Montanita–surfing and dreds anyone?

Thursday as we arrived at Cuna Luna, we noticed that this town has no restaurants. Maybe we’ll find one, but perhaps the only place to eat is the hostel restaurant. We decided to take a taxi to the next moderate sized town, Montanita. Phillip and I had read about it, that is it a surfer paradise. It is so famous for its waves that surfing competitions are held there. Sure enough, surfer dudes and dudettes all around. Bob Marley shirts and dreds. Reggae music. Some surfers were in the water, but I didn’t carry my big camera with me, so no good surfer pictures. The streets were filled with these vendor areas where folks sold handmade necklaces, bebidos con fruta y leche (remember? fruit smoothies to us), t-shirts, and other wares. We ate lunch in Montanita, but we weren’t in the area for the almuerzos, so we had chicken wings and a Hawaiian salad. The almuerzos are better! After about two hours, we were ready to get back to Cuna Luna.

After our Montanita trip, we walked along the beach to the south. It was low tide, so the beach was very wide. This area is not a bay area like Puerto Lopez was, so bigger waves come in. A few families with children were swimming and playing in the water. It seems fairly shallow for quite a way out, it is especially so when the tide is higher. After we walked south and back to our hostel, we laid in the hammocks.

After I took that sunset picture on the previous and we came inside, it was only 7 pm or so. I tried to hook my iPod to my netbook, but I couldn’t make it play movies, so Phillip and I watched “The Ghostwriter” (Ewan McGregor-Pierce Brosnan movie) on my iPod, sharing one set of earphones. Cozy. Of course, it had to be cozy since the iPod screen is only 3 inches big and the right and left ear pieces can only be about 12 inches apart!

Friday morning, a walk along the beach to the north, a walk thru town, breakfast at the hostal. Yes! actual brewed coffee! My first in over a week. Life is good. After breakfast, Phillip took the underwater camera out into the surf. The videos he took are better than the stills, but I’m not uploading videos because of the slow connections in Ecuador. The picture to the left is one he took in the water. I took video and still pictures with my Canon camera of Phillip out in the surf, bobbing over the waves as they came crashing in. It made me a little nervous for him to be out there, but I took comfort in the fact that if he got washed out to sea, I’d have it documented! Needless to say, he came back just fine and said that there were no riptides or undertow to speak of and that he could stand in the water the entire time. That’s him in the right picture (t-shirt on so he wouldn’t get sunburned).

The guidebook said that this beach area isn’t pretty, but we found it to be clean, wide, and perfectly fine. It was not crowded at all like some of the beaches are. Friday afternoon, Phillip was bored, so he took the Canon camera out. He found a family at the beach and a group of surfers taking lessons, so he took pictures of them, got their email addresses, and promised to email them the pictures. He brought the camera to me, and I reminded him that I’d need to crop and compress the pictures so that I could email them.  I spent the next two hours cropping the 155 pictures he took! That’s OK, it gave me something to do.

Saturday we go to Salinas where the hostal should have wifi, so I can send these posts. Cuna Luna has been exactly as advertised, a quiet beach resort where the hammocks and sea breezes are the reason for being here.