Canoa

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  Canoa, Ecuador
Thursday, October 30, 2008

I just spent a nice, relaxing few days in Canoa. Canoa is a very small fishing town right on the beach. The countryside surrounding the town is jungle. It is beautiful (although would have been more beautiful had there been some sunshine!) There are some caves that are covered when the tide is up and can only be reached when the tide is VERY low. We never made it all the way there but got pretty close. Had to climb up a huge hill, through some brambles to get there because we were too late to make the walk straight there and then still just missed it by a little. But, very beautiful.

The town is pretty quiet with not much going on. It seemed especially quiet after a week in Montaņita. I think I would have liked Canoa a bit more had I gone there before Montaņita but it just seemed a bit like a ghost town in comparison. It probably isn`t a fair comparison since I wasn`t there for a weekend night. It was lacking in some conveniences however...no bakery with fresh baked bread for sandwiches, no juice stands, no fruit stands even. There is a big market in San Vincente a few days a week so we headed over there, riding in the back of a pickup truck to get there (even cheaper that way...$.025) to buy a bunch of fruits and veggies so we would be able to do some cooking. We ended up buying A LOT of food and so ate very well for the few days we were there. The best meal (or most interesting anyway) was the fish night. The fishing boats come in from the ocean at around 3 pm. So, we waited on the beach for a boat to come in. There is a whole procedure for rolling the boat up onto the beach. Charlie helped the fishermen and crew of children who wait around to help the fishermen (I think they get a fish out of the deal) roll the boat up. We then picked out 5 fish, still alive, from the bottom of the boat for $5.00 (the lady at our hostel later told us we were ripped off because we hadn`t picked out good fish!)

Later that day I helped to clean and gut them (gross...but not as gross as I would have thought!) and then we stuffed them with ginger and rosemary and grilled them! They were pretty good! I was very proud of myself for the cleaning and gutting it part however!

Another exciting thing that happened was the adventure I had in mailing my absentee ballot. I had tried to do this in Montaņita but there is no post office there. You have to ride a bus for an hour to get to a town with a mailbox. So, I had waited, hoping the next place I went would have a mailbox. Manta did but I got there late on a Saturday and was there on a Sunday. So, that didn`t work out for me. When I arrived in Canoa I found out that there was one in Bahia. Which meant that to mail the ballot I had to ride in the back of a pickup truck to San Vincente, take a ferry across the bay, and then ask a million people where the post office was (for some reason they kept sending me to the Western Union! Not really sure why!) Eventually made it. Hoping it made it there in time! But, I did my best!!

Also, more excitement...one night while looking for dinner (maybe the night we arrived) we went into a restaurant, Surf Shack or something, and the World Series was on. I hadn`t even realized the World Series was going on and had no idea who was even playing! Another American in there told me it might be the last game, if the Phillies won. So, I was very pleased to have walked in on the final game of the World Series, completely accidentally. I hadn`t seen so many Americans in one place in a while (there were only about 6 of us!) and it was a really random group. I definitely wasn`t the only one who didn`t know which teams were playing but we all stayed and watched...a kind of random American bonding moment over something that many of us aren`t even that interested in back home but I guess when you`ve been traveling a while you miss a bit of true America!

I took a few nice walks on the beach. Well, as nice as you can get when there is garbage strewn all over the place! There are a couple of very nice houses along the shore. And the landscape surrounding it is beautiful. I walked through the town one day and saw the church and the school. The church was up on the top of a hill with a HUGE window overlooking the ocean...I might believe in god if I stared out at that beautiful scenery every Sunday! It still seems crazy to me when you have a town where most of the buildings are made out of bamboo or straw or something and then the church is an enormous, very sturdy structure. It is clearly so important to some people. The school was pretty cute...I was there early in the morning as the kids were arriving. They got to school and had to do a bunch of exercies...sit ups and push ups, while a large teacher in a skirt stood over them counting. Then they had to run around in a circle on their hands and feet...interesting morning exercises!

After a few days there Jess and I decided we had had enough. I was getting a bit nervous about the fact that I hadn`t yet bought my plane ticket and needed to get to South Africa by December 31. So, I needed to get to Quito so I could work on making my big purchase of my Round the World Ticket! Of course we started out a bit late again for a big travel day that would again turn into a LOT longer then expected!

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