La Costa

I have now seen all 3 regions of Ecuador
I'm living in the Sierra, high up in the Andes Mountains.
I had a short, but bug/heat/sickness filled stay in the Oriente (rain forest).
And I spent the last week on La Costa.

Last week, the whole group hopped a half hour flight (it would have been a very long 10 hour bus ride with a group that gets nauseous in traffic) to the coast.  The whole group went in order to conduct village studies.   Essentially, we were broken up into pairs, assigned to a family in a small, rural town, and were there to observe and learn about life on the coast for a week.  It was supposed to be a practice run in fieldwork before our month long independent projects. But before we began our assignments, we made a pit stop...

Guayaquil is Ecuador's largest city, and located right on the coast of the Pacific.  We stayed there for a night before starting our village studies.  Once we arrived in Guayaquil, I had my first of what was to be many, many plates of fish, followed by cake for Matthew's 21st birthday.   We spent the rest of the day on a boat cruise down the Guayas river, a VIP tour of a closed pottery museum, a walk through a very unique park in the center of town, and a trip up to the top of a lighthouse that overlooked the whole city.

The food is really different on the coast- everything is fish or crab or shrimp, while a can of tuna is usually all the fish I see in Quito.  Instead of bread on the coast, there's plantains.  And a lot of them.  Of course though, there is rice everywhere in Ecuador.

Not the traditional sort of 21st, since the drinking age in Ecuador is 18/ there really is no drinking age here.

The "Captain Morgan," named for the pirate who raided Guayaquil.  And yes, it is the same guy who they named the rum after.

Some of the ceramic pieces from the pottery museum.

Guayaquil

Something is a little off here...

In the center of a bustling metropolis is a the Park of Iguanas.  I asked our guide why the iguanas stayed in the park, when there were no gates or fences keeping them in.  She then asked me if I would leave a place where I was fed everyday and could lounge all the time long while people took photos of me like a celebrity. 

444 steps to the top of the lighthouse

It was just a bit windy up at the top of the lighthouse.   

The following day started out with a trip to the Parque Historico in Guayaquil.  The park was a mix between a zoo, a garden, and a museum.  During part of it, you walked through mangroves and forests with animals on either side of you.  In another section, there was a path through plants of coffee and chocolate, palm trees, and all sorts of flowers.  The last section was of houses that in the past, had been the houses of plantation owners and workers.  They had all been restored and preserved for people to walk through.

 

This was the biggest bird I have ever seen in my entire life- it was probably about 3 feet tall.

Crocodiles just laying out.

The gardens in the the Parque Historico

The closest I have gotten to rowing this fall has been seeing these dugout canoes.

An old plantation house.  On the inside, there was a huge ballroom, complete with bar, pianos, and couches that must have made for the quite the 18th century party.

The tile floor in one of the houses

 We left the Parque Historico, and started our 2 hour bus ride up the Ruta del Sol- translation, the route of the sun.  The ride took us farther and farther from the big city, as the highways turned into two laned roads that cut through small, rural pueblos.  At one point, the bus took a turn and we came up beside the Pacific.  It was our first glimpse of the ocean thus far in Ecuador, and I thought that I could stay here forever. We stopped for lunch at a small seafood restaurant on the beach, and I'm pretty sure at that moment while we were eating our giants plates of fish and bananas for 3$, feet in the sand, watching the waves of the Pacific roll in, the whole group was content.

Reality came crashing back over us when we got back onto the bus and our directors told us that they were going to start dropping off the pairs in about a half hour.  Before I continue, I think I need to paint a picture of the village study and what we were expecting.  Essentially, we had been briefly briefed on the task at hand- go in, live for 4 nights with a family, and learn about life in the village.  Now, it sounds like a vacation on the beach for a week, but everyone in the group, especially myself, were freaking out.  Each pair of people received a name of a town and a family, and we were to be dropped off by the bus somewhere in the vicinity of the town and had to find our house.  We had never met or spoken to the family's before, so essentially, we were going in blind.  And to make matters worse, people on the coast speak really fast Spanish and slur their words.
I was in the first pair to be dropped off.  I thought I was going to throw up everywhere because I was so nervous.  I apparently wasn't too good at hiding the nervousness, because my directors tried to assure me that it was going to be fine, the people are nice, and it was going to be a great experience.  My directors have been doing this for more than 10 years, and they're not ones to sugarcoat things, so I should have known to believe them, because they were right.

San Pablo, Ecuador

Gabby and I got off the bus in San Pablo, a small fishing community of about 2000.  There was literally nothing in the town except for cabana seafood restaurants and beach.  We lived for the week with Yolanda, a 70 year old widow who decided 8 years ago that she was going to turn her passion fro cooking into a business, and so opened a cabana on the beach.  She worked from 7 am until 6 at night, and had anywhere from 1 to 5 other women working in the kitchen with here every day.  Gabby and I shared a bed and slept on the second floor of the restaurant at night, listening to the waves crashing literally a few feet below us as we fell asleep.  During the days, we walked on the beach, swam in the ocean, lounged in the hammocks, searched for ice cream, and watched the women work. We ate lots of seafood, rice, and bananas, regardless if it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner.  I would confidently say that in four days, I ate atleast 75 shrimp, 2 octapus tentacles, 3 small fish, 10 medium sized plantains, and a small mountain of rice. At the end of the day, after everyone left for the night , Gabby and I would eat dinner with Yolanda and listen to her stories.  She had this quiet passion about her for the work she did, and a kind way with how she interacted with people.  The people in this country still amaze me every day- there is no reason for them to be nice and open and welcome strangers into their house, but time and time again they do.  We were only there for 5 days, but it was sadder to leave Yolanda and the other women in the restaurant than my other family in Los Chillos after living there for a month.  She opened up her whole life for the two of us to share in for a few days, and it is experiences like these that I will remember long after I leave in December.

Our living quarters on the second floor of the restaurant.  Yolanda had one bed, Gabby and I had the other, and the mice and cockroaches shared the floor.

One morning, Gabby and I removed the heads from 20 pounds of shrimp.  It was only a small delivery.

Cabana D' Yoly

The restaurant

The beach

Lines and lines of fishing net

One morning, we watched 16 guys spend hours pulling in a fishing net off of the shore.  People came in pick up trucks to take the fish to sell.  Other people came with plastic bags and took fish for themselves and their families.  I even saw one guy putting fish down his shirt because he didn't have a bag.  The whole thing lasted all morning, but by 11 the net was back in the boat and the fishermen rowed away.

At the end of the five days, we said goodbye, and hopped on a bus to meet back up with the group at a hostal about an hour away.  We arrived at Hostal Azalunas in Las Tunas, another small pueblo on the Ruta del Sol to find that everyone had survived their experiences, and had a great time, although it was nice to be in a place with running water and real showers.  We spent two days there, debriefing about our experiences, and gearing up for our next adventure, which will start next week.  We also found some time to swim in the biggest waves I have ever seen in real life, and celebrate Taylor's 21st birthday.

Hostal Azulunas

I didn't want to leave the coast.  For one, the plane that we had to take back was a 36 seater and much too small to feel safe in.  But more than my fear of crashing into the ocean, I didn't want to leave the way of life that characterized the coast.  The people were friendly and laid back, and didn't need much to be happy.  After regrouping at the hostal, we talked a lot about poverty.  To anyone passing by, the pueblos we stayed at would appear to be poor- I'm sure that's how my pictures make it seem.  But the thing is, when you see people living life fuller than so many others that have all of the money in the world, it makes you wonder who really is better off.