Route of the Sun, Manabi Coast

So a lot has happened in the last few months and I'm backtracking on my blog now but i'm starting where I left off and giving you an insight into my next adventure!

La ruta del sol, or route of the sun is a stretch of towns and villages stretching down Ecuador's pacific coast including the entire coast of the province of Manabi. So named the route of the sun as it is supposedly sunny every day (I visited a couple of times and I can confirm for the days I was there it was blinding sun and scorching heat), and is also famed for its coastal scenery. The best way to describe it is imagine Cornwall's craggy coastline punctuated with big golden sandy beaches and rocky headlands. Transport a palm tree saturated version of that to the year round tropical temperatures and azure seas of the equatorial pacific and put a sepia filter on it and you're pretty much there.

This region is the chillest place i've been to on Earth. Sea air, twinned with the heat and a relaxed south American attitude make everything seem so easy. We had to get the tyres of our car changed, we arrived at this place, tin roof and a few painted breeze blocks, the staff were chilling with a newspaper. Saying this half an hour later and less dollars than a UK tank of petrol later and we were all sorted.

jus' chillin

The northernmost point at which I started on the route was the city of Manta, after a 9 hour drive from Quito we arrived in the 'madrugada', around dawn time. We were initially in Manta to meet with a client, but as we arrived so early we decided to wander on to the beach. I was surprised by the large amount of people, walking, running, doing exercise or playing football. I'd quickly learn the reason for this is that at that time in the morning the temperature is a measly 25 degrees, nothing compared to the scorching heat of the midday sun! 

a morning haze

After the morning client meeting (which involved breakfast on the balcony of her house overlooking the pacific, not too shabby) we made our way back down onto the beach, where we decided to go on a (company dollar) speedboat trip around the harbour. Manta as a city is not spectacularly beautiful, and has a Benidorm vibe with concrete and glass apartments rising up behind the beach, but one really cool thing to see on the boat was all the fishing boats. Ecuador still has a thriving crab and fish market and Manta is one of the largest ports, jam packed with fishing and crabbing boats, as well as a number of container ships from around the world. It has a feeling a bit like the remaining fishing villages at home back in Britain, it makes me nostalgic. 

Civengtec looking dapper in orange

The sheer number of fishing boats here suggests that this would be an amazing place to get fresh fish dishes, and boy was I not disappointed. I am a sucker for a good fish dish and they do it so well here! Often the menu will tell you how a fish is cooked but it will depend what fish you get by season and availability, but it's all super fresh and I didn't have a bad meal. I can't say I 100% knew what much of the fish was I had or the names but it was all amazing! 

hut boat

So spending a (rather sweaty) night in Manta we took a drive down the coast the next day. You know when you think about your ultimate road trip, cruising down a tropical coastline, palm and banana trees on one side, gold sand on the other, punctuated by banana leaf huts, 33 degree sunshine and your favourite tunes on the radio. It was exactly that and I will never forget it. I'm a massive fan of driving (well being driven) and I love soaking up the views, but as a romantic, fleeting moment that leaves you wanting more and imagining you might never want to leave if you were to stop. 

Through San Lorenzo, Past Isla Salango, Puerto Lopez and more until we arrived at Montañita. I can't even begin to accurately describe the beauty of this region, the colours, the perfectly tranquil atmoshere, the hot sea air. All I can say is GO. I don't think Ecuador has the rep of some of the other South American countries but if you are nearby I implore you to go and explore this region! 

So now, Montañita, it deserves a post in itself, so all I'll say to round this off is imagine a hippy, middle class version of Magaluf or Zante. Watch out for it, it's coming next!

Peru, the Frontier & El Oro, Ecuador.

Ecuador borders Columbia to the North, the Pacific Ocean to the West, and Peru to the East and South.

El Oro is the Southernmost of Ecuador's coastal provinces. the word Oro translates into English as gold, and the region takes its name from a past of important gold production, in present day it is one of the worlds largest Banana exporters, obvious from banana plantations as far as the eye can see.

So many bananas, am I going bananas?

Machala is the capital of the region, however I stayed in Lucy's family house in the town centre of Santa Rosa, another principal town of the province. A small, fairly run down house with a couple of leaks and in need of sorting out, but at least it had beds, a bathroom and a tv.

