a weekend at the beach

last weekend in another atempt to search for the sun i went to the coast again, this time a little further south to a tiny village called Canoa, whick is known for having some of the best surf in Ecuador. i went with Griet who i met at school, she is here in Ecuador til september working as well. Canoa is quite along way from Quito [10 hours on a bus] so i have last friday off work so that we could travel down on thursday night, i know, i know its naught- stop tutting. The bus journey was not actually too bad except that it didn't actually take us to Canoa but to San Vincent about 15km away. So at 5.30 in the morning we got a lift in the back of a truck with a few other tourists and some freshly caught fish! The hostal, when we finally arrived was lovely, our room was at the very top and had only a straw roof and four posts where the walls would be. Very pretty but not ideal for sleeping when it is already light, so we just had a rest for a few hours before getting up to start the day. The beach was beautiful and completly empty- but this was probably more due to the large heavy clouds that appeared to have rolled in. Nevermind, it was still warm enough to lie lazily on the hammocks at the hostal, the sun did make an appearance that day and so we spent the rest of the day on the beach chilling out. the evening was also very relaxing, with a meal on the beach front and then only a couple of cocktails before bed as it had been a very long day. The weather on saturday was not great either so we hires some body boards and spent several hours playing in the surf, great fun but we both somehow managed to graze our chests and stomachs! The rest of the afternoon was spent in the bar of the hostal playing just about every board game possible (obviously i won most of them !!!?!), we had been told that it was also possible to 'follow happy hour' around town so at 5.30 we startedto drink cocktails. we didn't get very far however, and spent most of the evening in the first bar playing pool and practising our spanish with the locals. The end of the evening we decided to go to the one and only disco in Canoa, where i danced til my feet bled (yes, in real life thats true). Sunday we had to get up early in order to catch a bus to the next town, to catch a ferry across the bay, to catch the bus back to Quito. And suprise, suprise we missed the first bus so we decided to set off walking and see if we could hitch hike; well that was sucessful. Three vehicules passed by, the first full of a friendly ecuadorian family waving enthusiastically as they passed us, the second an old man who stopped to tell us he would call a taxi fir us when he arrived at the next town and the third was the bus, which did stop. We made the bus back to Quito by the skin of our teeth and spent the next ten hours festering in our hung-overness wishing we'd got up early enough to have a shower. Back in Quito i was supposed to go out with the hospital department, they had suggested i try the local delicacy here- guinea pig; being very tired i unfortunately had to cancel. maybe guinea pig next week.