Belize

Backfilling a little, I Need to get better at blogging.  I haven't put either Belize trip in here, so I'll talk about them together, since they were similar trips.  I think the first time was probably November 2009 and the second in April 2013.  The first trip, there were about 20 of us - along with the main house, we rented not her down the beach a few houses. The second trip was about 10 people.

Belize is amazing of course.  Both times, we stayed at Casa Tortuga on the island of San Pedro, south of the main part of the island.  The house is amazing, donning 4 ensuite and 1 additional large bedroom.  The three bedrooms on the lower level open up directly to the pool.  There are no bad rooms in the place.  It has a large living area with a bar, large couch and table that fits about 12 and a full kitchen.  In addition to the main house, there was also the pelican house, a mother-in-law type full-apt, which is super cute and has two levels of decks above it, that give you a full 360 view.  The best thing about the indoors though, is Maria, the house cook.  She is AMAZING.  And anybody who knows me, knows I can't shut up about the awesome Belizian Hot Sauce that she uses liberally.  I can't get enough of it.  Everything she cooks is amazing.

Outside, it sits immediately on the beach and has it's own dock, which is perfect for the scuba boat pick-ups.  There's also a large pool in the backyard, with plenty of padded lawn chairs for chilling' in the sun. 

A good number of us spent a fair amount of time diving.  I think I did 7 dives the first trip and 5 dives the second. We couldn't dive as many days the second trip because there had been a storm, which disrupted the water too much.  Belize is hands-down, the best diving I've done so far, which is exciting, because from what I hear, there are even better places to dive. Both times, I saw a non-quantifiable massive number of all kinds of fish, including nurse sharks and rays.  Every dive was full of tons of sea life.  We coordinated all our dives through Suya Tours, not far from the house and they pick us up promptly, right at our dock and are very reasonably priced and professional.  Unfortunately, I still haven't dove the Blue whole.  The second time, we couldn't due to weather and the first time, it was at the end of the week - a handful of us took the day boat out there (2 hrs), but I only did the short dives.  My sinuses were too messed up from diving all week to do the blue-whole - 150 feet down with sinus issues on a regulator sounded miserable. One day though, it'll happen.

Both trips, we took a day and rented golf carts for the entire group.  An absolute blast and complete shit-show.  We cruised through town and stopped at a few cool bars and restaurants along the way, like Fidos - a must stop at bar, right in the center of town and on the beach.  It's completely open on the back side, so it makes for a great bar to hang out in and get some fresh air.  That being said, there is no shortage of great beach bars within a stones throw.  The best bar though, is hands-down, The Palapa bar.  It's north of the bridge, so it's a bit of a trek, but well worth it.  It's built on a dock, so you look down straight into the water.  It's a party on it's own, any time of day, with a great lively atmosphere and shotski (well - more like a shot-boom) to boot.  We always have a blast at this bar - too bad it's too far to frequent more often.

When hanging out by the pool during the day, we were often visited by a few local woman (same both trips), that come by to schedule Massages, manicures, pedicures - you name it.  The last time I ended up with a sun burn (like I have now - See Ecuador 2014) and the woman gave me an Aloe Vera Massage to help it heal.  It's messy, but pretty awesome.  Very sweet lady that does the massages with the help of her two daughters or nieces (not sure which). 

Belize is definitely a vacation I look forward to.  Next time, it's possible we will stay in a different house a little ways down the beach.  We found a super cool new house that looked amazing, with all sorts of bells and whistles.  :). But, it'll be hard to switch from Casa Tortuga.

Leaving Montanita and Ecuador

I'm headed home today.  I'm happy to be leaving Montanita, I didn't get the tanning time I was hoping for and it is cloudy and sticky humid today.  :P

Hopping on a bus soon for Guayaquil and then off to the airport.

See you in Seattle!

