Montanita, Ecuador: Part 1.

As we've alluded to in earlier posts, we have been taking things slowly the past three weeks. As such, our blogging hit a bit of a lul... but I assure you, we are getting back into our groove. It is time for an overdue post about where we've been. We've been staying in Montanita, which is the party capital of Ecuador. When we arrived in town three and a half weeks ago, we were exhausted, burned out, hot (the "real feel" temperature was 114F), and had only $35 in our pockets in a country which only accepts cash. We grabbed lunch and a hostel room over a cute restaurant (*Spoiler: MISTAKE!), and dropped off our bags. This is where I will backtrack a bit. The reason we came to town with only $35 is because in Puerto Lopez, the ATM would not accept our debit card. Of course, we did not figure this out until we needed to get money out of the only ATM within a 1.5 hour radius. Obviously, this happened on a Friday at approximately 4:30pm after the bank had closed for the weekend. Also notable is the fact that we did not speak any Spanish at this time other than "yes," "no," our numbers, and certain food names.

We boarded the bus to Montanita, stowed our bags underneath, and took seats near the back. The people behind us wreaked of cologne and played music loudly from the speaker of their phone. When the man collecting money for the ride made it back to us, we had been on the bus nearly a half hour. He told Daniel that it was $3, and we immediately got the impression that we were being ripped off. Busses in Ecuador are $1 per hour, and it was only a 1 hour ride, so it should have been $2. Daniel tried to argue with what little Spanish he know, but the guy was persistant, the bus was full, and it wasn't worth the argument. He gave the man $3. "No, $3 POR PERSONA" the man says. Now that we are certain we are absolutely getting ripped off. More arguing ensues, Daniel's Spanglish is flying, and nobody else on the bus speaks a word of English to translate. Finally, we do the only thing we can do and pay the man. Afterall, its not like we can just get off the bus... we are in the back, the man that is angry with us has our bags locked underneath, and we are in the middle of nowhere at this point. In hindsight, it was only four dollars, but we were upset about it at the time.

Ok, back on track. We have arrived in Montanita, sans money, and stowed our bags in our chosen hostel hell. We headed off to find one of two ATMs in a city that is only 4x4 blocks. "Should be easy enough," we thought. Wrong. First, we wandered around to try and find one ourselves. After failing miserably, we asked someone where it was. "Donde es la cajera automatica?" We were proud to conjure up the phrase that expressed what we so desperately wanted to find. Of course, the man was very kind and explained in great detail how to get there. In Spanish. We didn't understand any of the words, but we made note of the hand motions he was making. We were fairly confident that we got the gist of what he was saying, and once again took off in pursuit of the ATM. "Um, I think we made a circle." No, no... we couldn't have. We try again, and end up in the same place, again. We wander a little farther and ask someone else for directions. Another stranger kind enough to help us, who doesn't speak any English. More hand motions. More head nodding. Let me point out that I am starting to get uncomfortable at this point... "These people know we are looking for an ATM, they know we don't speak Spanish, they know we have no idea W.T.F. we are doing... what if they follow us then try to rob us after we get out our money?" Daniel, of course, is irritated that I assume the worst in people and have such a terrible sense of direction.

Eventually, we found ATM number one. We insert our debit card, and it gives us an option for directions in English. HALLELUJAH! We typed in our pin number and the amount that we needed to pay for a week of Spanish lessons and spending money. Denied. No reason given. Shit. We try again, for a slightly smaller amount. Denied. Of course, I begin to panic. The ATM in Puerto Lopez didn't work, what if this one doesn't either? There is a second ATM, so I wasn't ridiculously bent out of shape, but it was not my version of a good day. We try again. No bueno. After a final try, we were able to get out money. It turns out, the daily limit at that particular machine is $300. Normally, this would be plenty, but we needed to pay for our classes and we had already dipped into our emergency money to pay for the bus ride, hostel, and lunch. I will give you the brief version of our quest to get additional funds that day from the secondary ATM: We eventually found it, and it didn't work. No sweat, we would just come back to the one that worked the next day. Our money woes were over.

We explored the town a bit, but it was miserably hot outside so we went back to the hostel to relax a bit. Eventually, evening came and we were ready to go to bed early. *This is the point where I will remind you that our hostel is situated "above a cute little restaurant in town". We had read that hostels in town are noisy at night, but it was the middle of the week in off season... I had a hard time falling asleep. It was hot, humid, and there was no air conditioning. We opened all the windows and turned on a fan pointed directly on the bed. Daniel was sleeping like a baby on the outside (and hogging all of the air from the fan), while I was sweating my guts out cramped up against the wall. Then the music started playing. It sounded like I was in the front row of a concert, and I could feel the vibrations from the wall. I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and tried to go to sleep. I tossed around a bit. Eventually, I remembered that I had earplugs in my bag, and went for them.