 The first thing you notice about this area of Ecuador is the heat. As we descended the mountains in the car it quite quickly got hotter and hotter and hotter to the point which my entire body was glistening with sweat. Yeh, glamorous I know. The locals don't seem too phased by the heat and take life slowly and keep it all together. I on the other hand, looked like a red in the face foreigner much more used to the not quite to hot climates of England, which of course I was. 38 degrees is an outrageous temperature anyway. I was just about managing the day in the knowledge that surely, like the desert, at night the temperature would drop and I would feel somewhat less like a roast turkey. This knowledge turned out to be something i'd entirely made up in my own, desperate brain, and it dropped to a mere 28 degrees in the night. This led me to sleeping sprawled out like a starfish, no covers, with a fan to try and maintain a stable temperature as not to boil dry. It's also nice to take a cold shower, which is good considering the shower in the house had no hot water (very normal in the hot parts of the country).
-Saying this in regards to temperature, I did sleep pretty soundly due to the 10 hour drive that going to Santa Rosa entails (there are in fact no trains in Ecuador, except a tourist train that doesn't actually go very far and costs an arm and leg) and flying internally also isn't an economical solution.

The food from the Coastal regions of Ecuador is renowned for being the best in the Country. Humitas, Tamales, Ceviches and a host of other Mariscos are genuinely delicious and I certainly had my fill. I'm lucky to get all these dishes in my home in Quito, because Lucy is from Santa Rosa and an excellent cook. Maybe i'll write a post in the near future talking about Ecuadorian dishes to everyone knows what i'm talking about.

They also do pretty good ice cream in Santa Rosa, pretty much expected from somewhere this bloody hot. My favourite flavours are the chocolate and the Mora, or Blackberry, flavours. At one point at about 8 o'clock at night we sat outside the heladeria (ice cream parlour) with ice creams in the pitch black and 28 degree heat. I will always remember that moment as it was blissfully tranquil. For unknown reasons the power to the entire town had gone out, there was no cars, no lights, no noises, nothing. They only sound was the crickets (I can only imagine they are giant crickets, all the bugs are giant here).
I will interject and say the hospital has it's own generator. The sick people were ok.

As part of our little trip to El Oro we drove down to Hauquillas, on the border with Peru. On one side of the river sits Hauquillas, and a small bridge connects it to Agua Verdes, on the Peruvian side of the border. The two towns have a free trade agreement meaning both nationalities can pass freely, and there are controls further inside both countries which check people aren't transporting prohibited goods (or drugs). We did witness a car being pulled apart piece by piece, the police suspected there were concealed drugs.

Spot the tourist
Welcome to Peru

Due to this free trade, both towns are pretty crazy and there are massive amounts of shops and stalls, selling everything you could ever wants, and people take advantage of products that may be cheaper on the other side of the border. There was also an entire street full of red onion vendors. Weird.

Many Onions

Many parts of Peru are pretty much desert and this was obvious in Aguas Verdes. It's very dusty and there are lots and lots of cactus'. Some of them several metres high. This is in quite a contrast to only slightly further North in Ecuador, where it's very green and humid due to the abundance of tropical rainforest. In Aguas Verdes we ate the regions famous dish. I can't actually remember what it was called but it was essentially lots of shellfish, and fish, cooked in it's own juices, seasoned and served with rice. I'm not sure how they make it so delicious but they do.

I really enjoyed this part of Ecuador, yeh it's pretty hot but for this reason everyone takes life pretty easy and pretty chilled out. Thats a life I can't knock, in comparison to the hustle and bustle of many of Britain's towns and cities.

The End of the Road - Shushufindi, Amazonic region.

Shushufindi is a 'city' (it's not very big) lying in the western part of the Amazon basin. Growing up as a 'Petrolera', (where they drill for petrol) the city is as far as you can get into the Ecuadorean section of the Amazon with a car.

The edge of civilisation

I wasn't in Shushufindi for vacation or an Amazon adventure. Unfortunately it was for work! We have a couple of projects going on in the city, one restaurant under construction, one hotel which we are looking at starting construction, and one hotel in design process. Obviously for these projects we need to speak to the various owners, check on constructions and take site surveys.

Site office, a couple of palm trees and a tarp

A model of the restaurant (made by me!)

I'm not going to exaggerate and say I saw crocodiles or Piranhas, or rare Amazonic monkeys. The creatures generally stay away from the human population. The creatures that is apart from the vast amounts of creepy crawlies, most of which apparently 'leave a nasty bite' or 'if it bites you you might need an amputation'. Joy. Luckily apart from a few vicious mosquito bites we were all ok. I saw plenty of lizards, giant butterflies, 'wasps' (as big as horses I swear), parrots and parakeets, and some small spiders. Luckily no Tarantulas. I can't deny, I was terrified of seeing one.

The amazon, being the rain forest, does what it says on the tin. It rains, alot. It's also very very hot and sticky. 38 degrees and damp is not something i'm used to. Luckily our hotel was well air conditioned, however this also has the downfall that when you go back outside it feels like you are stepping into the fiery furnace of hell.