Montanita Day 2

Montanita Day 2

Yesterday was great, we walked along the beach all the way out to the end and along the rocks to a large point, where you could see the next beach over and the coast line for a ways, it was absolutely beautiful.  There were about 15 people on the end of the point fishing.  A few of them with poles, but most with simple a fishing line.  I'm not sure what he was doing different, or what bait he was using, but one guy in particular was cleaning up - he just caught fish after fish.  For the whole walk out, we stopped and looked at all the sea life along the way.  Most of it was pretty standard, baby crabs and snails, but it was nice for me to learn the words.  :)  There was one the Xavier didn't know the name of, it's a very dark purple, spiky animal, that stings you really bad apparently - I took his word for it.  :)  The waves were fun to watch, the shape of the rocks left many crevices for the water to jump up and surprise you from below.  We quickly determined that if the ground you're walking on there is wet, then you will be wet soon too.  I got a few pictures of one spot in particular, that got us.  It was a small crevice that just looked like a crack, really far into the rocks.  Not every wave would cause a spout of water there & not even all the large waves, it seems it has to be at just the right angle.  It was a bit surprising and kinda funny.  :)  I also got some great pics of the ocean slamming up against the end of the point.  Every once in a while you'd get a good one that splashed up te rocks and a good 15 feet of so into the air.  It was great. 

My lesson of the day -- don't underestimate how much sunscreen you need at the equator.  Could have been much worse, but I definitely have some red calves right now from walking along the water. 

After the beach, we toured around the town again for a bit and got our daily intake of empenadas (of course).  In the late afternoon, we revisited a favorite little cocktails stand we have been visiting & had a few fruity drinks, then headed over to this cute bar next to our place to listen to some live music, which was really great.  It was a guy with a guitar and a few friends, just blasting the place with everything from spanish pop, to country (in spanish).  We got dinner at a little restaurant with a few of Xavier's friends (Pedro, Alex, and Alex (also referred to as Alexandra and The Columbian).  They were really funny, from the parts I could understand.  :)  They pretty much picked on The Columbian the whole night.  It was pretty entertaining.  There was supposed to be some big beach party, but apparently it didn't happen - Hopefully tonight.  :)  So, with no beach party, we headed back to the music and cocktails with Xavier's friends.  It was fun talking with them and gave me allot of practice talking with different people in Spanish.  It was a bit of a challenge though, 'cause on the coast, the language is very different.  Everybody speaks "lazy" (not my term); they leave off the end sound of most of the words.  For instance, instead of "dos" (two),  they'll say "do_" and most of the words are run together, so it's hard to distinguish words (or impossible, for me).  So that's a fun challenge.  :)

After Hanging out there for awhile, we went to a discoteca with great music.  It was a blast.  I danced with one of Xavier's friends for a bit, but it was really awkward, I felt like a ritard - I had no idea what I was doing and he was really short (yes, shorter than me), so I was not in anyway showing any skillz of being able to follow - but it was fun to try for awhile.  I just kept laughing at myself and he  attempted to teach me, but I failed miserably - oh well.   :)  They had a guy there that was leading everybody in synchronized salsa dancing, kind of like line dancing.  He was so animated, it was absolutely hilarious.  I got a pic with him after the dancing was done.  The whole night went by in a flash, we didn't go to sleep till about 5am.  

This is definitely a pretty tranquil town with parties on the side, it's pretty fun.  Though admitedly, I can only do a few days on the beach, before I need a few more activities.  I wish I had time to go to banos before going home.  I'll have to come back soon and do more of a mountain recreations tour.  Banos specifically, apparently has ziplining, biking, hiking, waterfalls you can climb under… all sorts of stuff.  But since I only had a few days and my trip goal was to learn as much Spanish as possible, I chose Montanita - since Xavier came with, it was absolutely my best spanish speaking option.  :)

Xavier made breakfast again this morning.  I love it - it's a surprise traditional dish every morning.  This morning was fresh plantains (squashed and fried), with cheese - It may be the best thing I've ever eaten.  And all the food is so cheap here, I'm guessing breakfast for both of us cost about $1.  Yum Yum Yum!  I need to find plantains in Seattle and figure out what kind of cheese they use here.  

