montanita

things i've learned while on the beach:

• best way to get the business of females traveling alone - send kids their way. i got off the bus and had the option of listening to a man in his late 30s or following two kids (maybe aged eight and twelve) who started yammering away at me in spanish - i went with the kids who took me on a bit of a tour of the place (it's not that big) and told me that the hostel i was looking for was currently under renovations and not open. so i ended up staying at the hotel they recommended.
• batidos - fresh fruit smoothies made of only fresh fruit, milk, sugar and ice. i'm not sure how they away with not using yogurt and still getting a thicker consistency. regardless, it's SOOOO good. i have at LEAST one a day and at $1USD a pop, it puts any smoothie place back home to shame.
• ecuador runs on USD. i miss peruvian prices and soles.
• fresh ceviche - you can pretty much watch the seafood come out of the ocean and into the restaurant. SOOOOO good...mmm...
• empanadas - the BEST empanadas i have EVER had are to be found in montanita. there's a shop down liquor alley (more about that later) run by a guy who's from NY and his argentinian wife. they don't deep fry their empanadas, they bake them, i think, and then toaster oven them so that they're warm when you eat them. SOOOO good. i've had empanadas stuffed with spinach and ricotto cheese, tuna and cheese, sweet red peppers and cheese...mmmmm...
• liquor alley - so there are bars and restaurants and clubs and what not here in montanita. but there is also what gringos call liquor alley. it's basically a street lined up with carts/kiosks where people sell cocktails. it's quite ridiculous but brilliant in that overhead costs next to nothing and all you need are a few plastic chairs in front of the cart. otherwise your customers just stand around and drink and when enough alcohol has been consumes, they can dance in the streets and you don't have to worry about them. it's basically a huge street party.
• thursday, friday, saturday and sometimes sunday evenings - music blares from various bars, clubs and liquor alley until at least 0300H but i've heard it going until 0600H.
• staying in a hotel on the main strip means that uninterrupted sleep does NOT happen on thursday, friday, saturday or sunday evenings.
• music stops at 0600H, construction starts at 0700H.
• if your original surf instructor says to meet him at 0830H but you see him out drinking and partying harder than you are at 0200H, there is the possibility that he will show up at 0830H to teach you how to surf. i wasn't that fortunate. i showed up at 0820H and waited until 0900H before my hunger got the best of me and i had to go looking for food. i went back to the shop after breakfast and chatted with the guy doing bookings and he was QUITE apologetic about the whole thing. gave me my money back and recommended a couple other surf schools for me to check out.
• being a girl definitely has its perks around here. i ended up running into a surfing lesson a few minutes late and it was just the instructor and one guy he was teaching. my instructor's name is uba (or ubar, i'm not really sure) and i pretty much got a private lesson as he essentially never left my side and just sent the other guy off. granted the other guy was faring better than i was but still, i imagine he's a little miffed. and once uba discovered i was completely unattached, he offered to help me out with my surfing the next day of the kindness of his heart and he's taking me out surfing one last time today before i go tomorrow. there's a bit of a language barrier but i always remind him that i'm leaving montanita and that all i want from him are surfing lessons.
• surfing is NOTHING like snowboarding. i find that there's a LOT more to think about when it comes to surfing - like staying on top of the water, whereas in snowboarding, staying atop the snow is a given. and apparently my hand-talking tendencies are doing me no favours when it comes to surfing. the few times i've gotten up, i get really excited and throw my arms up and that topples me over. my surfing instructor has been VERY patient and kind to me but i can only imagine how frustrated he gets watching me ALMOST get it. i found it amusing that within five minutes of my lesson, uba figured out that my main problem was that i had to relax. apparently i get a little too excited about getting up on the board and that throws me over. i swear, 50% of his feedback to me is "take it easy, honey, relax." and i get frustrated because i'm TRYING to relax but that in and of itself gets me more frustrated because i'm trying so hard to relax. sigh. there's no winning. surfing also requires a great deal of balance. i suck at balancing. one of the first things uba said to me was that surfing is not like snowboarding in that your weight is more forward in surfing and surfing is far more sensitive to the positioning of your butt. if your butt isn't centered with the board, you fall off. i'm not very good at keeping my butt centered with the board. so if it's not my arms flailing about, it's my butt in the wrong place, or i'm not relaxed enough or i jump up on the board too fast or i'm not leaning forward enough or i'm just not liking the feeling of having flushed gallons of salt water through my sinuses - i just don't think i was made to surf. uba was nice enough to suggest that perhaps it was the board and not me - but i've been out twice on two different boards and i can't say one was any better than the other. we'll see how today goes.
• i definitely cannot live in small, small towns. i knew that already but being here for almost a week definitely confirms it. i think there are about a thousand people living here. maybe it'd be different if i had my own place but still, i'm definitely getting bored. everyone i talk to says that there are basically two things to do in montanita: surf and drink. and if you don't do either one of those, you should look at getting out of montanita asap. so i've done both AND i've discovered good food here, too. but yeah, i'm ready to go.
• i think i'm understanding more spanish than i thought i would considering i've been to very english-speaking-friendly places in peru. i've had quite a few "conversations" with locals where i ask a questions in VERY elementary and broken spanish and they reply in simple words and very slowly in spanish. i reply in english with appropriate hand gestures and a lot of pointing. they respond in spanish in the same way and we seem to understand each other. or at least we get the gist of what the other is trying to convey. it's kind of cool walking away from a "conversation" realizing that the other person didn't use a word of english. i definitely want to take spanish lessons when i get back. wish i had more time to do it down here as it is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and it'd be SO much easier to practice...\

so i'm leaving montanita tomorrow. not entirely sure where i'll end up tomorrow night but i'll figure it out when i'm back at the bus terminal in guayaquil. speaking of which, the bus terminal in guayaquil is AMAZING. it's like an airport! i was quite impressed with it. anyways, i thought i could go straight to quito from montanita but everyone's telling me it's faster to head back to guayaquil and then up to quito. i think i'm going to stop in banos on my way up to quito for a couple days and do a bike ride there. got a few day trips from quito i want to do and in a week i'll be off to the galapagos! meaning i go back to canada soon...boo...

on a happier note, i found out that i get an extra paycheque this week!!!!! as a part of the union's new agreement, we get "retention incentive pay" - which is bascially me getting a chunk of money for staying with my job. the original plan was that we would get the first of the two payments in january and the other six months later (i think) but i got word that they bumped it up to this friday!!!! that works out GREAT for me because money was getting kind of tight - especially with the canadian dollar not doing so well compared to the USD...so yay for getting unexpected chunks of money!!!