Puerto Lopez for Carnival

Everyone flees the city for carnival, so our beach trip began with a long search for any free rooms anywhere along the coast. After many calls we discovered a place in Puerto Lopez, which was originally a small fishing village. After a struggle just to plan the get away, the trip proved to be full of challenges. Thats what makes a good story though so no regrets!

We took the night bus on Friday and barely after clearing the city we came to a stand still. It turns out there was flooding all across Ecuador because of all the rain we had last week and there was a mud slide that had covered the road. We sat for about 2 hours and in all the trip took us about 14 hours, 7pm to 9am. Luckily I was able to sleep for a good portion and there were bathroom breaks, as well as a strange "dinner break" at 1:30am.

When we arrived we were thrilled to see the sun and spent the day on the beach. As the day passed we became aware that the entire city, as well as some other parts of the coast, was without power. Unfortunately in our case this also meant no running water in our hotel room, so it was bucket baths for all of us. Then we went for a candle lit Italian dinner at a really nice little place. We got a bottle of wine and toasted to light, and a few minutes later the power returned.

I went on the trip with Lilly and 3 other girls she works with, so in total we were 3 Americans, 1 Scott, and 1 German. Needless to say we attracted a little attention. One of the main traditions for carnival is to throw water at people on the streets (mostly boys and young men throwing it at girls). They were equipped with water guns, water balloons, and in some cases eggs or ¨bombas¨filled with red fruit. So for the next 3 days whenever we walked the streets we had a little fear.

Saturday was a little rainy and overcast so we decided to take a bus to Montanita, a surf village about an hour and a half north of Puerto Lopez that is very popular with tourists. It had a much different vibe, a little more chilled out and we didn´t stand out as much because there were many more international faces. I ate my first ceviche, fish that is cooked more or less in the acid of lemons. Very tasty. We had a fun night out there, with lots of good people watching, but I had one too many strawberry daquories and didn´t feel so hot the next day.