Montañita!

At the moment I'm getting ready for my last night of partying in Montañita - and last night in Ecuador - decided a few days ago to step by Peru before going back to Europe!

I've been at the coast of Ecuador for about 2 weeks now. First I went to Canoa, a beach town further north from where I am now. A really nice place, but definately made for sun, which was non-existing for the time I was there. Someone should have been doing her homework and would then discover that september is the lowest of low season in Ecuador.. So Canoa was a ghost town - nice to relax there and cool that you could get familiar with all the locals within hours, but I left after a few days. Went paragliding there tho - awesome! check out the photos on facebook.

Then I went south with Lora - a nice english girl I met at the hostel in Canoa. A night and a day in Puerto Lopez, which also was very quiet, but is where you can go whale watching! Turned out that in august/september is when all the humpback whales go up along the coast of Ecuador for mating. We went for a few hours and saw 6 whales! As a lot of you know, I have a mayor thing for whales, I was about to cry when I saw them coming jumping up right next to the boat. I do have photos, but I suppose they don't seem that spectacular to people who weren't there.

Then I went down to Montañita, a hippie/tourist/surftown and The Place to Be in weekends. I've had such great fun here - wicked parties, good surf, great atmosphere. I've actually only surfed twice, cause the waves have been waay to big for a little chicka most of the days. But the times I've been out there have been super! Great to be on the board again! And I still remember how to do it, even if it's been 2 years. My muscles have forgotten everything about paddeling, though.. And yep, easy to get some locals help you whenever you need it!

I also went horseback riding on the beach here, some peruvian guy took me to this random farm a bit away from the centre. It didn't seem like anyone was home, but then the owner turned up, offering me a bit skinny looking horse. I paid $5 and could do whatever for an hour. So I went to the beach and the horse went mental! SO fast, great fun! Just went running full speed for most of the time. And put some local kids on it for a little while.

I've taken some spanish classes here, but only 2 hours per day and it's been very relaxed, we've just played games, read a couple of stories and chatted a lot. Exactly what I wanted. And it's also been extremly easy to practice spanish here, I meet "spanish teachers" on every corner. The people are nice and fun here, but a little crazy. They just tend to smoke a bit too much, I suppose. Specially the boys, of course. I feel like I have many "friends", but not any real friendships. They all tend to turn weird at some point. Any girl who's been to south america would know what I mean.

Almost done in Quito!

I'm having my last weekend in Quito now, leaving to the coast in 2 days! It's weird and a bit sad since this has become more or less my home. The hostel is great, but it changes a lot. For my first and last week there's been really good groups of people to chat and have a beer with, but there aren't many long term stayers and in between it's been pretty dead. But it's also a good thing, because I've been forced outside the hostel on my own to get a network, which mostly have been through salsa and in spanish.

But: I can't wait to get to the beach!! Quito's got about 2500 altitude meters and it's only warm when it's sunny. One cloud and it gets freeezing. I got a lama jacket my first week here, and I fell in love with it immediately - I even got married to it - (we had a "ceremony" one very late night, an australian chick was the priest - "do you take this jacket to be your lawfully wedded..jacket? I do!You may put on your jacket!") But now we've developed this kind of love/hate relationship - it keeps me warm but I'm sick of needing it.

My days have pretty much gone by like before - spanishsalsaspanishsalsa. Great fun but lots of work. Last week was crazy - I started cheating on my salsa school and took 2 lessons every day - one at each school. And the spanish grammar is getting a bit out of hand. At some point you feel like they keep throwing tenses at you that doubt you'll ever use. They got something like 27 of them in total, my last three have been: 1 for the future when you're not sure something's going to happen or not, 1 if it's a possibility that something happens, 1 if you just want to suggest that something might happen. Yep. I'll probably take some more spanish lessons on the coast but only chatting. No more tenses, please.

I did a horseback riding trip all of last weekend, it was amazing! Just riding around in the jungle/farmland in Pululahua, a volcanic crater about an hour away from Quito. My horse was absolutely perfect - just wanted to gogogo but easy to stop if I wanted to, which didn't happen much. Otherwise I haven't really explored much - haven't had the time and energy for it.

Yesterday I ran into a "familiar" face. My friend Astrid's boyfriend's sister (!) lives in Ecuador and I've gotten lots of good tips from her through facebook even if we've never met - she's a sweetheart. She lives quite far from Quito, but suddenly I heard "Tine Sommerfelt, right?" in swedish and there she was - in my hostel! Cool to see her in person and thank you Svante for hooking me up with her!