Montanita, Ecuador

After  all the hard work in Banos and Columbia, we decided that we were due for a break !!  This travelling business is really hard work and sooooo exhausting !!  With Christmas coming up, we decided that we should find a noce place to settle in for “Christmas Holidays”… That place was Montanita, Ecuador, a small surfer / hippie / party town on the coast.

As usual, the bus ride was rather interesting.  We took one bus from Banos to a large city called Guayaquil, where we needed to purchase new tickets and switch buses to Montanita.  Like always, we were swarmed the second we stepped off the bus with people trying to “help us out”.  We held it pretty cool and avoided all the scammers and finally found out where the line was for the tickets we needed, the bad news was, there  were about a hundred other people in the line in front of us !!!   Thank goodness for the helpful guy that helped me (David) out and took me right to the front of the line to get a “Direct Ticket” to Montanita…  He only charged me triple, which was a great deal I thought !!  Five minutes later, we were on a bus leaving the terminal.  Too bad for all those suckers still waiting in line !!!!  Bad news for us was that the bus was only heading in the general direction of Montanita, and we would later find out that we would need to get off the bus 2/3’s of the way there and pay / switch again.   Oooops !  Needless to say, Dawne has been promoted to Head of Transportation and Logistics !!  Congrats Dawne !!!!

As it turns out we ended up sharing a vehicle with an Ecuadorian couple for the last stage of the journey to Montanita.  It was great to chat with them and learn about some of their customs.  We found out they were on their way to Montanita for their honeymoon and they were so excited to tell us all about their wedding and traditions.

 On Monday we came across a Scuba shop and inquired about PADI certification and Spanish lessons.  As usual, we couldn’t make up our mind as to which to focus on, so we again settled for both.  This made for a pretty hectic week.  Over the next four days we managed to complete  8 hours of Spanish classes each, 5 chapters of PADI Scuba theory (and quizzes), 2 hours of “in pool” dive training, 4 “open water” ocean dives and a PADI final exam, which we completed just minutes before turkey dinner on Christmas Eve.  

 

Wow!!  What a week!!!  To make things more interesting David got a bad case of food poisoning mid-week.  Scuba diving, wet suits and diarrea… That’s a recipe for some pretty interesting moments, but I’m happy to say I made it through with no disaster !!  (Sorry about the details)

As we mentioned in the last post, we found turkey dinner on Christmas Eve that we ate with some of the other travelers we met over the past few weeks and followed up dinner with some cocktails.  Santa had no trouble finding us in our hotel (must have been the Christmas lights we put up on the ocean front balcony), so we spent Christmas morning opening gifts and indulging on the treats we found in our stockings. 

After that we went to the beach and treated ourselves to some surf lessons.  Dawne made it look easy, while I had a few problems with the whole standing up thing!!  Maybe next time will be better!!  We had a wonderful time in Montanita, and learnt so much.  We’re starting to get a reputation amongst other traveller’s as the “Nerdy Canadians who are too busy learning to have any fun!”  I think they’re just jealous!! 

Where to next???