We walked from one side to the other and scaled some crevices and cliffs. This was slightly hazardous in flipflops not just because of the slipping possibility but because there were these large brown crabs camouflaged against the rocks that I had to be careful not to step on. The rocks jutted out into the sea at points and we had to time it out so that we jumped rock to rock before the sea collided with the cliff behind us.Ryan’s shoes by the end of it were totally soaked.
By 11:30 or so we discovered that malaria pills minus food = a nauseous combination. We returned to the room where I passed out for a little while and fought the urge to throw up. After digging into my granola bar rations, I was able to get out the door again. We had to find food and fast except despite it being nearly the afternoon, most places were still serving only Desayunu (breakfast) and we wanted Almuerzo (lunch). Eggs weren’t going to hack it for me. Finally we found a nice establishment where I had shrimp (camaro) in a delicious garlic sauce with rice (arroz) and some more plantain chips.
Feeling much better, we changed into our bathing suits and headed to the beach. There were a lot of surfers out catching awesome waves, but they were mostly wearing wet suits. We decided against renting surf boards because we weren’t sure how long we were going to last in the water. I placed our stuff (just our shoes with the hostal room key and my skirt) near a families picnic blanket so that people might assume it belongs to them and not steal it. Then we steadily worked our way into the water and played in the surf for about forty minutes. I was ready to stay longer but Ryan caught a chill so we headed out, washed up and he struggled to get warm again for an hour. As we headed back another man handed us one of those cards about a party and this is when I decided that we were going. It was not so much this day or the food that was memorable today, as it was the night.
It was hard to imagine what the two of us could do there after dark anyway. Neither of us are big party people and we didn’t know anybody else there. It was a strategic move more than anything because the person handing the cards out seemed to be targeting those who looked like foreigners. This is what made Ryan paranoid, but piqued my interest. Basically the deal was this: for five bucks a person you get transit to a place on the outskirts of Montanita called Kamala, with BBQ, beach volleyball, unlimited mixed drinks, a bonfire, and a billiards table. Sounded like a pretty awesome deal to me. He was freaking out. We tried to walk to it down the beach, but after 15 minutes on foot, he started to get worried about the fact that we were alone on a dark empty beach and totally vulnerable if somebody were to try to attack us. I was somehow in an uncannily chill mood. By the time we got back to the main strip, it was a lot later and it took a while to track the bus down because it wasn’t really a bus. It was a jeep-like vehicle with three rows of wooden benches. We weren’t the only ones on our way there—there was a group of three other people. It was about a five minute ride zipping down the road. We were there by around 7:15 pm and it wasn’t nearly what I thought it’d be. I pictured a huge party, packed with people with lots of dancing. It was a pretty quiet place with a few huts, a small bon-fire and a bar with about 20 or so others sitting around drinking. This was actually more of our scene than anything.
The food was ready around 7:30 and they served us pork, chicken (pollo), this really awesome salsa mix and a few other things. Later they had some pretty good rice. I can’t seem to get enough rice here. This is a good thing. They serve it with everything. There was really only a choice of three drinks: sprite and vodka, rum and coke, and a capriana which is some liquor mixed with sugar and lime. This was enough. We tried to play ping pong because the billiards table was occupied for a while but the ping pong table was so worn down that the ball barely bounced on it. But there was a really amazing swing that went higher than any swing I’ve ever been on in my life. It was like if somebody made a swing out of two telephone poles. When the billiards table was clear, we played a game and quickly found ourselves surrounded by about five or six Ecuadorian teenagers watching our every move. Eventually they cleared away and went to play beach volleyball. I guess the deal with the place is that it’s a resort for mostly locals and on Saturdays they bus in some of the travelers to try to create more of a party scene. Later there was a larger bon-fire on the beach and fire-dancers.
Feeling much better, we changed into our bathing suits and headed to the beach. There were a lot of surfers out catching awesome waves, but they were mostly wearing wet suits. We decided against renting surf boards because we weren’t sure how long we were going to last in the water. I placed our stuff (just our shoes with the hostal room key and my skirt) near a families picnic blanket so that people might assume it belongs to them and not steal it. Then we steadily worked our way into the water and played in the surf for about forty minutes. I was ready to stay longer but Ryan caught a chill so we headed out, washed up and he struggled to get warm again for an hour. As we headed back another man handed us one of those cards about a party and this is when I decided that we were going. It was not so much this day or the food that was memorable today, as it was the night.
