LAURA Well, not much has happened since the last time I wrote. We made our way to Quito where we are now. Lets see....We decided one night to go to a smaller beach town. Small it was. I don´t even think the bus people though we were even going there, and the man I sat beside on the bus looked at me like I was crazy when I told him we were going there. It turned out good though. We had to make sure there was a hotel in the town before we got off the bus though! Turns out there was. It was called the Ponderosa! A bamboo building with 4 rooms. Basically 2 single beds. The bathroom was out back in the hotel they were just building. I think they got the bathroom ready for us acually, as when we got there there was no running water, but by night, I was able to have a cold shower! That was nice as it was SO HOT. Likely about 35 degrees if I had to guess. It was really nice there acually. Our hotel room was right on the ocean, and we could see and hear the waves crashing right from our beds. So nice.....
Anyways, from there we went to a bigger town and dropped our bags off at the bus station, and went to another beach town for the day. We strolled around and had supper ( Chris will fill you in on his gigantic plate of seafood on his email! haha) and then we headed back to Manta to take our bus to Quito. The bus man said it should take 8-9 hours, and if that wasn´t bad enough, it ended up being about 12 or so. It was all through the mountains and it turns out there was construction. I am not sure if it was from waterfalls washing out the roads, or landslides, but there were times the bus just sat on the highway for about a half hour with out moving. All we could see were cars and buses and semis lined up all waiting. Literally hundreds of vehicles.
We FINALLY got to Quito and found a hotel room in the old town. Quito has 2 main sections, the old town and new town. It really is an old town. We walked around all afternoon yesterday and went into some old churches and old buildings. I felt like I walked right into the pages of the Pillars of the Earth book, even though the churches we saw weren´t that old! Still though, they were built in the 1700´s and later. Very impressive.
Last night we went to bed early, not because we wanted to but because after we walked out of the restaurant after supper, everything, and I mean everything was closed in the area we were staying in. No emailing for us.
This morning we went to a market a bit out of town. I thought it would be a tourisy market but it was local. All animals, fruits, veggies, and household stuff. Still neat to see. We are now in the New area of Quito, killing time before supper and then heading to the room so I can pack up and set the alarm for 3 am, as I fly out at 6:30 tomorrow morning. Not looking forward to that, leaving warm weather and my hot Chris for my new 5 day work week......oh i won´t think of that until Sunday night!
Hope you enjoyed my adventures and stay tuned for the adventures of Chris!
CHRIS well i am sure sad my pretty laura is leaving to go home................the adventure wil prob get more adventurous with only me travelling plus i´ll def meet more people as when i am by myself i talk waaaaaaaaaaaaay more to other travellors and locals alike............that wil be one god thing.........................still i wish she wasn´t going.......cannot believe how fast 3 weeks flew by forgot to mention, unless u checked the travelblog, but we did try eating guniea pig in banos.............that was interesting.......and was something else i was to mention but cannto think of it now????????????????? spent 1 more day at that lil fishing town but during the day hoped the bus and randomly picked dots on the maps and bussed to the lil towns............................................went to a little beach town that i was amazed how empty it was................absoloutely beautiful on the beach but about 15 houses in total and some abandoned buildings as well.................we went into a hotel that was quite dirty and overrun with flies as in the corner they had piled up about 30 - 40 cantelopes that were starting to rot and some were moldy....................they had cute lil cabins with ocean views for rent but laura said she´d be scared to eat there.................myself guess i coulda lived off beer for a day but shame it was so dirty in side the restaurant part......................we walked around the beach area trying to find shade as it was scorching hot...............sand actually was burning our feet.
we also went to another beach town and got the awesomest sweetest pieces of watermelon from this store as we missed our stop and ended up in town further down road than what we´d actualy wanted to go to........................the locals sured stared at us but were totally freindly and all saying hi to us then staring..................obviously not many tourists visit there next day we
finally left for another fishing town........funny, laura sat with a man and he asked in spanish where we were headed..................when she told him...............he shook his head and said no we weren´t going there but laura said yes we are! when the bus got to this lil town,the bus worker actualy ran into a restaurant and asked if this vilage actualy had a hotel in it before they drove off leaving us there.................nice of them we found a place............................it was a concrete pad about 8 feet by 10 feet with 2 beds in it and a light bulb...............................totally basic all surounded in bamboo.....................i totally thought we´d have every creepy crawly creature in the area crawling on us................but aside from mosquitoes........it wasn´t bad and we coulda thrown a stone from our bed into the oceann so it was so relaxing to fal asleep to sound of waves crashing. the bathroom was in another building that wasn´t quite finished yet so had no door or electricity and didn´t have water when we checked in but woman motioned she´d get some men working on it so we could use it..................we totaly thought what had we goten urselves into staying in the middle of nowhere in this place. tunrned out it was so peaceful there we had beach to ourselves basically aside from a few chickens and the fattest moma pig ever!
the next day we again randomley picked another beach town, i like travelling this way.....adventurous and never know what u´l see or do that way........anyways, it was long totally backtracking ride there but only a few local tourists there and tonnes of lil rest´s n bars on the ocean we had our pick...........funniest thing my poor spanish got me into a situation as i´ve been eating mixto plates of seafood basicaly a mix of fish, shrimp,squid,octopus,oyster,ect this one place didn´t look the cleanest but it was down right ´local´looking front table had 3 local men getting drunk drinking this boze straight passing around a lil cup..............wals were dirty laura prob didn´t wanna eat there...but she agreed anyways i asked if possible to get a mixto of seafood.....and listed fish,shrimp,squid........................they said yes possible 10 minutes lator i saw laura chuckling, and they brought out friggen platter of seafood......................my heart sunk thinking what was this gonna cost and how could i eat it all? there was 2 huge slabs on entire side of fish, pile of shrimp, squid, fries,cooked banana s,salad........i saw the cook laughing to her self watching from the side when they cleared the table to make room for this huge thing.................long story short it was awesome n garlicky i ate almost all of it...........and thankfully with laura´s breaded shrimp and drink it was 20.00 a number seemed to have been pulled from the air but thankfuly they didn´t ask for more.................as we didn´t agree on price before hand so i couldn´t realy said anything in defence........it was realy good the guy was smiling when we left that the platter was empty! after that we took a 9-10 hour night bus but because of road construction on mountainside and a huge traffic jam it took 13 hours ish! funny we took a taxi from bus station to our hotel...............................was stuck in traffic a bit and meter read 1.39 i counted today , we´re like big shots taking taxi´s as they are so cheap! meter goes up 1 cent every 4 seconds............this morning took cab was under 1.50
yesterday we walked around the óld QUITO and saw some lovly old buildings and churches and laura got tricked into a tour of church by this guy saying he was preist then demanding money at the end for his services. (note from Laura....in my defense I knew it was a scam by the time he asked for the money, and i didn´t give him any!) all shops closed up at 8:00 pm and area was empty except for some sketchy looking people so we just we to room. today we checked out the NEW QUITO lots of touristy stuff but i did find a buffet rest......finally after 3 weeks of none, with lots of seafood for 6.50 so we are now killing time to let our appetites build so we can eat...........then we´ll splurge for a taxi to supermarket for laura´s last minute snacks, booze,gifts and tomorrow sadly she leaves and i got a full day of bussin over the border into Colombia...................that i am looking forward to unsure how much i´l email i may go to a lil town in mountains san agustine unsure if internet there or not?
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