LA COSTA

Well, I made it to the coast! Another fieldtrip with my Volcanology class, and another weekend of wild things! We left on Friday afternoon, much later than we had first expected but that’s okay. We stopped at KFC for dinner, and I was afraid to eat a lot of it. I always bring peanut butter sandwiches with me and plenty of snacks, but I figured I could rock some chicken-and the cookie it came with! Surprisingly though it had the nicest bathrooms I’ve seen yet!

I fell asleep for a bit, and woke up when we stopped the bus because some boys who had bought alcohol at the last stop really needed to pee, which by the way traveled under the bus and down the other side of the road. I had to go too, but when we asked how much further it was only 20 minutes! We finally turned onto a different road, and all of a sudden the ocean was right next to me! Luckily I was on the side of the water, and literally the water was no more than 30 feet away from me! Even though it was dark and I couldn’t see the horizon, it was so wonderful to hear see and smell the ocean. We haphazardly chose rooms, and went to bed. Since I had mistakenly chosen the bus without Theo on the way there, we realized we had no idea what time we were meeting, so we went back to talk to him. I still couldn’t decide if I wanted to go with the group, or just chill on the beach all day and try paragliding. Or sailing, now I’m confused because they call it something different here. I didn’t have to go with the class because I already did all my reports, but I ended up going with them because we always do cool stuff with Theo and I didn’t want to miss out.

We got up and ate breakfast, and then headed out to do whatever was on Theo’s agenda. First stop: look at oceanic crust that’s on land! I wish I could explain it all, but I’m in the process of figuring it all out. I do know that I now have my very own piece of gypsum that I took right out of the wall. While we were there the wall was constantly crumbling, which was pretty wild. On the way back to the bus, I heard shewolf playing and took a mini video just to make sure I remembered to tell people like Rachael about it.

It was so hot, and the ride to the next stop was long, so a lot of people fell asleep. My professor started to take pictures of all the sleeping people, and luckily I woke up with the sound of his phone taking it as he got the person in front of me. The view was gorgeous, looking at farms, houses, people, and plants. No matter where I go in Ecuador I am happy looking out the window and not saying one word the whole time I’m in the bus.

We stopped at an office, explaining a bunch of stuff that I couldn’t hear. It was so hot but they had trays of delicious sweets and bottled water for all of us. We then headed a bit further into the property in the bus, to see some really cool turquoise rocks. It was also more oceanic crust on the land, and a TV crew was there to film Theo talking about it all. We also saw bright turquoise in the rock as well. I feel really stupid because I can never remember what everything is!

After, we went to see the sites where they blow up rocks to sell for construction. They drill holes in the rocks, then fill it with gunpowder and some sort of dynomite. They did a little example for us with two rocks. I took a video, but we waited so long that I stopped the video to start another one, and of course that’s when the first one went off. I gave up for the second one because it was more like the rock just broke into pieces, nothing flew into the air.

We headed to the next stop, seeing random animals in what could have been a parking lot but was just dirty and flat, and then I saw trees that I think were real but look like the fake trees they have to “disguise” towers somewhere on the East Coast that my dad really likes a lot.

Anyway, our next stop was the beach!!! And it was paradise. We were hungry, but Theo said no we’re going to the beach first. We didn’t realize that there was a guided tour happening, but I walked ahead with Theo and talked to him a lot which was nice. The sand was hot and really hard to walk in-more than normal. We stopped near the rocks, and he pointed to around the bend, and said we were headed to the cave. So-we started a bit of rock climbing along a rounded rock wall, over water. A few of us got over there, and I was so grateful I decided to wear the shoes I did because they’re thin and similar to rock climbing shoes, but also airy so they could go in the water no problem.

Anyway, we started heading towards the cave when a few people had made it over and Theo realized a lot of people wouldn’t be able to climb around the wall. He got to a part where the rock stopped, and to continue you had to get over a crevasse that was kind of big. Not huge, but in those circumstances dangerous. Theo said it was too dangerous to continue, not just because of that but also because of the waves crashing into the rocks below us. To get to the cave we would have to walk through that water, and there’s no way people would make it there and back without getting hurt. Maybe if the tide was lower, and maybe if there wasn’t a tsunami warning that we didn’t even know about! More on that later.

Two guys climbed up way higher, and I was going too but wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get down, so decided to head back. It was a little unnerving, but an Ecuadorian classmate helped me down at times, and I was back near the curved rock wall. It was either climb back to shore, or jump in and swim back. I was really scared that I would fall off the rock into the water unexpectedly, and since theo said we could jump in if we wanted to, I chose that. It took a while, however, because you had to wait for the wave to come in and then make sure no others were close behind otherwise it would be dangerous. While waiting, however, I sat down and held on tight because the waves would come up and crash over us every once in a while, almost taking me back down with them.

I finally jumped in with another Ecuadorian girl, and we swam back. Then I ran on shore, farther from the rock and closer to the rest of the class, and had a blast! I got taken under the tidal waves a few times, complete with a bloody and scratched back, but it was totally worth it. I also somehow got a serious blister on my toe, probably from trekking thru the sand with shoes earlier, but oh well.

