Ecuador!: A Coastal Voyage

Hello there avid blog readers. Hold on to your laptops and get a piece of leather to bite down on, because we have decided, on this hot and sweaty evening in Canoa, to grace you with a blogpost!

Well, where were we? Peru. As I´m sure you´ll agree, Mancora was a pretty cool place. However, as paradisical as it was, we still had a continent to conquer, and so we decided that we had seen quite enough of Peru, and that we should rob a bank and head for the border, so we did (except for robbing the bank). At midnight in Mancora we got on a dodgy looking bus headed for Ecuador. The border crossing at Tumbes has earned the title as The Worst Border Crossing in South America, which is something we thought we should see. However, upon arriving there at 3am, the only stressful part was waiting in the queue. Queues here do not function in the normal fashion, which is where everyone lines up in an orderly fashion. Here, everyone crowds around, shouts, tries to slip in from the side while looking innocent, and maybe someone gets stabbed. Other than that though, it was reasonably painless, and the nice Ecuadorian Official granted us a 60 day stay in the country. The rest of the bus ride was absolutely horrific. As well as being a long distance bus, with seated passengers, it was also functioning as a short distance bus, with standing passengers crammed into the aisle, meaning that for many many hours my face was squished against the backsides of many different Peruvians (and Ecuadorians). I elbowed many of them in the ribs and then pretended to be asleep. This pleased me.

Thankfully, this second bus was luxurious, air conditioned, and short, and that afternoon we arrived at the coastal (hippie Capital of the world), Montañita. We found a decent hostel on the beachfront (Montañita only extends three roads back from the beachfront anyway), and set about exploring the town. It was then that we discovered that we were not like the rest of the people in this town, since we, for some reason, did not enjoy walking barefoot through the streets and bathed ourselves more than once a month. Being in a town where your hygene habits set you apart from everyone else is an interesting experience.

After hanging around Montañita for a few days, we decided that we did not like the place. I have no problem with hippies, or hippie towns for that matter. I do have a problem with fake hippies and trustafarians (rasta´s with trust funds), and towns that have been constructed entirely for tourists who marvel at how ¨magical¨ the place is. Montañita has nothing to do with Ecuador, and may as well be on another planet. I wish it was.

Don´t get me wrong, its not a terrible place (compared to Benoni) - the different kinds of food were great, the place was laid back and chilled, and there were no naughty people who wanted to stab us. A highlight was witnessing the evening enjoyed by The Drunkest Girl in the Whole Wide World - who clearly had aspirations to be both a prostitue and a drunk, but was struggling to find a way to blend the two professions. Her conflict fascinated us for hours, as did her conversation with a stray dog. Another highlight was walking down the beach and meeting a man who held in his hands the biggest freakin Oyster I have ever seen. The beast could have fed a family of four. ¿ But somewhere between the giant dreamcatcher hanging on the main road, and the hundreds of far out people who decided to be different by all dressing the same and doing the same thing and telling the same stories, who all tried to sell us their artisan products, we became disillusioned with the place and decided to leave.

We had heard of a place just a few hours north called Puerto Lopez, where, at this time of year, many many many Humpback whales gather to, well, hump each other in the calm waters of the tranquil bay. The prospect of seeing humpback whales humping (and the many inappropriate jokes I could make), was too enticing to miss. The minute we arrived in Puerto Lopez, we were glad to be out of Montañita. Puerto Lopez is a tiny town nestled in a lovely bay, with a wide beach and an authentic feel. Although the whales do attract tourists, the place somehow retains an air of simplicity and authenticity, and although it might not be as groovy as its neighbour to the South, its a much better way to experience a small Ecuadorian coastal town.

Because so many whales come to Puerto Lopez in August for their whale orgy (how do they even do it?), whale watching boat trips can guarantee whale sightings. Thus, we handed over our $20, and boarded the boat, along with many other people who clearly had no idea they were so prone to motion sickness. First, we got to see some Boobies. Before you get the wrong idea, I´m talking about blue-footed Boobies, rare coastal birds with blue feet. After seeing a pair of large boobies flapping around on a beach, we moved on to some whale watching. Within 20 minutes, we had spotted our first whales. There were two of them, and they were splashing about - I don´t want to jump to any conclusions, but I think they may have been doing something naughty. While staring at the water, a 17m whale jumped right out, its entire body suspended in the air before it crashed back into the water in the ultimate Cannonball splash. This was such a flabbergasting sight that, even though it happened three times, we did not manange to capture it on camera because we were far too amazed.

We had a whale of a time.

Evenings in Puerto Lopez were quite something. While the place did not have much nightlife, it made up for this with its collection of drinks shacks on the beach. These bamboo bars served cocktails (with ice that served the dual functions of cooling your drink, and then later acting as a laxative), toasted sandwiches, and fruit smoothies. They all had their own sections of beach, littered with a few palm trees, with hammocks strung in between them. At night they light up some beach fires, which you can chill out in front of while sipping cold beer and listening to fantastic cuban music. It was pretty fantastic. The only thing wrong with these beach shacks was that their owners had no clue how to constuct a fire. Instead of getting a flame going with kindling, and then gradually building up the fire so that it can burn large logs, they simply piled up small twigs and set them alight with petrol. Then they would look confused when the fire did not stay alight for long, and add more petrol.

