Montañita, I hardly knew ye

As we´re rarely connected to the internet, I find myself needing to recap a lot, and as we´ve moved on from that bastion of loud reggae and dreadlocks, the village of Motañita, I´ll do my best to give the highlights.

Hostel: I´d give it a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. While their cockroaches were huge and fearless, their large lawn area was ideal for hackey sacking. Ben and I have dubbed that space Wimbledon, while the beach is known as Roland Garros. (It´s not clay, but the sand is similar, kind of). Our room itself is not fantastic, our shower is sandy, and the entire space has become a breeding ground for mosquito larvae, who are no doubt living it up in the cosmic soup of the toilet. Our balconey is good. We spend a lot of time there, plotting, scheming writing occasionally. I would give reports of Operation Hula Hoops, but our ideas have changed so much that it wouldn´t make much sense to elaborate. Just know that we spent a full two days trying to come up with rhyming verses for a rapping hippo.

People: The balconey also provided us the occasion to meet our neighbors, Brandice and Alexis. Brandice, a belly-dancing surfer from Santa Cruz, and Alexis, a trek-loving seemstress from Los Angeles. We have befriended them on the strength of Ben´s accent and my awkward charm. When they left for Guayaquil and Mancora respectively, Brandice gave us her business card: A photo of her in a belly dancing costume looking sultry. I use it as a bookmark and can´t help but laugh every time I see it. I would take a picture and post it, but we´ve lost our camera along with my cell phone (see future post on bus rides).