Sophie. First we wanted to take a bus but after some minutes we decided to take a taxi to the old town of Quito. Where we decided very stupidly to walk up the hill to the statue of the Virgin of Quito, finally reaching the top, totally exhausted (altitude and climbing) the police asked us to take a cab down because it was actually illegal to walk up the hill as a lot of people got robbed there. But from the top of this hill there is a very nice view over Quito. So after this nice experience, we took a cab down to visit the Basilica del Voto Nacional where we could climb into the bell tower and walk over all kind of doggy planks to get once again a great view over Quito. In the church was a café where we decided to go and drink Coca tea, as they had it, in the church, so as it was in there, it shouldn’t be illegal… or is it ?

This weekend it is off to Otovalo which is supposed to great with a good traditional market, so I will keep you guys up to date,

Adios Amigos, Hasta Luego