Montanita

August 23rd
Today was our first full day in Montanita. Montanita is a surf town. Lots of "hippys" around. We took a bus from Cuenca to Guayaquil then Guayaquil to Montanita, it took about 7 hours. Today Hannah and I took surfing lessons. Our instructors name is Jorge. He´s funny. Surfing was really fun. It was really exhausting! It requires strong arms! My arms felt like they were limp by the time we were done. They had us use the larger boards ... I think they are sort of the training boards ... So they are easy to surf on when you catch a wave, but they are harder to turn and harder to get out to catch the waves, so I´m going to try a slightly smaller board tomorrow. I´m going to have some strong arms by the time I get home! We are excited to get better and do more surfing.

I signed up for Spanish lessons this week. I´m going to do 4 hours (2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon) on wednesday, thursday and friday this week. In between time Hannah and I will likely spend the time surfing! On Saturday we are going to stay overnight in Puerto Lopez which is about an hour and a half north of Montanita. There is good whale watching there and there is an island near by, isla de la plata, which they call the poor man´s galapagos. It is supposed to have very similar species only it is much cheaper to visit than the galapagos islands. Ivan is coming to visit us here in a couple of days. So he will hang out with Hannah. Hannah leaves for Chile this coming Monday so Ivan and I will hang out for a few days after she leaves until I leave the morning of the 1st.

Its 830pm right now and Hannah and I are exhausted from surfing and going to bed shortly! The internet is very unreliable in our hostal so I had to pay and go to an internet cafe here. Doing well, its very nice to stay in one place for a long time. Hannah is getting a bit stir crazy from time to time - she is like you mom!

I´ll upload some pictures, the internet is a bit slow though.

Oh also there is a dog, named Negra in our hostel. She follows me and lays outside of my room sometimes. She is a border collie mix. She has one puppie that is probably 6 weeks. I´ll include some pictures soon. Lots of dogs here that just roam around town, most of which have owners.

Our hostel´s dog whose name was Negra.

Me and one of Negra´s puppies. She had two, we didn´t get a picture of the second one.

Adorable puppy!

Negra and her puppy.

Me on the first day of surfing!