.......on a dirt side road - hot and dusty but beautiful ....right through that jungle listening to Howler Monkeys and exotic birds. Every once in a while I feel like pinching myself - stepping out watching myself riding along as if this is normal. And it is, it is my life right now...riding my bike through the jungle and listening to wildlife.
In Muisne the dirt road ended. We took a ferry to the island and spend the night in a questionable wannabe hostel at the beach away from the down town area with a bunch of friendly hooligans. We have come across this all through Ecuador: Big advertisements, roadsigns about hotels, resorts, restaurants - tourist attractions of some kind and when we get there, there is nothing or just a small attempt of the mentioned still in construction or left as ruins. We have started to ignore signs like that. It seems as if Ecuador is ready for the tourists to flood the whole country and it didn't happen. (or maybe it still will?) On weekdays when the national tourists are busy working in Quito or other big cities, the rest of the country's establishments turn into ghost towns....pretty weird experience.
So, about the hooligans: After dinner in down town we came back to our room (which was hardly a "hotel room") and James discovered that someone had gone through each and every bag on his bike.....
Nothing had been stolen, but, never - the - less we felt vandalized and unsafe. As a result the night was spend somewhat restless and in the morning we decided to ride back to the main road and not continuing along the isolated beach in case somebody had planned to rob us. James had the idea to invite our hosts to a group photo before leaving....
I don't know what they were thinking rummaging through all the bike bags, but they all seem quite innocent and friendly and happy and posting for the picture (though, not all of them were present in the am), don't they?
All went well and we reached our village unharmed where we were hoping to catch a boat to another village across the bay.
