I arrived at about mid-day in Montañita, having taken a bus from
Puerto Lopez, it only took an hour which was great, an unusually short
journey for South America! However on arrival I was still in search of a
cab to take me to my final destination! But with no cabs in sight I was
forced to walk to the canbanas where I was staying; luckily it wasn't
far. I was greeted
with various people guessing that I was Swedish or Australian, my tan
and blonde locks was a dead giveaway! It was probably the easiest
journey yet and the destination and greeting better than any before. The
setting of the cabanas was fabulous, based just passed a river at the
north end of the town, far enough away from Montañita town not to be
drawn into the parties and constant bussle but near enough to pop in and
enjoy it! The cabanas themselves were great, surrounded by a pool area
with palm trees, and a kitchen/communal area for general hanging out.
Once
settled in, I had the chance to look around the town, I say town but
its more like a village, basically the main streets are approx 3 across
by another 6 or so in a grid-like pattern. The rest of Montañita is residential.
Its a hippy surfing village, with jewelery stalls lining the streets
lots of bars, restaurants, juice stands and a couple of bakeries thrown
in for good measure, all located by the beach which had white sand, good surf and
a look-out point.
Beach view
Look out point
Sunday
evening I was invited for some food at the Dive Shop owners house, most
people from the cabanas were going so I saw it as a chance to meet
everyone properly and not have to think about dinner on my first day there! The dive instructor and an intern at the Spanish school were
cooking stir-fry complete with egg-fried rice and two other veggie dishes...mmm, better than I could cook
for sure!
I didn´t stay late as I needed to prepare for the spanish classes I was taking which were due to start the following day, Monday morning, bright and early at 7.40am, the
earliest I´d been up to start work in 2 months!
I was given a test first thing, a shock to the system but I
was able to skip the first two stages, which gave me confidence in my
terrible Spanish abilities, I was intermediate, which was great news as I
thought I´d be starting Spanish lessons again from the start, I had some experience in school with Spanish, but as with everyone else traveling had no practical experience of it and found it nearby impossible to get into it straight off. My
classes for the week would be 8am-10am and 1pm-3pm, which meant early
starts but gave me the afternoon to learn more Spanish and to try to learn to surf too!
The Spanish school was located up a hill, looking over Montañita and the class setting were a great learning environment
And classes
My main priotiy here was to learn Spanish and secondly to try to surf and work on my salsa moves if I had the time...definitely not to party too much...little did I know about Montañita!
Montañita
is a great party place, and I realised this was a good mix to working hard, as
going out to bars is a good way of speaking to the locals and practising
Spanish as you don´t normally get into many conversations with the
locals otherwise. The downfall of the party town was that there wasn´t much in the
way of restaurants open until midday; food in restuarants generally
takes about one and a half hours so it was impossible to get food between
classes! We got into the habit of heading to the super cheap fruit and veg stalls
(5 cents for a banana etc) and with a kitchen at the
cabanas we could prepare all our own food. Some people also cooked at
night too which was great, I was pretty lazy, as the food was so cheap ($4-8
for a main course), and food in Montañita was pretty varied. Favourites included an Italian place called Carpe Diem and a pizza place I
can´t remember the name of. I also tried out the Thai food and a couple
of the more generic places. Another great place to eat at night was
the street food stalls, offering Burritos for $2 or
hamburgers, chips and the like.
There were
two main nights out in Montañita, Thursday, which was ladies night,
where there was free drinks from 10pm-midnight, it was cheaper for ladies to get in too! And Saturday night, because of the weekend.
During
my first week in Montañita I was very much looking forward to ladies
night, the previous one had been good and my expectations were high,
however unfortunately when it came to Thursday, after we´d dressed up, gone out
and were eating dinner at Carpe Diem, the police came along
and asked the restaurant not to serve alcohol anymore because of the election day due on Saturday, two days later!! They were
banning people from drinking over this period to encourage attendance
and to make sure everyone gives an accurate vote! So they were actually
stopping anyone (including us foreigners) from buying alcohol Thursday
evening right up until Sunday. Usually on Sunday you can´t but alcohol
either in Ecuador, to stop the
large amount of drink driving. This was something that was bought in about a year ago and has apparently been working.
However, in true European style, the ban on alcohol didn´t
stop us, we were up for a good night out, so we had all stocked up on alcohol prior to the ban and headed for
the beach on Thursday night instead, as this is where people usually
went. There was still hope for my Spanish!
Unfortunately
we didn´t find many others on the beach with the same idea, so we
created our own party, which was not part of the plan but fun never the
less. One amusing idea was to climb the life-guard tower and pretend to
be a lifeguard!