Tomorrow, We bus back to Guayaqil and I catch my flight home.  I can't wait to see me friends, but I'm sad to leave.  If it weren't for Shasta, I'd try to stay an extra 4-5 days to hit Banos, but... next trip. 

Montanita Ecuador

Montanita
Has been great so far.  As soon as I got here, I knew I went the right direction (to the coast vs. to the mountains again).  I needed to see the ocean.  Plus, travelling with Xavier, I'm speaking Spanish 99% of the time.  (He's given up on english a bit, but I'm trying to encourage it).  :)  Such great practice though, I'm understanding ALLOT, but not all.  :)  And I'm figuring out how to say most everything I need to say.  He says my spanish, including my grammer is really good, a few people have said that, but I don't know that I really believe it on the grammer part quite yet.  It doesn't sound normal to me yet, so I can't really tell if I'm putting things in the right order.  But, whatever, it works.  :D  I'm super excited though, I have 4 days of pure spanish, which should improve my spanish by leaps and bounds.  Maybe even more-so than the 4 weeks I spent in school.  Though that was necessary to make this possible.  I still have a hard time when people speak really fast, but I'm getting allot better at picking up more of when they are speaking fast. 

We got into Monanita and found a great hostel, right on the beach, for fairly cheap.  Actually, of the options, it's on the more expensive side, but for me it's cheap.  We're paying $50 total for both of us, for the 3 nights we're here.  $50 is nothing for me, and I wanted to stay on the beach with a deck, so I offered to pay for the room for both of us, since he's been such a great friend and tour guide and he has allot less than I do. 

After dropping our crap off in the room, we toured around Montanita.  It's a tiny town, only about 6 blocks worth of stuff and an amazing beach.  We sat for awhile at this place that has empenadas and beer (that's it) and proceeded to eat them out of stock (give or take - haha).  They had about 10 different kinds of empenadas which were amazing.  We didn't try them all, but we have a few days here yet to do so.  :D

Sundays in Montanita (well, all of Ecuador, really) are very tranquil.  It's illegal in ecuador to sell alcohol on Sundays, so most places shut down.  However, there are still plenty of places that don't worry about that pesky law and still sell plenty of drinks.  We walked around and looked at the crafts for sale, walked to little park, toured along the beach, watched a few surfers and then sat for awhile with Pina Coladas at small drinks stand just up from the beach.  It was great, we talked allot and I learned all about his turbulent relationship with his x.  All in Spanish.  I'm 100% spanish now, but my ability to speak and understand it fades late at night and early in the morning.  :D

After much needed showers (yikes), we ventured out for dinner and found some really great and cheap pizza (I know, not very Ecuadorian, but it sounded great) at a place called Hola Ola.  We chatted a bit with one of the very friendly lady that worked there.  She talked super fast, I caught parts of it.  :D  We chatted about Guayaquil a bit.  It was pretty funny, when we left, she said very fast, that my spanish was really good, but it was too fast, so Xavier had to tell me what she said.  I just thought that was kinda funny in an ironic way.  :D

We turned in around 11, since the town was asleep.  I slept great for the most part, but the humidity here makes everything pretty sticky feeling 24/7.  You just have to ignore it.  :P

In the morning, Xavier made me a traditional Ecuadorian breakfast for the cost, which is richer than what they eat in the city.  We had Encebollado, which was a soup, with onions, fish, cilantro and chifles (plantain chips) on top.  The broth was really yummy.  I have no idea how he made it, but it was amazing.  :) 

And now you're current, we're off to enjoy the day.  Not sure what we'll do yet, but maybe some surfing.  Mucho fiesta en la noche.  :)

A Day in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Guayaquil
Saturday morning, I headed to Guayaquil with Rebecca, a girlfriend I met from school.  Her boyfriend was flying into Guayaquil and I decided to go to the coast, which meant I needed to go through it anyway, so it worked out perfect.  Normally, I wouldn't have planned much time in Guayaquil, as it's muy peligrosio (very dangerous).  Even taking taxis isn't safe, because many of them will just drive you to their friends, so that they can take all your shit.  Plus, from what I've heard, it just isn't really a city that has that much too offer.  Well, the reports about what the city has to offer were wrong, but the taxi warnings are true (according to the locals -- not first hand, thank goodness). 

