Beach Bums

We apologize for it having been a week since our last post. I has been a whirlwind of events lately and we are just now finding time to access the internet. If you don´t know already from email, right now we are in Puerto Lopez. It is a tiny fishing town about halfway down the coast of Euador and situated minutes away from the expansive Parque Nacional Machalilla. Since arriving at 8:30 in the morning on Wednesday off an overnight bus ride from Quito, we have been soaking in the sun and doing a bit of exploring. Yesterday we visited Agua Blanca, a tiny pueblo in the National Park which is inhabited by an exclusive group of people who´s ancestors have lived there since Inca time. The villiage is protected by the government from people attemtping to buy the land and the people of the villiage are self-sustaining. They import and export nothing. Their purpose is to maintain and protect an archeological site that was begun by its own people centuries ago. We rented bikes and rode down the beach from Puerto Lopez along the highway to Agua Blanca. Once we arrived, we were given a guide who showed us around the museum and eventually led us to a sulfur lake. The water was runoff from the mountains and contained something like 70 percent sulfer. And yes, it smelled like rotten eggs. But we jumped in without hesitation once we were told it was good for the skin, as was coating ourselves in the sulfur mud, which we also did. We have pictures and will gladly post those as soon as we can find a fast connection, they are quite comical. After the laguna, we rode our bikes back to Puerto Lopez. On the way back, we could not help ourselves from riding onto the sand, ditching our bikes on the beach, and heading to the water. Ecuador´s beaches are very under-appreciated. It is beautiful here, and relatively low on tourists. Few people think of beaches when they think of Ecuador, and for us, we are loving the fact that we are just chilling in and underrated fishing villiage right now. It is a big change from the high paced life in the city. There is a man that owns a little tienda right next to our hostal and he sits outside of his shop ALL DAY LONG. I don´t think I have ever seen him move from his plastic patio chair, and every time we pass by, he offers a ¨buenos dias¨ and a slow smile. We appreciate this change of pace from the fast paced atmosphere in Quito where not even the busses stop completely to let passengers on and off. I have jumped on and off of a moving bus a number of times.

Some of you may be wondering why we picked up and left all of the sudden from Quito. We were raving about Quito and it probably seemed like we would stay there forever. Well, all it took was a french couple and a Kiwi to get us up and moving again. In our last few days in Quito, we made friends with a young couple from France who had traveled to Cuba and had lived for a year in Ireland. There was also a guy our age staying in our hostal from New Zealand who had been all over the continent and was preparing to go to Cuba as well. Listening to these people tell their stories of travelling made us realize that there is so much left for us to see. While we do love Quito, we had to move on, not to to mention the fact that it was raining and cold the last few days in the city. After the beach, where they are currently celebrating Carnaval, we will likely head back to the mountains to Ambato where there is a fruit and flower festival during the rest of February and then south to Cuenca. We will visit a town called Vilcabamba before going to the border and crossing over into Peru.

It was sad leaving our hostal that we had grown to love. We made a dinner the night before leaving. We had settled on spaghetti and I undertook the cooking duties. I had a recipe for a spaghetti sauce that I had working in my head and upon arrival at the grocery store, I was reminded that tomato sauce does not exist in Ecuador. Soooooo I had to create a spaghetti sauce with ketchup and achiote paste. It was an interesting mix indeed but turned out pretty good. Hallye put together some buttered oregano spiced bread and we had a feast.

Must be going. Will write again very soon.
Katie