It was hard to imagine what the two of us could do there after dark anyway. Neither of us are big party people and we didn’t know anybody else there. It was a strategic move more than anything because the person handing the cards out seemed to be targeting those who looked like foreigners. This is what made Ryan paranoid, but piqued my interest. Basically the deal was this: for five bucks a person you get transit to a place on the outskirts of Montanita called Kamala, with BBQ, beach volleyball, unlimited mixed drinks, a bonfire, and a billiards table. Sounded like a pretty awesome deal to me. He was freaking out. We tried to walk to it down the beach, but after 15 minutes on foot, he started to get worried about the fact that we were alone on a dark empty beach and totally vulnerable if somebody were to try to attack us. I was somehow in an uncannily chill mood. By the time we got back to the main strip, it was a lot later and it took a while to track the bus down because it wasn’t really a bus. It was a jeep-like vehicle with three rows of wooden benches. We weren’t the only ones on our way there—there was a group of three other people. It was about a five minute ride zipping down the road. We were there by around 7:15 pm and it wasn’t nearly what I thought it’d be. I pictured a huge party, packed with people with lots of dancing. It was a pretty quiet place with a few huts, a small bon-fire and a bar with about 20 or so others sitting around drinking. This was actually more of our scene than anything.
The food was ready around 7:30 and they served us pork, chicken (pollo), this really awesome salsa mix and a few other things. Later they had some pretty good rice. I can’t seem to get enough rice here. This is a good thing. They serve it with everything. There was really only a choice of three drinks: sprite and vodka, rum and coke, and a capriana which is some liquor mixed with sugar and lime. This was enough. We tried to play ping pong because the billiards table was occupied for a while but the ping pong table was so worn down that the ball barely bounced on it. But there was a really amazing swing that went higher than any swing I’ve ever been on in my life. It was like if somebody made a swing out of two telephone poles. When the billiards table was clear, we played a game and quickly found ourselves surrounded by about five or six Ecuadorian teenagers watching our every move. Eventually they cleared away and went to play beach volleyball. I guess the deal with the place is that it’s a resort for mostly locals and on Saturdays they bus in some of the travelers to try to create more of a party scene. Later there was a larger bon-fire on the beach and fire-dancers.
At one point Ryan went to set up the billiards table and I went to use el bano. I came back and he was chatting away with this guy who was like his Ecuadorian counterpart, Carmash. The dude was from the next town over and played in a reggae cover band that was playing later that night. We hung out playing pool with Carmash until it was time for his band to play and then we sat back amused as they played Bob Marley and other songs.
Around 10 pm, we discovered the bus was starting to fill with people, so we rushed out of Kamala. It turned out it was mostly a group of travelers who had been bussed out really late, saw the place and had decided it wasn’t worth it given that the party was ending very soon. There wasn’t enough space for everybody, so we climbed onto the roof (which apparently is also intended for passengers). This is where we met Simone, a girl from Australia blogging for Nomadichands.com—an organization that sends artists, writers and filmmakers across the world to document about different non-profits that are helping improve the planet. She was the girl who had been held up in Guayaquil in the cab, but where I would have been calling home traumatized by the incident, she seemed to be thrilled with the material she now had to blog about. This appears to be the attitude of most of the travelers I met this night. They stay in hostels. They live meagerly and many of them volunteer wherever they go or are simply out to see the world. Simone hasn’t even been hostelling it up for the most part—but instead couchsurfing and staying with indigenous tribes. I think I could get into that. It took a while for the bus to leave and so many stepped off at some point and there was some shuffling around. By the time it departed, Ryan was on one of the wooden benches and I was up on the roof dodging branches with an Israeli named Yuval, two French guys, Simone and a Canadian named Josh.
