Atacames

So, I´ve fallen way behind on my blogging as you guys can tell. But maybe that´s a good thing, that means I´ve been dedicating my time to more important things like school right???...... we´ll let the end of the semester determine that....

So now, the weekend before last we traveled to Atacames, Ecuador mainly because one of the girls will be traveling with her community service agency for the majority of weekends to come and she wanted to get some beach love before hand...so we went.

There were several beaches we could´ve gone to in Ecuador, all of which would´ve been at least a 7hr bus ride from Quito because of Ecuador´s moutainous terrain it takes forever to travel to the costal cities. Atacames is located in Ecuador´s province of Esmeraldas. This province is notorious for putting out star athletes in Ecuador´s soccer leagues and national team. Incidentally, Esmeraldas has Ecuador´s largest Afro-Ecuadorian population at 80% of the province. It´s interesting that Blacks in Ecuador even though they are a more extreme minority,like African-Americans in the U.S., dominate the country´s premeir sport. Is this an attestment to Black physical superiority or another example of how societal factors have affected the sports landscape and in what ways?? Tell me what you think.

So we took a bus for $8 at 3:30 for our 7hr trip to Atacames. The first 3hrs of the trip were phenomenal seeing how a carretera(highway) was carved out of the Andes Mountains. It felt like an Indiana Jones movie, how high up we were in a charter bus. There was a 3month old infant to my left with her mom and her 14yr old sister to my left. AT first it was annoying but we forged a sort of comaraderie through the tumultous drive that at one point was sooo humid that we could barely see out the windows and to open them meant freezing. Oddly enough I got into a random conversation with the man and his daughter infront of me because I was speaking english with my friends about everything from jazz to Hurricane Katrina. It ended with him giving me his e-mail address and telling me if I needed anything to just let him know. Granted, I was a little weary at first just because I´ve heard horror stories of naive Americans...but he seemed genuinley nice.

We got there at 11:30 and all 5 piled into a small rinky little taxi cart that reminded me of the same ones in China. We got to the hotel and were surprised that it was going to cost $34 per person as opposed to $17, but at that point we weren´t going to argue nor try and find another hotel. We left to find food and found a pizza place on the beach surrounded by discotecas and bars. Soon after we returned after some of the girls got their baile on to our beds with mosquito nets because malaria was prevalant but not endemic in the region. Needless to say I was taking my malaria medicine every other day just like the bottle said so.

The next day we visited some artesanias that had stands set up near the beach and then went on to the overcast white sanded beach. The girls were expecting to get some sun, me not soo much, but that definitely wasn´t going to happen with the overcast skies. Chisara and Kristina met a guy trying to sell a boat ride for $30 on the beach,which to me looked sketchy but they were ancy to go so we all piled in. It turned out to be much better than I though and we got to see more of the coast. We got to se some more sealife.

That night we ate at a nice seafood restaurant where the girls wanted to get ceviche, which is a kind of stew that is notorious for making foreigners sick. I chose to get lomo(or beefsteak). THe girls ended up getting fish instead. After that we went to a couple of discotecas and called it a night. The next day, I woke up late while they all went to the beach to try and tomar el sol(or sun bathe). By 2 we were back on the long road back to Quito, which only took 6hrs on the way back!!!!

Hopefully I´ll be able to get in another post about this most recent weekend in the Oriente(AMAZON).