We headed to grab lunch, and I traveled into the tiny town with some people to find a restaurant. Luckily the one we chose was also their house, so the bathroom had a shower and I rinsed off the sand from my back and face. I was still covered in sand, and it wasn’t worth it to try to clean off.

We were getting close to the meeting time, and since everyone but me ordered ceviche (a delish dish with seafood, but between allergies and being in a random town I just ate my apple from home) I headed back to the meeting spot to make sure we weren’t left behind. A lot of people still hadn’t eaten, so we weren’t leaving anytime soon. I ended up talking a lot with Theo, learning about his life and how he met his wife and his younger years which was cool. I also got to watch a bunch of college guys play with 2 little girls and their beach ball, which was hilarious.  Although it was an awesome time on the beach and chatting with people, it kind of stunk because Theo had mentioned how much more beautiful the next stop was going to be, and we ended up not going since lunch went so long and he didn’t want to drive at night on the coast. Oh well. We had a gorgeous view, and you could see your legs when you swam it was so clear and blue!

As we left the town, I saw a cemetery, and the cemeteries here are so happy looking. They must use only fake flowers with the heat, because every stone has bright flowers. It kind of creeps me out that a lot of it is those boxes just stacked up on each other, but still it looks like a happy place, and most of the stones are a bright white instead of dark gray. As we drove back to our hostal, lots of people waved hello, which is always fun.

We got back and I watched the sunset, getting some nice thinking time just listening to the water. I wish I could have just sat by myself and napped, but I knew better than that.

I turned on my American phone to take a picture so that I could use it as a background when I’m back in the states, and found out I had pretty good service there-and received a bunch of messages about the earthquake in Chile, the tsunami warning on the pacific coast, and was I ok?!?!?! Well, I clearly had no idea about any of this. If we were in danger our professor definitely would have told us, but there was nothing we needed to do or could do, so he didn’t warn us and since we were at the beach all day it clearly wasn’t a huge issue haha.

That night when we got back I jumped in the pool instead of showering and hung out with some people for a bit, then went to dinner, did some shopping on the street, and got ice cream. Luckily the girls I was with also liked the idea of sitting on the beach, so we did that for a while and chatted. I also sat away from them for a bit to get my alone time on the water, and we headed back. They were tired but I didn’t want to go to sleep with the ocean right there, and we luckily ran into a lot more people from our class doing the same thing we were. We sat down with them, and then our professor called us over because there were even more of us a little bit further down. I keep using further/farther in this blog and I’m honestly not sure if I’m using it correctly or not. Anyway, we all sat together chatting, and I got to hang out with some new people which is always nice. A bunch of people went out to the discotech to drink and dance, but I wasn’t really hyper enough to go dancing. Instead, I went back to swim a bit at the hostal. I ended up staying there for a longgg time.

There was only one other American in the pool, my professor, and then a lot of Ecuadorians. They were drinking “agua loco” aka some sort of straight alcohol that was fire. Allie and I tried to integrate ourselves but it was hard, and most of the Ecuas I know were out dancing, but we still stayed and talked a bit with some people.

After a long while of being in the pool while the Ecuas through their friends in fully clothed or pushed people who had been swimming back in, I got out to dry off, thinking I would go to sleep soon. I ended up chatting with a bunch of people, and then Byron started to teach me salsa because there was music playing. We stayed up for a long time, and even after a lot of people went to sleep we were still talking-for some reason I could understand his Spanish really well. At first we had been speaking in English, but then switched to Spanish when we realized that was a much better idea. At about 5:20 I went to my hostal to go to sleep, and around 5:30 was the earthquake! I had been crouched down looking in my bag for something, and then got up and went to walk around the corner of the bed in the dark, so I thought that I just got really dizzy or something. But when my roommate woke up, and I heard stuff falling down upstairs, I didn’t think it was just me standing up too fast. And alas, it was a 5.3 earthquake! Crazyyy!

Some people thought their friends had been shaking their beds, and some didn’t even wake up.

The next morning we listened to Theo talk about rocks, and I went just to try to listen while others had to take notes in order to hand in a report immediately after. Then we packed up, and the girls I had eaten dinner with the night before went to find out about this parasailing business. We didn’t have much time, and when we got there they told us the wind wasn’t good enough. Oh well. We headed back and found out we had wayyy more time because of course, we’re in Ecuador and people still had to pay the hostal-which took a long time. One kid really wanted to go for one last dip in the ocean, but couldn’t convince others. We talked to our professor, and I thought about how I have no idea when I’ll be back on the coast next, so I did it. And I’m so glad I did. I love the ocean, and it was so nice to get one more good swim in!

The ride back was no where near as long as I thought it would be. We stopped at a funny rest stop, only funny because it’s so different than the US-it was cafeteria style food, and then a candy store that you had to walk across the building to the cafeteria line in order to pay for your candy. For a place that has a lot of robberies, their stores are very odd. But the food was good.

We played more music and I looked out the window much more than the movies from the other trips, and it was nice in general bc this trip felt a lot more mixed between Ecuadorians and Americans. I also hung out with Ecuadorians a lot more which was awesome too.

As we got closer we played some sweet jams, and Theo came into the back of the bus and I got a picture of it. It was also nice to take a taxi home with Heidi, who lives on my street! We only figured that out on the last field trip.