We wanted to take a break from our hectic life (LOL!) and go to the coast, we decided to return to the place in Puerto Lopez that we had gone to with my Mom.
As usual, we couldn't sit together in the Van to Guayaquil, Michael and Oscar sat in the front with the driver, and I was stuck in the back row, next to two young Ecuadorian men. We were up pretty early, so I was looking forward to sleeping during the three hour ride through the Andes. Oh well, best laid plans. The two guys next to me were like 13 year old girls, they didn't shut up for about an hour, they were very animated, eventually they ran out of things to say and their conversation ended. I was so thankful; peace and quiet at last.
I was drifting off and then I heard the sound of a helicopter. A helicopter???
What the heck is a helicopter doing in the Caja's Mountains???
I opened my eyes to find that the van had a drop down screen to watch videos, my peaceful ride through the mountains was now accompanied with the movie "Black Hawk Down". The soundtrack was blaring, it was dubbed in Spanish, but it had subtitles, ALSO in Spanish. It was sorta surreal, beautiful mountain scenery with a movie about death and mayhem.
Anyway, we caught the nice bus to Olon, which also played a movie, "We Bought a Zoo" with Matt Damon. It was also dubbed in Spanish, with Spanish subtitles. Michael joked that there must be a ton of deaf Ecuadorians that take this type of transportation.
In Olon the Taxi that the Hotel arranged for us was waiting, we were quite comfortable during the 45 minute ride to Puerto Lopez. We got to the hotel, checked in and strolled the beach in enough time to catch a great sunset.
The Hotel:
Our Room:
Each room is named after a fish, or a bird, or a flower, and the room key is a HUGE piece of wood in the shape of the animal. So, we had a key shaped like a Butterfly.
The room actually sleeps five, there is a single bed to left of this one, and a loft area with another double bed. We had a refrigerator and a cooktop. It was nice to be able to make our coffee in the morning and sit on our private balcony. There is no A/C, but the room had several ceiling fans and a few floor fans. We didn't really need them, this room is on the "second floor" and the breezes were amazing. We left the French Doors open at night, we could hear the waves.
Our Balcony:
We had two entrances to the balcony, one off the French doors next to the bed, and one that wrapped around from the room entrance.
Through the trees we could watch the waves. There were two comfy chairs and two hammocks, they were not so comfy, wierd plastic things.
The bushes were like Bougainvillea gone wild; red, white, orange, pink, absolutely beautiful. There were tons of birds, some we had never seen before, and we were pleasantly surprised at the lack of bugs.
Typical Puerto Lopez transporatation:
We spent one day watching a guy with a motorcycle going up and down the beach all day transporting people. At one point there were five people on one Motorcycle.
We made our coffee each morning, had breakfast in our room, and then we would claim two hammocks and go to the beach. The hotel has a nice library, so we would pick a book, take towels and soda or water down to a little Cabana, and spend very relaxing days, literally hanging out.
 |
Sunsets: Enough said. |
Flowers on the grounds of the hotel:
Their garden is specatular.
 | ||
|
An afternoon in Puerto Lopez.
Oscar has been frightened of the water since the time he fell off one of the kayaks. We would not go NEAR water. For some reason, he took to the beach like crazy. He went nuts playing in the surf and chasing crabs, I guess his Daschund breeding went into high gear, he kept digging in the sand trying to get a crab. They always out smarted him.
Horses that showed up on the beach.
We watched these guys run back and forth from this little boat unloading fish.
The owners of the hotel were on vacation themselves, so the duty of walking the five "Hotel" dogs was given to a hotel employee. This day, guests had volunteered to take them for their 45 minute walk down the beach.
On our last evening we lost one of our cell phones.
We had taken one of the funny little "Taxis" to a nice Italian restaurant we had gone to with a couple we had met at the Hosteria. We strolled back to the hotel, and when we got to our room we realized we were missing a phone, so off down the dirt road we went with flashlights. We walked all the way back to the restaurant, and then we called the missing cell phone. A guy answered, we didn't speak Spanish, he didn't speak English, so the restaurant owner intervened for us. The "guy" had found the phone in the taxi we had taken to the restaurant and was willing to bring it to our hotel in the morning, BUT, he wanted to know how much we were going to pay him to bring the phone to us. We didn't specify an amount, we just said we would pay. About an hour later he called back and said he would bring the phone to the hotel that night. It cost us $10.00 to get our phone back.
The trip back from the coast was uneventful, there was another movie on the bus, which we slept through. Michael, me and Oscar were out like lights.
A bonus of our little excursion to the coast was meeting a really nice couple, originally from Southern California and now living in Panama. They are here in Ecuador exploring around to see if they want to make the move. After they left Puerto Lopez, they toured around the coast and then came to Cuenca. We met them for lunch on Friday, and yesterday Linda and Stephen came to our house for lunch along with our friends Wally and Hazel.
It was a nice day. Life in Ecuador.
No comments:
Post a Comment