Somewhere over the rainbow

Well we´re well into our tour now and it´s been a lot of fun since we left Quito. I didn´t elaborate very much about Ecuador once we´ve left the capital. I have definitely gotten an appreciation for the fact that Ecuador is a third world country. In Mindo, we probably stayed in the nicest place in town and it still didn´t have electricity in the rooms except for a bulb hanging from the ceilings. Hot showers and water pressure is something for dreamers.
I´d have to say that Mindo has been my favourite town so far though. It´s very tranquile....except for the roosters! They start crowing at 3am and don´t stop til about 8am. On our first night in Mindo, the hotel manager locked the front door, which locked my roomate out of the hotel. I woke up at 4 am, only to find one of the guys on our tour, who was also looking for his roomate. They were fine, but what another fine example of a fire hazard.

After Mindo, we travelled the long commute , 340 km, to St Vincente. It was only supposed to take us 4 hours, but instead took us 9. We arrive just in time to have a super late dinner.
The next we spent the day at the beach in Canoa, a neighbouring town. We tried boogie boarding and surfing, as well as rides in a ¨plane¨. ´
I´ll take a moment to pause on a story about one of the people on my group. For many of the people in the group, english is a second language. One of the girls´ english is sort of poor, and we recenly taught her the word ¨sketchy¨, which I have to say, we use a lot. This is how i would describe our ¨plane¨ ride. It was more like a motorcycle with a large sail on it. It was a lot of fun and I´ll post pictures once I get back.
We left St Vincente really late and drove to Puerto Lopez. We arrive at 3 in the morning, and I was not at all comforted by the fact that the beds at the hotel required mosquito nets. I´ve got to say that I think it´s a bit ridiculous that I have yet to see a mosquito, but I´m covered in Mosquito bites.
In Puerto Lopez we went for a boat ride which took up most of the day. We went snorkeling and saw natural rock formations that looked like gorillas and a turtle. Also, my highlight of the trip, I saw some blue footed boobies! For those of you that don´t know, they´re native to the Galapagos and Ecuador, and they´re pretty normal looking birds, with bright blue feet.

The next day our group went for a hike into the jungle. It was 30 km each way and very intense. Although wildlife like monkeys could be heard, they were not seen.

Yesterday we arrived in Salinas, and we´re staying at a five star hotel. It´s really nice and everyone was welcome for somewhere with hot water, and a place to dry off.
Today we mostly hung out by the pool and walked on the beach.

My goal was originally to return home as pale as I came down. Well. that is not goign to happen. I got horribly sunburnt in Canoa, even though I was wearing excessive amounts of suncreen and it was raining out! I couldn´t believe it.

So tomorrow we´re heading into Banos, where we´re staying for two nights, and then heading back into Quito. In 11 days we´ll have a made a pretty good tour around the country.

There´s a lot of detail that I´m not adding about my trip, mostly because I don´t have a lot of time. My wrist is all better and i´m enjoying not having to have someone help me all the time, like a gimp!

My computer is counting down like a bad action movie, I´ll post before I leave Quito.