Luckily, a few of us had met a friend from Guayaquil a few weeks earlier in Cuenca, via our schoolmate Kendra.  My new Guayaquil friend, Xavier Enrique is awesome.  We've been friends since the moment we met.  He knows just enough english to help me and is great to talk to.  I've helped him with his english a bit and he's helped me a ton with my spanish.  We're both really patient with teaching, so we have fun talking and practicing the languages.  :) 

Xavier met us at the train station and helped us find a great hostel that wasn't in the guide book.  Word of advice, if you're ever in Guayaquil and have a choice between a room with or without air conditioning… spring for the air conditioning.  At first, we were like… ah, who cares, we don't need it.  But the rooms were SO astronomically hot and humid, that you break out into a full body sweat within about 5 seconds of opening the door, with no window, so know possibility of cooling it down any.  After coming back in the evening and having the rooms be just as bad, even though it was nice and "cool" (I'm guessing a cool 70 degrees by our hostel (far enough from the river to not get allot of breeze), but with no sun at night, of course, so it didn't feel quite that warm really) outside -- we gave up and got air conditioned rooms.  It was like heaven in comparison.  The location of the place was great, we were just outside of the center and could easily walk around to all of the different interesting sights. 

Xavier gave us the grand city tour, which was really great.  We started with empenadas that were F'ing amazing, then wandered over to el parque de centro to see all the iguanas that live in the park.  The park was beautiful and the iguanas were totally docile and petable, it was great.  Still grasping spanish a bit though, when we were figuring out the plan, at first I thought that we were going to go eat iguanas, but quickly (or not so...) figured out were going to go eat and then see the iguanas  (whew).  :) 

After many iguana pictures, we walked to the shore, passing a few beautiful buildings, including a beautiful municipal building with statues and palm trees in front.  We got to the river and walked up some massive steps to get to the top, the steps were almost as tall as my legs, it was pretty funny walking up them.  At the top, you could see really far up and down the river.  A few boats went by that were there for transit or tour, but no others under motor.  We saw a couple fisherman with nets and a row boat, no poles.  It was a really great view.  I wonder how deep the water is, because the water was really muddy -- clean, but muddy -- from the muddy river bottom and there were allot of floating branches all over the river.  

We continued on down the walkway and checked out the scenery.  The area was really beautiful.  You could see the residential area called Pena in the distance, which was absolutely gorgeous from there.  Every house was painted in one of 5 or so almost pastel type colors.  It looked pretty amazing from a far.  We walked through a garden area that was really beautiful, huge trees with the roots hitting the ground  You could tell the tree was possibly [relatively] young, because none of the draping roots from the tree were very beefy (at least that's my uneducated guess, assuming it's even that type of tree). 

We continued along the river , just enjoying the  beauty in the middle of the city.  Near the end of the walk, they had a huge fiesta for charity with dancers and music and such, which was pretty cool to watch for a few minutes. 

We waited for our friend Nick, who was flying through Guayaquil and hangin' with us for the day on his way to Peru.  Then we headed to this area close by that was super cute.  It was a seemingly never ending set of stairs, winding up the hill, lined with tiendas and bars and snacks and other stuff.  Each of the buildings had a picture outside of it of what the building looked like before it was renovated.  It's pretty amazingly different.  Apparently, the entire waterfront area and that stairs area lined with bars and such were all fairly new.  The president had the entire thing redone to bring some beauty to the city and attract tourism, etc.  I can't imagine what the city must have been like before that, but as sketchy as the city is in general, It was a great call to fix that all up and provide one safe place where people can go and have fun at night.  From what I understand, literally everywhere else in the city is unsafe at night unless you personally know the people.  We sat and had a beer overlooking the river, with a sweltering hot, yet cooler than before breeze.  What a great day. 