We got back into town and watched the jugglers. Simone is apparently amazing and started juggling with them and playing around with some unlit fire-dancing ropes. She also apparently knows everybody in town and went off with some other travelers to go dancing for a while. Josh and I went to get Pina Colodas from one of the drink stands and Ryan went off with the French guys for a beer. The drink cart was an experience because the bartender was so damn serious about it. He spent about twenty minutes trying to mix the perfect Pina Coloda— he kept sampling it to make sure the texture was just right and finally handed the drinks to us with pride and an expression that dared us to find a better one. We went down to the beach with our drinks and inherited a bon-fire from some travelers who were leaving. Ryan and Josh at one point went off to get some more beer and I sort of had a sandcastle-off with the French guys who spoke almost no English and were only able to communicate with Ryan through a combination of Spanish, French and English. I won, hands down. Eventually we headed back into town in time to run into Simone who was about to start fire dancing with her new juggler friends. They put on a short show, with a lot of juggling, a whole bunch of fire dancing and a huge crowd they tipped the hat to in the end. Simone earned herself a beer which I thought was wicked cool. Then we all decided to go to a disco on the beach and danced for the next hour and a half—with guess who being the life of the party and doing flips on the dance floor while surrounded by the entire room? Not me. Simone. But I think I held my own that night in terms of dancing. Apparently it’s not just a drunk delusion, maybe I can actually dance if I drink enough.
By 3 AM we were tuckered out and called it a night. We wised up and shoved toilet paper in our ears as make-shift ear plugs. They kind of worked, but I might have been out cold from all the mixed drinks at Kamala, the Pina Coloda and the beer.
Around 10 pm, we discovered the bus was starting to fill with people, so we rushed out of Kamala. It turned out it was mostly a group of travelers who had been bussed out really late, saw the place and had decided it wasn’t worth it given that the party was ending very soon. There wasn’t enough space for everybody, so we climbed onto the roof (which apparently is also intended for passengers). This is where we met Simone, a girl from Australia blogging for Nomadichands.com—an organization that sends artists, writers and filmmakers across the world to document about different non-profits that are helping improve the planet. She was the girl who had been held up in Guayaquil in the cab, but where I would have been calling home traumatized by the incident, she seemed to be thrilled with the material she now had to blog about. This appears to be the attitude of most of the travelers I met this night. They stay in hostels. They live meagerly and many of them volunteer wherever they go or are simply out to see the world. Simone hasn’t even been hostelling it up for the most part—but instead couchsurfing and staying with indigenous tribes. I think I could get into that. It took a while for the bus to leave and so many stepped off at some point and there was some shuffling around. By the time it departed, Ryan was on one of the wooden benches and I was up on the roof dodging branches with an Israeli named Yuval, two French guys, Simone and a Canadian named Josh.
We got back into town and watched the jugglers. Simone is apparently amazing and started juggling with them and playing around with some unlit fire-dancing ropes. She also apparently knows everybody in town and went off with some other travelers to go dancing for a while. Josh and I went to get Pina Colodas from one of the drink stands and Ryan went off with the French guys for a beer. The drink cart was an experience because the bartender was so damn serious about it. He spent about twenty minutes trying to mix the perfect Pina Coloda— he kept sampling it to make sure the texture was just right and finally handed the drinks to us with pride and an expression that dared us to find a better one. We went down to the beach with our drinks and inherited a bon-fire from some travelers who were leaving. Ryan and Josh at one point went off to get some more beer and I sort of had a sandcastle-off with the French guys who spoke almost no English and were only able to communicate with Ryan through a combination of Spanish, French and English. I won, hands down. Eventually we headed back into town in time to run into Simone who was about to start fire dancing with her new juggler friends. They put on a short show, with a lot of juggling, a whole bunch of fire dancing and a huge crowd they tipped the hat to in the end. Simone earned herself a beer which I thought was wicked cool. Then we all decided to go to a disco on the beach and danced for the next hour and a half—with guess who being the life of the party and doing flips on the dance floor while surrounded by the entire room? Not me. Simone. But I think I held my own that night in terms of dancing. Apparently it’s not just a drunk delusion, maybe I can actually dance if I drink enough.
By 3 AM we were tuckered out and called it a night. We wised up and shoved toilet paper in our ears as make-shift ear plugs. They kind of worked, but I might have been out cold from all the mixed drinks at Kamala, the Pina Coloda and the beer.
1 comment:
Debbie....this all sounds incredible. And possibly unreal. Someday I hope Alex and I will have a fantastic adventure. I'm glad you're safe and enjoying yours. You should come back to Texas when you get back. I miss you. Oh and studying for the GRE will kill your brain.... <3 Kitty
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