I climbed over Daniel, fumbled my way out of the mosquito net around the bed, and fished around in the dark for them. I made my way back into bed and happily inserted my earplugs into my ears. Now, instead of being at the front row of a concert, it is more like I am playing music as loudly as possible in my car. I continued to lay in bed for hours. I started feeling itchy. Surely it was just the heat or the sheets, because we had a mosquito net. Twelve years later When the sun rose, Daniel rolled over and asked me how I slept. I wanted to murder him. I was exhausted, sweaty, and covered in bug bites. Mosquitoes were happily clinging to the inside of our mosquito net, asleep after feasting on me all night. Daniel was refreshed, well rested, and bite free. There was only one thing we could do that day in order to stay happily married, and it didn't involve talking or working things out... We had find a quiet hostel with some air conditioning!

What is funny about the whole thing is that when I sat down to write this post, I had intended to write a "this is what we did in Montanita" sort of thing. What actually came spewing out was completely different and rather lengthy. I had completely forgotten about our first day here until I started writing... maybe it was a suppressed bad memory? Of course it is funny in hindsight. What were we thinking staying in the center of a party town? When Daniel read over the draft, his response was...

"I slept just fine."

Puerto Lopez, Ecuador

After Daniel's heartfelt yet debbie downer of a post the other day, I wanted to get caught up with writing about some of the things we've been doing lately. We are a bit behind on our blogging, because we have been staying in one place and studying Spanish for the last two weeks. More about that will be coming in a future post. For now, I want to give a little blog love to Puerto Lopez, Ecuador.

Puerto Lopez is a small fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. We spent a few days relaxing, hanging out at the beach, and eating fantastic seafood. I got in some great beach runs, then subsequently got some nasty blood blisters on my feet. It was also our jumping off point for Isla de la Plata, where we saw blue footed boobies. It is a fairly slow paced little town, and the beach was nice and clean.

The main excitement was waking up early and going to the beach to watch the fishing boats bring in their catch. There were dozens of different types of fish, shrimp, squid, and sharks that were brought in by the tote full. The sharks and larger fish, they would butcher right on the sand and the smaller fish would be taken to tables a bit higher on the beach where they were cleaned and fileted. The people working the filet tables were ridiculously fast and there were piles of fish and guts everywhere.

A little higher on the beach, they had an area set up where women cooked for the fishermen and your freshly purchased fish could be eaten. There were also a few people who rode their bicycles along the beach selling fruit off the back. The bananas were five cents, so I ended up getting one each day we were there. Other than the fish market and awesome seafood, there was not too much going on while we were visiting. It was absolutely worth the few days we spent there, but it is not somewhere we would want to spend more than a few days.

The rest of our photos from Puerto Lopez can be viewed on Flickr.

Doldrums

I've come to know many people without ever seeing their face. Coworkers that live overseas, friends that I've met online, customers that I only ever speak to on the phone. I typically develop some kind of mental picture as to what I think the person looks like, I can see in my mind's eye if they're tall, have facial hair, a round face, whatever it may be. To date, I've not once had an even remotely correct picture in my mind. In fact, many times they're diametrically opposed to what I've come to expect.

In many ways the trip has been similar, it has been very different than I had envisioned. We're just over 1 month on the road at this point and I thought I'd talk about those differences and the difficulties we've had over the last month.

Our blog posts have painted a pretty rosy picture of things on the road. For those following along, we're whale watching, biking, hiking, busing, and seeing the sights. What we haven't really talked about are the day to day experiences that are the types of things you (or at least we) glossed over when imagining this trip in our minds eye. Sure we had a list of sites we wanted to see, when I thought about the trip I was thinking about hot air balloons over the plains of Namibia, a train ride across Russia to the far east, and a 4x4 across the surreal landscapes of Salar de Uyuni.

I of course knew we'd be doing laundry by hand, staying in dumps, eating strange foods, and waiting listlessly for hours at bus/train stations. It wouldn't be all sunshine and rainbows, in fact, both Jordan and I anticipated that in the first two weeks we'd want to head home. What I, what we, weren't prepared for was fighting, homesickness, and thoughts that we'd made a monumental mistake.

The Fights

Jordan and I have been together for 9 years at this point. We've been married for 3 years, were engaged for 1, and we dated long distance during college for 5. Prior to that we were best friends for the majority of high school, all told we've been very good friends for nearly 40% of our lives. I can think of only a couple fights that we've ever had in all that time, in fact I can only really recall the detail of a single fight, we just don't have many disagreements. In the last month we've been nearly always on edge with each other, almost constantly on the verge of some minor disagreement.