For dinner, we went back to the river, t o this area where they have a handful of different restaurants you can order at and sit at one of the tables by the river.  The food was great and the location was unbeatable.  On the way there, we walked by this park area where the kids could get into these huge plastic bubbles and walk on the water in them.  I REALLY REALLY wanted to see if they would let me do it, but we didn't have time.  We had about an hour for dinner and then Nick had to head to the bus terminal and we had to go to the airport to pick up Rebecca's boyfriend. 

The airport pick up did NOT go as planned when we got there, we were told the wrong terminal for Kevin's flight and the flight that we thought it was, was delayed an hour and a half, so we sat in the airport for two hours, to learn that we had the wrong spot and had totally missed him.  We finally caught up with him at the first hostel we tried to stay at, but decided not to.  By the time we got everything figured out and got him to the correct place, it was about 1:30am, so we got a really late start to the night.  :(  But it was still fun…

We headed back to the bars on the stairs and after the 3rd one, finally found a place with both space and a cold beer - whew… things were looking up.  The bars quickly closed, around 2:30, so we headed to a kareoke bar in the building below where Xavier lives, where he knew the owners, so we could hang out with people there for awhile.  It was fun, we listened to bad kareoke, danced, met new people, and had a great time.  :)  After the bar, we hung out at Xavier's waiting for the seguro (safe) cab his mom had called for us.  (It's very normal here, the whole family lives together for a very long time.  Even possibly after getting married.)  It's a pretty crazy concept, but it's not safe in Guayaquil to hail a taxi after the bars at night, unless you're in the one safe place I was talking about (even then, there's a chance it's not safe.)  The taxi that Xavier's mom called was somebody that they knew and he walked down to ensure it was really him.  Knowing somebody in the city made a huge difference and made our experience in Guayaquil SO much better.  He knew how to keep us safe, while still allowing us to be able to go out late and have fun.  We got back to the hostel and crawled into bed around 4:30am. 

The next morning, we had a couple hours in the city, so grabbed empenadas (awesome!) for "breakfast" and repeated some of the previous days tour for Kevin.  Such a great experience in Guayaquil.  We headed to the bus terminal at 1pm and I said goodbye to Kevin and Rebecca, who headed back to Cuenca.  :(  I hopped on a bus to Montanita with Xavier, who decided to come with me. 

Cuenca Finite

Cuenca Finite

Last week was my last in Cuenca.  I had a fun week, but very mellow (much needed).  It was actually the last week of school for many of my friends there, so we got together for drinks everyday per usual and talked about our plans coming up and all that fun stuff.  I also started doing daily beers and flashcards with Caleb, which I wish I had done earlier.  I'm going to miss all my new friends -- most of them were really young, but truly a fantastic group of people, wise beyond their years. 

The funny as hell award goes to mi amigo Caleb. He just cracks everybody up non-stop.  I will have to add more of his phrases later as I think of them, but here's a few to get you started.  To put these in context however, you need to know a little more about him.  He's from Minnesota, grew up on a farm and does (or used to do) help work on other farms from time to time.  You name it in the country and he's probably done it.  When he graduates from college, he's going to be a police officer, but continue doing some taxidermy on the side.  I can't remember half of the jobs he's once had, but the list would be long and includes things like calving (helping cows give birth), cleaning stalls, etc.  I learned all sorts of new sports that exist, such as "cooning" (raccoon hunting).  I'm not truly doing him justice, because I don't remember it all, but you get the general idea.  Anyhoo, a few of my favorite phrases… and thanks to Caleb for the ones he's going to send me to add to it.  :)

• He's "Nuttier than a squirrel turd"
• [Well crap, after all that, I can't remember any others right now --  I'll be back}

