Montanita...

Firstly, I must apogolise for my extremely long absence!

I have been holed up in the small surf town of Montanita, on the east coast of Ecuador.

Although it is somewhat touristy, Montanita stole my heart. For 3 weeks at least...

I’m not sure exactly why, but Montanita really saved Ecuador for me. As is obvious from my posts to date, Ecuador has been somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster and many places I have visited here I have not exactly become enamoured with. My health has been crap, I failed to meet many people I connected with, I kept finding myself in extremely isolated spots sin any English speaking people, I fell out with my travel buddy etc etc...

There are many differences between Montanita and the other places I have visited in Ecuador, however the initial most obvious difference was of course in climate. Although Ecuador is situated on the equator, most of its major cities are located in the Andes. And while I enjoyed the mild temperatures of the mountain regions after the humidity of Rio, it was extremely pleasant to find myself back in a balmy climate. After all, the weather can have a vast effect on one’s mood.

We (Bree and I – the story of meeting Bree will have to wait for another post) arrived at night and set out looking for the Cabanas with which I had a reservation through the school. Expectations were not high as I didn’t really know much about the place and it was pretty cheap. However, as we were walking down the dirt road the Cabanas were apparently on, I noticed an establishment to the right with hammocks, a Jacuzzi, big pool and lots of young people playing around in the pool and drinking cerveza. We decided it was far too nice to be the school Cabanas and kept on walking. However, we realised we had gone too far and turned back and what do you know, the resort-esque place we had passed was the one! A good start to my time in Montanita...

The next day, I set off for school at about 7:45am and had my first lesson at 8am. I was very happy to be served a little fruit salad and freshly squeezed melon juice during my first class with Jenny, my teacher whose English was EXTREMELY basic. I quickly realised that I loved the routine of actually having something to get up in the morning for every day and getting back into learning something. I also had my first surfing lesson that day which I immediately loved. Getting out into the ocean for two hours every day soon became the highlight of my day, even if some days I failed to stand up much...

Another reason why Montanita will always hold a special place in my heart is it was the first time on my journey when romance really made an appearance. During my second surfing lesson, the instructor Isidro (a champion surfer and the town’s hero) invited me to watch a movie with him that night. As his English isn’t great and it was a bit of an awkard conversation anyway (I was literally lying on the board while he held onto it, waiting for a decent wave to come) I didn’t really understand if it was a date (just me and him) or a group thing with some of the other teachers and students as he told me to meet him at the school. However, as I was leaving the surfing workshop he had waited for me to walk out after the other students and organised a time with me to meet so I had an inkling it was more of a date type scenario. If I am being honest, I only really decided to go because I thought it would be a funny story to tell people back home and I was aware of the fact that at that point on the journey I was rather devoid of such stories. Not that I was dependent on having an element of romance on my trip but after a month and a half of not much on that front despite meeting new people constantly, I was starting to become rather concerned about my interestingness (I realise this is not a word) to the opposite sex. This may have also had something to do with what happened with Joel. Although I realised that he was the one with the problem etc etc, it was hard to not let that whole incident make me doubt myself a little.

So anyway, off I went to meet Isidro for our ‘date’. He was a really nice person and I had fun however I walked away with the impression that I was probably one of many Western wannabe-surfers that he arranges such movie nights with. Also the language barrier is pretty hard to overcome. It is difficult to really be interested in someone when you cannot communicate properly as you never really understand how they tick. However, I appreciated the situation for what it was and I would be lying if I said that my ego didn’t receive a slight stroking...

Friday rolled around and my ever-increasing dread at having to leave Montanita reached fever pitch. After my morning class I made a decision and set off for the internet cafe to let the people at the orphanage in Colombia know that I would be arriving two weeks later than my initial date. I felt a twinge of guilt at letting the organisation down, however I strongly felt that I needed to stay in Montanita.

Ok well this is not going to be finished soon so I will post half now in the interests of keeping you all (whoever you are) up to date...