However, this didn´t work
out for one of my dorm mates who was actually afraid of heights, so we
spent about 2-3hrs trying to bring him down, eventually we got him to
jump but as was completely tensed up, he hurt himself and we were
worried he´d broken his neck/back....oops! After calling on various
people and waiting several hours, a fire engine turned up (apparently it
was a busy night) and six strong lads took my dear friend on a
stretcher to the fire engine, placing him ontop of the fire engine to be
taken to the hospital!!
It was fisher
price hospital and the verdict came back in the morning of 6 broken ribs
and a compressed spine! It wasn´t until after he´d cancelled his
Galapagos trip and spoken to his family did he go back to a bigger
hospital where they said that the previous verdict was wrong and no ribs
were broken and that he was just a bit battered and bruised. Still, he managed transfer his Galapagos trip to another day and normality was
restored, minus a slightly sore neck and another eventful ladies night!
Saturday
meant the surf trip, we went to a different place than planned because of
the elections, everyone had to return from where they were from
originally to vote so a lot of people had to travel some distance to vote and the
roads are pretty crowded! We saw some cars/trucks along the way with up
to about 30 people in the back or maybe more, which put our jeep in
Solento to shame!
The first surf spot was a bit crazy, so we
moved and went to Las Tunas, which was fun and had fabulous cerviche! I got totalled by a massive wave just before lunch which was
quite funny too, I´m only a beginner and I went out a bit too far! That´ll
teach me! However I think surfing suits me:
The
evening was a slow evening, with drinks and food at the cabañas, we
decided we´d try to go out late at night, hoping the alcohol ban had
been lifted, we succeeded in our plan and was served on cocktail alley ($2
cocktails) and hung out on the beach. I thought it would be fun to run
to the sea, but someone thought it would be even funnier to drag me right
in. I got pretty drenched, but felt I should make the most of the
weekend, and put the Spanish I´d learnt into practice, so we hit Caña Grill, an open air club with a mix of salsa and
modern classics (and too much black-eyed peas).
It was a good night and I managed to practice my Spanish and my salsa! I also got offered a job at the
hamburger van for $1 a day, this however wouldn´t have afforded me even a
hamburger at the stand so I politely declined the offer deciding it
would be to much of a drain on resources to stay on in Montañita too long, even if it would help my Spanish.
Sunday
we had the pleasure of going to the Dive Shop owners house again,
this time for a BBQ, it was amazing, burgers, chicken, steak, massive
prawns...mmm...the party was started hotting up and it looked like it was going to be a late night, which is when I
left, like the geek I am.
The second week started well, I had
been crowned the geek as I constantly had my head in a book, we said
goodbye to some people, and there were new faces to join the crew! Monday
went well but on Tuesday, when I had been given my terrible results of an impromptu test, my teacher hadn´t been pleased and I would need to re-learn a lot of past work. I lost my
confidence and decided Tuesday was the new Thursday, which meant I went
out and missed Wednesday classes...oops! However, on the plus side I did
decide to return to that teachers class and keep up my Spanish. Starting
Thursday afresh I worked hard all day and with Ladies night on, practiced my Spanish and my salsa that night too which was great even making Friday´s
classes to learn all about the small words in Spanish...por, para etc...
My favourite word in spanish is still Zumbido (it means the humming or
buzzing sounds bees or humming birds make) and Zanahoria
(carrot)...although I now have a new one/two now...en serio (Seriously)!There are some great words in Spanish.
Friday was the bi-weekly Spanish school BBQ, more chicken, giant prawns, steak and lots of salads, rice and potatoes...always lots of carbs! There was a fire show and we had a small salsa class...the Latinos put us Europeans to shame as usual!
Afterwards, we hit the town but there was a power cut so we selected one of
the few places with power to go out to...Nativa Bamboo, there was
an acrobatics show downstairs and a club upstairs, looking over the
sea...I wish I´d bought my camera! It was another picture perfect
moment!
The weekend was fun, Saturday sunbathing on the beach
and heading for a walk with Andrea, my Swiss friend to the
look-out point at sunset!!
Saturday night was a big one as it was my last night, we put on our dresses and went out to cocktail alley again...
and
onto Caña Grill, our favourite dancing spot, we got free
drinks when the band was playing, who were really good and played
spanish songs and rock classics too!
I
stayed out a bit too long so the 7.30am start to head to the organic
farm was not an easy one. It was going to take up to 8
hours so I had no choice but to get up...at least I had a
cow on the road to keep me company whilst I was waiting for the bus!