Since my first week here, the family that owns the hostel I'm staying at has been rebuilding the back building to add more rooms to the hostel  It's been really interesting to see the whole thing be torn down and rebuilt by hand.  So if you're wondering about the random pics of construction in my photos, those are progress photos along the way.  It's really crazy watching them build it.  Literally each and every piece is done by hand.  In the beginning, the nocked the building down wall by wall with sledge hammers.  The cement is mixed with shovels and scooped in to buckets and handed down the "assembly line" (aka, to the next guy) to be poured into the intended place.  The tools they use are rudimentary at best --  when laying a large area with cement, they used a wooden board to flatten and spread it.  It was really interesting watching everything come along.  The building should be done in about a month.  Celso invited me back for the big fiesta they'll have when it's complete, but unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to make that. 

Kids say the darndest things...

I funny story as I was saying my goodbyes to Celso at the hostel… we're chatting and goodbyeing, etc… his son is sitting there as well and his grandson (about 5 years old?) is floating around poking his head in and out - super cute kid.   We hug adios and I start up the stairs to my room.  As soon as I'm out of eyeshot, I hear his grandson at the top of his lungs, ask… "Grandpa! Is that your girlfriend?"   Every one of us just busts out laughing.  It was absolutely the funniest thing.  :)  such a cute kid

Cuenca - 6/18/2012

Yesterday was a pretty successful day...

La Farmacia
I finally got my amoxicillin, so I should be feeling better in no time.  I am already starting to.  It's definitely different buying drugs here.  This isn't specific to Cuenca by any means, it's similar in most non US countries I've been too, but worth describing.  They have farmacias (pharmacy) all over the place and many drugs you would need a prescription for in the states, you don't need one for here.  I haven't fully tested how far that goes.  I did however, need a prescription for my amoxicillin, which I got from our dance (salsa) instructor from the school, who also happens to be a doctor.  So that was awesome. Anyway... I went to the farmacia and handed them my prescription, which incidentally didn't even have my name on it, nor did they ask -- which makes me wonder if I even actually needed it.  She went and grabbed a few boxes of amoxicillin, then just count off and cut 21 pills out of the packet.  On the counter in front of her computer.  I don't know why, but I just found it funny, considering in the states, they are very much seperated from the customer and it could take 45 minutes for them to fill a prescription for you. 

Espanol and lunch
I had lunch at Chiplote, I sat at the bar and spoke spanish with the bar tender for awhile, which was fun. I think today, I'll do an early dinner at a different bar where I can talk to the bar tender in spanish, it seems to be a good way to get some spanish in. :)

Guacamole
I went to the market with Kim and Rebecca after school, we got all fresh ingredients (in espanol), including Avocadoes (5), Tomatoes, onion, cilantro, limes and jabeneros (we couldn't find jalepenos).  In the evening, we got together at Kim's place (her host family's home) and made Guac.  I've never used jabeneros before, so we chopped them up very very tiny and used very little.  We only used only a half a pepper, because it burned our eyes just cutting them, even with gloves on - that was crazy.   Ultimately, I think we could have used a little more, but I errored on the side of keeping it edible.  :)  We may try again later this week if we can find jabeneros, or maybe even if we can't.  The guac was pretty awesome though, it was a huge hit and it was fun chillin at the bar with a huge bowl of guac and a few beers. 

The avacadoes here are really different.  They're more yellow inside than green, and the ripe ones feel like what would be an over-ripe avacado feels like at home.  When you open it up, the outer part of the avacado is super soft, but the middle is on the harder side.  Yet even though it's a bit hard, it still tasts like a ripe avacado, not under-ripe, like ours would.  It's really strange.  The skins are about half the thickness and durability of ours as well, when scooping out the avacado, the spoon is "sharp" enough to cut through the skin -- so wierd. 

Finally...
And -- Allas! I found flashcards! woohoo!
I'm feeling allot better, so I'm getting more blog-inclined, if you can't tell.  :)