Where are we going to eat, what are we doing tomorrow, why don't you want to go here, you want to increase the trip budget, bugs are biting me, there aren't any bugs, how can you not know what lechuga is by now… and on and on and on ad nausium. A lump is growing in my throat as I enumerate these. It is wearing on both of us, but I think it is worse for Jordan as I'm almost always ready for a fight over the stupidest things. Why are we fighting? I can't quite nail it down, but I think the constant uncertainty (a core tenant of the trip was a by the seat of our pants mentality) is really wearing on us and just making us both overly sensitive to smaller things.

Not knowing what we're doing tomorrow, or next week, means that we're constantly needing to research, discuss, and decide what our course will be. This isn't something we've ever even had to think about for as long as we've been together, what is next has always been easy to know. High school -> college -> job, friendship -> dating -> marriage, or pay off loans -> buy house -> save for trip. It was so clearly defined. Now we're wandering and it is making us both emotionally raw.

In the last week or so things have been better. We're staying put and taking spanish classes for a week or two in Montanita, I think having a plan means we're calming down.

Homesickness

For all intents and purposes I haven't lived at "home" since I left for college shortly after turning 18. I lived away from my family and girlfriend all through college and while I certainly missed them, I never had any desire to move back home. I did not expect even the slightest hint of homesickness on the trip, I've always been very independent.

I've found myself craving the comforts of home, the familiarity of the environs and people. Mostly I'd love to be able to read a menu and understand what it says, have normal size napkin, not constantly drinking fruit juice, not have to worry about if hot water was available, have normal pillows, be able to drive somewhere on my own, be able to pay with my debit card, know that the ATM will just work, get some decent pasta, have a vendor able to make change for a 20 dollar bill, eat cereal, not listen to truck mounted loud speakers driving across town offering everyone a fresh pineapple, and Jordan would kill for some peanut butter.

I've got to get over this. Some of the comforts of the US may be available in Europe or Australia, but there is little hope that we'll have them for any other parts of this trip. I'm finding that I just crave a little "normalcy" whatever that is.

A mistake?

Most of all, I never expected to so completely contemplate the fact that I'd made a mistake. Perhaps the years of thinking about and planning for this trip resulted in some kind of romanticization of what this would be. Did I really give up our excellent salaries, comfortable home, and interesting job for this? Sure the activities (climbing a volcano, seeing incredible animals, visiting interesting places) are all amazing, but what about the other 80% of the time? I can reasonably expect that both Jordan and I were on the precipice of promotions, we could really have saved a lot of money now that the loans were paid off, perhaps have endeavored on the next logical step and contemplated progeny…

It is extraordinarily difficult to question a dream, and this really was a dream, so fundamentally. How could I have so gravely miscalculated? We gave up so much to make this possible.

What Now?

We could abandon the trip, head to Seattle, we've got enough saved that it would make a nice downpayment on a home. We've made no secret that the suburbs of Chicago weren't an environment that we loved. Perhaps we should continue on the usual path in a more urban and outdoorsy environment?

Maybe the problem is South America, should we skip to somewhere with more the modern amenities that we're used to? Perhaps Asia with its well-worn backpacker trail would be easier. There are so many things we still desperately want to see in South America, surely we can't leave the continent without seeing them, maybe we just hit those and then leave? At that rate the trip will last 6 months.

We can't continue to be miserable as we move from place to place.

Then you think about how silly all of this is, this trip is the chance of a lifetime. Dozens of people have told us as much, are we squandering this amazing opportunity? And this long ranting post about the whole thing, should I even write it, it sounds like the worlds largest white whine… poor me, I'm traveling the world while not having to work.

So what are we doing about it? Well as previously mentioned, we're slowing down and staying in one place for a while. It's a bit more expensive than we might like, but it means we don't have to worry about what we're doing tomorrow or the day after. While we're here we're trying to come up with a rough plan of what the following weeks will look like.

We're working to embrace the local food which is cheaper and tastier than the attempts at Americanized food. We're going to be formally taking spanish classes in the next two weeks so we're better at conversing with the locals.

We're sticking with our rough overall plan, at least for the time being. We're going to continue overland through South American hitting Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. We've got get the hang of this backpacking things eventually… right?

Finally, why write a long, perhaps whiny, post about all of this? Ultimately, I think it does an injustice to us and other who might be contemplating similar trips, not to document how we're feeling during the course of things. The blog is our way to remember how things were and that means capturing everything, even the less pretty bits.

Post Script

I've put off posting this for a long time now. I've read and reread the contents a bunch of times and both Jordan and I share some apprehension about publishing it. I however, still feel that I want to have my thoughts, my opinions, about how I felt in the beginning of the trip clearly documented, primarily for myself in the future.

In the last 1.5 weeks we've been staying put in Montanita, Ecuador learning spanish. It has been nice, but I'm ready for us to move on to other parts of the country and then to Peru. We may be travelling with some of the folks we've met here through Peru which might be a nice change of pace as well.