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Last time I left off having just returned from my trip to Riobamba with Anna. As I expected the first half of my week back involved alot of chilling in the house and watching films etc. On Thursday Tony and I went to a community called Pikiur which involved alot fo walking through some hefty mud. Eventually we made it and our day panned out to be one of physical activity, I was nackered by the end of the day! Not only did we play football for an hour in the midday sun, but we also played javelin with spears fashioned from branches (they guys there are so skilled with the machete). The machete turned out to become a najor part of the day as we were employed as deforesters. We must have spent 2 hours hacking away at the rainforest to clear space for cultivation. It was really tiring but good fun, I am getting quite good at machete handling. There were a couple of times where I thought that I was going to meet my end to the end of one, as three went flying past my body, but I narrowly escaped. The only other danger of the day was the snake that I disturbed...it wasn´t too impressed.
After a thoroughly exhausting day in the rainforest, having got a good sunburn, I headed off to Quito to meet Robbo and Felix. I arrived in Quito at 5pm and wandered into a hostal dorm to see Robbo´s big grin-possibly one of the happiest days of my whole trip. Not long after Felix came in, it was so good to see the guys since they are the first familiar faces I have seen in over 2 months. That night we played pool, had a curry and went out clubbing in Quito (it felt like being back at home). Quito was packed with foreigners whic felt odd for me as I am so used to the isolated Macas. On Saturday morning we got the bus down to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador and the most dangerous, which took 10 hours. We got stopped by the police once and to my horror I relaised that I had lost the copy of my passport so I had no documentation. Luckily all they did was open my bad to check the contents. If they had asked for papers, it would have been to jail with me! Eventually we got to Guayaquil, probably the largest and nicest bus stop I have ever been to. It has 4 floors and the buses left from the 1st and 2nd floor which was odd. We were told that the bus to Montañita (a coastal surfing town and our final destination) wasn´t until 3:30 am so we decided to stay the night in the bus stop. It was surprisingly fun and I got to know it pretty well. Unfortunately our night did not end at 3:30 as the bus wasn´t actually until 5:45....it was a long night.
On Sunday morning we finally reached Montañita. a dusty small surfing town full of bamboo bars and hostals. It was almost completey pedestrianised and so relaxed. Our hostal was a bamboo shack and was right on the sea front. The next few days were some of the most relaxed days of trip so far, I had a really good time. All we did was swim, swim, play volleyball, go out at night and eat...oh and swim again. However one night Felix and I got dragged out by a rip tide, I thought I wasn´t going to make it. I swam on the spot for 10 minutes against the tide but just couldn´t move. Thankfully I managed to body surf a massive wave qute far in before getting pushed down into the sea bed- the waves were really strong. After that incident I was a bit warier of th sea. On Tuesday night, having met a large group of Swedish girls and an English guy, we were invited to some ´´secret´´ party down the beach. Needless to say we ended up going. It was a little way off the beach and all I could hear was electro house music being pumped out with green strobe lights everywhere. To get in you had to walk between bed sheets hanging from a washing line. It turned out to be a good laugh and we met loads of people. On Wednesday, much to my dismay, I had to leave the lads and head back to Macas. This turned into a hellish 18 hours bus journey involving staying in some dodgy hostal in Riobamba for 3 hours during the night.
Since then I have just been relaxing more, going swimming in the river and going out. I seem to have entered a very relaxed phase, not that I am comlpaining, it is really nice!
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