Well, what can I say about Montanita. We loved it! Set by the beach with streets of sand, roving packs of neighbourhood dogs and plenty of restaurants (Serving salads!!! Finally!)it is also home to the infamous cocktail alley where we did spend a few nights... (but more on that later)
Our main reason for heading to Montanita was to get a bit of sun and warm weather and to check out the poor mans Galapagos, otherwise known as Isla de la Plata. Alas, the weather was quite overcast on arrival and stayed that was for a few days. We entertained ourselves by organizing our tour out to the island, eating fantastic chicken salads and roasted corn on the cob smeared with garlic butter, mayo and rolled in parmesan cheese (sounds gross, tastes amazing!) and drinking in cocktail alley. The end result of time spent sampling strong, cheap cocktails was that on the appointed day of our tour we were waaaay to hungover to make it and I had to stumble still half drunk down the street at 8.30am to cancel and see if we could re-schedule. Lucky for us the lovely and very amused lady at the office said ¨no problem¨ and I stumbled back to our hostel to die. Nadia had barely even made it out of bed so when I bumped into her on the way back she was very glad to hear that we did not have to drag ourselves onto a boat for the day.
Unfortunately we then had to wait 2 more days to get onto another trip out to Isla de la Plata. This did work in our favour as the sun came out and we had a day on the beach which was much needed after time in the mountains. The island itself was really unique and walking around and over it we saw lots of the hilarious blue footed boobies as well as sea turtles, seals, many other kinds of birds and some distant whales off shore. We were a little disappointed that our only close encounter whale sighting from the boat involved a whale that was stuck in a fishing net. Our boat and 3 others put men into the water to try and cut it free but by the time our boat had to move on it was still tangled up. Another whale had come along to try and comfort the trapped one and it was becoming dangerous for the men to stay close enough in the water to continue cutting the net.
Funny things to note while in Montanita: I got so drunk one night with some other backpackers that when I eventually went to bed I woke Nadia up and apparently spoke gibberish to her, but better yet I slept and snored through a small earthquake! Priceless.
From Montanita we got a bus to Guayaquil and then boarded our worst bus trip to date to get to Lima.
