Montañita sucks (12-14/Jul/06)

Cuenca, Ecuador

Montañita is paradise, an amazing beach with great surfing waves and you can walk about barefoot all day. Well, that's what Lonely Platet says. It's basically a backpacker paradise, a place where you can hang out with other westerners, eat western food, listen to western music, and drink ecuatorian beer. Absolutely pointless in our books, we are here to see ECUADOR, not a bunch of gringos. Plus it is cloudy season, we don't surf, and because of upset stomachs cannot drink alcohol.

The plan was to stay for 3 days, then hook up with Miguel and some of the other expats in Puerto Lopez to do some whale-watching (the season is about now). But we found Montañita so not to be a place we wanted to waste time at that we went whale-watching on the second day. That was pretty amazing. We went out to sea for about an hour, and found 2 males courting a female (they come here from the South to both court and have the babies that resulted from last year's courting). These are humpback wales, one of the smallest species, but we didn't find them small in any way. When their tails come out of the water it's an amazing sight. Also, the males occasionally jumped out of the water and created huge splashes (to show off their strength to the females). In all we must have followed them, and later a few others, for a couple of hours, and then headed back to shore. It felt like 5 minutes.

On the third day we got the bus to Cuenca, where we arrived late in the evening and hooked up with Miguel's Quito flatmate Charly (in Cuenca for a few months for work).