Life´s a beach in Equador

24 Feb Went for a surf lesson this morning. I had tried surfing before but this want the first proper attempt with instruction. E11 for 90 mins was expensive on Peruvian standards but was worthwhile nonetheless. Carlos was eventually my instructor after a short disagreement with the other instructor about who was going to get Caroline as their pupil. Instructors, the same horndogs all over the world. Anyway with my ego still intact we started the lesson on the beach with Carlos demonstrating how to get up to stand up on the board from the lying down position once a wave was caught. We repeated the drill a few times until he was happy with my technique, and off we went paddling the board out to the waves. I was lying on the board paddling with my arms and he was in the water, holding the back and paddling with his legs. Armed with plenty of horsepower, we caught the next available wave. I stood up, but not correctly in the middle of the board, and off I fell. After a gallon of saltwater up my nose and my eyes burning we regrouped and he said `Why you not stand on the board like I f**king tell you!´ I turned around (this was the first caught wave of my life) to him and said `Here you, Im paying you to teach me how to surf, not to give me shit. So, f**king teach!´ He was all apologies and doing high fives after that and telling me I was a great student (Of course, I agreed with that bit :-) )
That night we went out to a local steakhouse to celebrate Carolines 29th birthday, kindly paid for by a nice donation from her mother.

25 Feb Booked our bus tickets over the border to Equador and had a few cocktails that night to celebrate our departure from Peru, leaving Ben and Lizzie after 2 months travelling and Carolines birthday again and all paid for by us.

26 Feb Said our final farewells to Ben and Lizzie and our 9am bus arrived at 10.30am. Bound for Montanita in Equador via Guayaquil, the countrys largest city, the journey took 12 hours and 4 bus changes. Apart from the first one being late, all the others were waiting for us as soon as we arrived. Blessed. We weren´t feeling all that well due to the late night the previous night and hadnt eaten anything since breakfast due to the immediate departure of all our buses. By the time we reached Montanita I was famished and mad for grub and a cold beer.
Everything in Equador is in US dollars as they did away with their own currency a few years ago due to rampant inflation and counterfeit problems. This makes things easy to calculate and budget but its about 50% dearer than Peru.

27 Feb Montanita is a surf orientated beachside resort and today I walked all around the town and up and down the 5km beach. Got sunburnt too. Had nice food and a few beers and did nowt else.

28 Feb Kept low today protecting the bit of sunburn. We tried to watch the Ireland - England rugby game but nobody in town had the subscription for the ESPN channel we needed. Being Saturday night we went down the town sampling the cocktails from the stands lined up all along the roads. The Mojitos and strawberry Daquiris were great as locals and visiting hippies played guitars, drums and trumpets on every corner. Dang good 2am street burgers too.

01 Mar Decided to go and rent a Boogie board ( small surfboard for shallow water surfing) but they were half the price for an 4hour rental than to buy one so I bought it and the 3 of us shared it all day. Great craic.

02 Mar Left Montanita today on a minibus, chartered by 13 stranded backpackers (didnt pre book our away tickets) for $8 each back to Guayaquil, the main transport hub in southern Equador. After a rare lunch at McDonalds we headed to the Andean mountain town of Riobamba. It was an uneventful journey and we arrived at about 10pm that night. We went to an outdoor stall type restaurant and had steak, chips, salad, rice and veg for $2.75. It was really good too, except for an annoying street kid selling sweets. He insisted on putting them on our table and demanding payment. 3 times we told him no, but he kept saying `yes´ and putting his hand out. Eventually standing up and eyeballing him I explained, as I pointed at an adjacent bin, where his sweets were going if he didnt `Vamos!´. He got the message and a few local lads sharing our table had a good laugh over it.

03 Mar Had a look around Riobamba today and although its a pleasant enough town it wasnt up to much really. We booked our train tickets to the Nariz Del Diablo (The Devils nose) an apparrent marvel of mountain railway engineering. It is reccommended by the guide book as an incredible train journey down through part of the Andean mountains whilst sitting on the roof if one wished. We wished.

04 Mar Up and out at 5.45am to get the bus to the train station in Analusi, 2 hours away. We que-ed up for 30 mins for the tickets only to discover that sitting on the roof was no longer permitted due to a backpacker falling off the roof to his death a few months ago. What a con, we only went for the roof ride opportunity and that was the first we heard of it despite our previous communication with the company. They know only too well that they would lose loads of business if it was common knowledge that the roof ride no longer existed. The journey in the train was shite. The train pictured in all their gloss was an old steam train and what we got was a `Trainbus´an old American school bus fixed on top of a railway carraige chassis. What a bone shakin´ shit heap with filthy fogged up windows allowing passengers see feck all. Anyway, back to Riobamba without delay and on the next bus to a town called Banos. Arrived there 90 mins later and it seems like a good place.