After a few evenings of this, we decided to get back on the road and continue up the coast to our next stop, the famous town of Montecristi. Montecristi is famous for producing the greatest hat on the planet - the sombrero de paja toquilla (otherwise known as the Panama hat). The hats are made of toquilla straw, which grows in the mountains surrounding Montecristi, and the last remaining hat weavers all reside in the tiny town, dilligently weaving hats. Apparently, and sadly, the skills of hat weaving are being lost due to the booming factory hat trade, and now there are only a handful of people in Montecristi who weave the hats. The finest hat of all, the superfino, can take up to four months to weave, and a hat of 32 weaves per inch will fetch over $5000 in the States. In Montecristi, you can buy one of them for a tenth of the price. Of course, you could always just buy a $10 factory made hat from Cuenca, but then you wouldnt be buying a piece of art, a piece of a dying tradition.

While the hats are fine, the town is not, and the only reason to be there would be to buy a hat. When we asked the busdriver to let us off in Montecristi, he gave us a look as if to say, ¨you want to get off here?¨. Nevertheless, we headed into the onehorse town, and even managed to bargain the price of the room at the only hotel in town. The man bargaining with us must have been an idiot, since we had no choice but to stay at his hotel. After checking in we set about town looking at the different hats and marvelling at their fineness. After searching around for a restaurant (I don´t think they eat food in Montecristi, since there seems to be very little of it around), we found a man making burgers from a stand, and eagerly paid him money for food that we knew would make our bowels dance the Macarena. The next day, we finally found the hats we were looking for. I am now the proud owner of a handmade Montecristi superfino - while it might not be the finest hat of all, its 26 weaves per inch are fine enough to make a grown man cry. Nadia has begun to get worried, since I lovingly stroke my hat each evening and talk for hours of its beauty.

After Montecristi, the plan was to head to the port of Manta, only 15 minutes away, and hang around there a few days before heading up the coast. However, when we arrived in the dirty port city, with our backpacks all ready to go, at the bus station, we decided to bite the bullet and get on another bus headed for Canoa, a tiny paradise close to the equator, a full day´s drive up the coast. That morning we had luckily hunted down some helpless toasted sandwiches in Montecristi, but other than that, we did not manage to get much other food. After three different buses and a long hungry day, we arrived in Canoa only to discover that we had only $7 between us(since our cards did not work at the ATM in montecristi) , and that there was no way of drawing money in Canoa. Tired and hungry we checked into our hostel, put our bags down, and had to backtrack an hour to the nearest town with an ATM, San Vicente. We hitched a ride in the truck of a farmer who had an impressive moustache, who kindly argreed to drop us off in San Vicente. When we arrived, we discovered the ATM there did not work either, and thus had to fork out some of our last money to get on a boat (a boat!) and head across the bay to the bigger town of Bahia de Caraquez. In Bahia, we discovered, to our horror, that our cards did not work at either of the ATMs, and concluded that there was a problem with our cards, and not the ATMs. We also concluded that, since we only had $4 left (not even enough to get back to Canoa), and it was 3am in South Africa, we were in a bit of trouble. At this point we decided to try and wake some people in SA so that we could get some assistance from home, to hopefully put us in touch with Rennies so that they could sort out our cards. We thus decided to put our remaining money towards some internet time, and sent out an SOS signal. Luckily, the Limerick Writing Rory awoke from his slumber and came to our assistance, putting us in touch with someone at Rennies, who, after I explained our situation via email, phoned the internet cafe and eventually organised for us to collect a money transfer at a Western Union the next morning. That did not solve the problem of how we would get back to our hostel in Canoa, since it was now 10pm our time, and we had no money. We thus checked into a cheap hotel that accepted a credit card, and miraculously found a restaurant that was still open and that also accepted credit card. As we ate our amazing hamburgers (the first thing we´d eaten since the toasted sandwich) we breathed a sigh of relief an reflected on the rather hectic day we´d had.

The next day we collected our money and made it back to Canoa. Canoa is a damn cool place. Visited only by a few Gringo backpackers, this beautiful beach town is a serious gem. The kind of place where people plan to spend a few days and end up staying a month, a year, a lifetime. That is where we are now, loving it. Our Canoan adventures will have to be saved for the next blog, since we are still doing our hard research which involves lying on the beach and eating prawns for lunch.

Not bad. Not bad indeed.

To see more pics, go to

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/steveo.zogg/Montañita

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/steveo.zogg/PuertoLopez

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/steveo.zogg/MontecristiLandOfThePanamaHat

Until next time amigos,

Adios!