La Costa - Puerto Lopez boobies and Montañita surfing

After descending from the Andes, through the cloud forest, and through countless banana plantations, I arrived on the coast, where I stayed Monday night, just for the night, in the big city of Manta. I managed to catch a movie in English there, since I was bored at night, I ate Kentucky Fried Chicken and watched "You, Me, and Dupree."

The next day dawned hot and sticky. I wasn´t in the mountains anymore, Dorothy. One morning I awaken shivering under thick wool blankets and my flowing poncho. The next morning I am sweating in the coastal humidity, swarmed by malaria-infested mosquitos. From Manta, I had a little adventure to buy Mark´s Christmas present so I can´t say what I did but it was very cool.

Then I caught a bus to Puerto Lopez. In the morning, Wednesday, I went with a tour group to the Isla de la Plata. They call it the poor man´s Galapagos because it has the same birds as Galapagos but only costs 30 bucks instead of 1500. No lizards or sea lions. But lots of boobies... blue-footed boobies, that is!! It was so cool. You could just walk right through them, and they weren´t scared and didn´t move one inch. The young have gray feet and are very fuzzy and fat. After a few years, they get browner feathers and their feet turn blue because of some weird genetic code. This was the first tour I´ve actually paid for since October! but it was the only way to get to the island. We had a very rough two hour ocean ride in a small boat to get there and back. After seeing the birds, I went snorkeling and saw tons of brightly colored tropical fish.

On Thursday, I went to another part of the same national park, the Parque Nacional Machalilla. I went to the beach called Los Frailes, one of the most pristine beaches of Ecuador, where I enjoyed the afternoon by getting horribly sunburnt because I was an idiot and didn´t use sunscreen.

Then, bus to Montañita. Montañita is a world famous surfing town. But it is full of surfers, that is to say, idiot drug addicts and tripping foreigners. The people are very bad, and the town would have been a nice little beach town but for all the bad people. The upside was that I learned how to surf on Friday. It´s actually a lot easier than it looks, but I was severely injured throughout my surfing experience because of the whole-body sunburn that made squirming around on a soggy board more than unpleasant. But... I can now surf!!! So... I guess it was worth it. Then, a guy I knew, who was an indigenous guy from the jungle went all ape-poop on me. His grandmother died, and he was trying to kill himself... so I did not sleep Friday night, as I tried to convince him in Spanish that he didn´t want to stab himself... Argh!

Because I was sunburnt, a bit sick, travel weary, tired of suicidal acquaintances, exhausted, and lonely, I was ready to return to Baños for Christmas. What I was not ready for was 15 hours on horribly crowded, stinky, loud buses. From Montañita to Salinas to Guayaquil to Riobamba to Ambato. I could barely walk by the time I got to Baños, and my feet had swollen to twice the normal size from mosquito bites! I had some horrible reaction, and they went all numb.

I stumbled into Baños Saturday night, almost falling over with the weight of my backpack. That night... I fell asleep in about two seconds...