A wooden car ferry crosses the Napo River, an Amazon tributary 

As for foods in the Amazon, as you can probably imagine it's the kind of place where they eat all manner of what us westerners would consider to be disgusting things (they actually are). I don't realllly get this as there is a tonnes of absolutely delicious food out there. Different fruits you could never imagine...

Cacau, (chocolate beans!)

'pollo del campo' or chicken of the countryside, 'Guanta' (described to me as a kind of giant rabbit of an animal, I can only assume hare, but none the less tasty tasty), and much much more.
So, why on earth the people like THIS, I will never know.

This is 'Gusan'. It's basically a wichetty grub like you see on I'm a Celeb. I decided to try it, as i'm not squeamish about the fact that it's a bug, and though well if all these people are eating it, it can't be that bad.
I was wrong.
With a kind of salty, crispy but hair skin initally I wasn't that enthused but the skins taste was really awful. I bit into out, and oh my lord. Out oozes a kind of oily white mush that makes up the entire interior of the bug. I can't describe the texture other than saying a mix between gone off milk and 'man juices'. And with a taste like I cant describe.
The lady in the restaurant told me it was good for your health, but I can safely say I shan't be trying that again.

So my slice of Amazon adventure wasn't exactly fighting crocodiles and discovering un-contacted tribes (they do exist here!), but an experience none the less!

Luis the Architect, project owner, me!

Caio.

NYE - Bringing in 2014 in local Latin style.

I'm very accustomed to the British NYE celebrations now. Mainly involving wearing something overly glamorous (considering the likeliness of vomiting down it later) or dressing up to a theme with my best friends. This is accompanied with having a party (of which I will down 3 pints of punch, or basically straight vodka, that my friend makes) followed by stumbling around bars, being confused about the time, at some point having a count down, and later making it home but not remembering how.

The Quito experience definitely had it's similarities, but was also something quite different. The similarities go as far as stumbling around bars, being confused at when midnight actually is and outrageous amounts of alcohol, (keeping up the classy side of British traditions I will admit I vomited on my outfit).

NYE starts the day before, in making the 'muñeco' which translates as doll, or dummy. This is very similar to the Guy Fawkes tradition we have in Britain. You make the guy, and your burn it. Here the purpose it to burn away all the bad things from the past year, and bring in the new year with good luck. For this the muñeco also wears an item of each persons clothes. Ours also had a creepy face that we bought, as there are stalls and vendors selling muñeco faces, and even whole muñecos all over the city. We made ours with clothes and shredded paper, only adding the face.

A muñeco for sale

Our Señor

NYE night itself is something of an extravaganza. The streets are full of people, there are random stages everywhere with party music blaring out and stalls selling drinks and food lining the pavement. All of this was just in my 'quiet' neighbourhood in the north of the city, I can't imagine what the city centre is like. This is all well and good for the party atmosphere, then you spot a woman in the street gyrating on the bonnet of a car. Oh wait, in fact not a woman, a man, who seems to have nicked his sisters smallest clothes. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It is traditional for young men to use their sisters or mums clothes, put some make up on and just be extremely vulgar in the middle of the street. Whilst doing this they block all the cars until they hand over a few coins to be allowed to pass!

check out those buns

These guys also hassle the bystanders for a few pennies, not a problem, but I didn't take any money with out me, but this wasn't good enough for one group of 'girls'. 6 of them picked me up, lifted me right over their heads then laid me down in the road in front of a car! They then proceeded to dance over the top of me, in the usual vulgar fashion, to the hilarity of the crowd and my family. They did duly lift me and and give me a pat on the back.
This is an experience I will never forget. Ever.

So to continue. Later in the evening we had a big dinner, in fact another christmas dinner. Accompanied by many drinks. Then headed down to the family bar for what was definitely too much vodka. By the time we went down it was about 10pm and we spent a few hours drinking before the big 12 to burn the muñeco! Health and safety laws don't really apply here and we set the thing alight in the middle of the street, as well as loads of fireworks. Oh and I forgot to mention we filled the muñeco with fireworks too. Safe. We drank and laughed and danced by the burning man, and did some jumps over him. Lucy couldn't jump over in her heels so Luis and I picked her up in tandem and jumped over the fire with her. In retrospect this probably wasn't the safest of vodka fuelled ideas.

The spent the rest of the night dancing to Latin music and drinking beers at a street party in the next road from ours, only going home when the people were thinning out and our feet couldn't take any more!

New year Latin style definitely made a change from the usual stumble vomit New Years i've had before (not that I don't enjoy stumble vomit, I certainly did plenty of that here too, and paid for it the next day). So i'd your'e looking for a real NYE beyond the realms of watching the London fireworks or queuing for 2 hours for a nightclub, get yourself to Quito to Bring in 2015!