Ecuador y más allá: Vamos a la Playa

Yes, it's been a little while since my last post. My apologies! I went to the beach!

I skipped a couple classes to leave for the beach with Sara, Larissa, her sister and friends from here. We got to the beach (Pedernales) at around 11pm. Our hostel was a sight for sore eyes but was very nice on the inside [except for the lack of air conditioning]. The area around the hostel was interesting... in a creepy way. In the daylight it was much nicer but the beach was still pretty dirty with driftwood and some trash.

Flashback to the night we got there. I had an ecology paper to finish and send to my partner but I couldn't connect to wifi. Now if you know me, you know how frantic I can get. I was freaking out a little, only a little... but then I finally got the correct password and got to work through the night to finish my paper. It took a little of the next day too.

Since the beach wasn't what we thought it would be, we drove about 1 hour down the road to another beach called Canoa. This beach was AMAZING! Our hostel was only $8 per person and was actually pretty nice. The beach had beautiful scenery, don't worry I have pictures. The water was perfect temperature and the weather was great. I even got to ride a horse. How much did a horse ride on the beach cost? $1, that's how much! Only in Ecuador :)

The drive back was in the daylight so I got to see the pretty sights. There were tons of waterfalls as we drove and there was even a carved face in the side of a mountain (no picture of that one, sorry). It was a fun time at the beach but I was definitely worn out afterward. This is the last school week before spring break which means Machu Picchu is days away!

Random- I ate guatitia. Guatita is cow stomach. It was prepared with potatoes in a peanut sauce and was very chewy. There wasn't much flavor to it and the texture reminded me of calamari. I'm getting used to trying weird things now.