Time to tackle the Pacific Ocean

HI HOOOOOOOO!!

Hello all, i hope all is well. Clearly this is a difficult time for the Derby County readers out there. I share your pain. Thankfully, there aren´t many forest/ leicester or leeds fans out here, so if you need a break from the inevitable taunting then Ecuador is a good hideout. Just a wee hint for you there.

We are currently inspecting the surfers retreat of Montanita, which so far seems pretty damn cool. This afternoon we are set to join the long haired, chilled out dudes that reside here and become surfers ourselves with our first lesson planned, and the Pacific ocean readying itself to be our classroom.

We arrived yesterday from a coastal city of Salinas. The bus journey from there to here should only have been an hour or so, it is only 50km after all, but once again we found ourselves aboard a perpetually collapsing bus and despite the frantic efforts of the driver and passengers alike, no amount of tenderloving care was able to return the old work horse to life. So for us, it was a matter of flagging down the next bus to come along and continue our journey without further hitch.

On arrival we did what we usually do and will continue to do as it is a good idea; find accommodation. Our home for this particular weekend is a lovely beach side hostal called Las Palmeras. The only issue is that it hasn´t actually been fully built yet. When we arrived to have a look at the rooms, two guys were putting the final touches to our window and bathroom. But as it is still a work in progress, the benefit for us is that its nice, new and cheap. And it seems they are in the final stages so it isn´t as though there´s too much noise from the guys painting the walls and finishing off the finer points to what will be a lovely place to stay.

I think i last left you a message from the party town of Cuenca, where the people love nothing more than a good old game of ¨dodge the Kathryn Wheel¨. The festivities continued throughout the weekend with the highlight, from a spectators view, possible being the soapbox derby, which was utterly hilarious solely due to the complete calamity of it all, from organisation to the carts themselves. Great fun to watch but íll be damned if you ever got me in one of those races without a suit of armour and Richard and Hyascinth Bouquet as my co drivers.

After the weekend we headed to the nearby national park ´Cajas´, pronouned CA-ghhhghghgjjgg-AS, which was just Scotlands long lost twin brother and should have been called Mackay & Macdonald´s Highland Park, complete with ginger bushes and marroading haggis. It was identical, complete with heather and pishing rain. Was nice, but nobody wants to travel thousands of miles for a different view of what feels like their own back garden.

We left Cuenca on the Tuesday as we decided to delay more spanish classes until we reach Quito in a couple of weeks, with the intention of using the time to really brush up on some vocab and the basics that we learnt three months ago. We originally planned to stop in Ecuador´s biggest city, Guayaquil, but it was manky and had a comedy bus station, (You arrive to a strip of tarmac akin to a runway, then have to walk for 5 minutes to a metro bus, which takes you from one side of the road to the other, i kid you not. As the crow flies, the bus probably moved us 10 meters closer to the where we wanted to be) so we headed on to the coastal city of Salinas, which was ok, but we wanted to head north after a couple of nights to here where its is much cooler and we can transform ourselves into ´surfers dudes´. Maya has even treated herself to some baggy shorts to aid the morphing process.

That is about all there is to tell you just now. We will be here for the weekend and then will maybe head north or south, we´re not sure where yet as we want to take a scuba diving course somewhere around here and we´re not sure if we´re best headed 3km south to Manglaralto or about 40km north to Puerto Lopez. Its not a bad choice to have either way.

Anyhow, i hope all is well. For those of you who are unaware that there is an important date approaching in your calender, ´shame on you´, as wednesday 14th Nov is to be my 24th birthday and i expect love and goodwishes from all.

Bye bye for now.
Rob