Introduction to Montañita

After flying into and staying one night in Guayaquil, with quickly got the f out of dodge since it´s just a large grimy city. We hopped a bus for the small surf town of Montañita. You know you are headed to a laid back hippy town when a fellow passenger literally smokes a bowl on the bus, with kids in nearby rows no less! More on the hippiness of Montañita in a later post.

For those of you who don´t know, the focus of this trip is a little bit different than the last one. Where we were constantly on the move for 2 months in Asia, we are pretty much staying in the same place the entire 5 weeks we are in Ecaudor aside from a few days at the end of the trip. We are going to Spanish school, living with a host family, volunteering at an elementary school, and surfing every free chance we get. Basically, I am trying to move closer to my lifetime goal of learning Spanish and actually being able to communicate with others in Spanish, which I have been unsuccessful in achieving up to this point.

Basically, rather than tell you about a lot of different places we will be giving you an in-depth account of our random thoughts and observations about living in this one place. You are in luck, readers, because Montañita has a lot of character and characters, so hopefully we can still make this blog worth your while.  With that, we´re off to rent our surf boards for the month.  Here are a couple pics so far, which will help you to see why we chose to be here. 

On the Road Again

A mere 3 months after returning from SE Asia, we are back on the road again and ready to share our one of a kind perspective of our latest adventure. This time, it´s South America, Ecuador to be precise.  Having recently arrived, we are reminded of the *pleasures* of traveling in the 3rd world.  These include, but are not limited to, using bathrooms without toilet paper, throwing your used tp into a trash can rather than the toilet, having to use bottled water to brush your teeth, and being woken up to the incessant calls of the early morning roosters in the house next door.  Oh, and of course, cute little caged monkeys (pictured below).  Ah, the joys of travel!  These things will phase us less and less as our time here goes on, but it´s just funny to be right back in the middle of them again. 

With that, we will get this post live, because we know that some folks (Alexis, ahem) are sick of checking to see if there is a new post.  Oh, and apologies for only the one photo - we didn´t feel like taking a picture of a trashcan full of poopy tp...