The first thing I noticed was a lot of people already drinking (it was about 8:00am). There were a surprising number of people awake already and out and about. I was planning on doing some time trials, so I found a good map with an accurate scale. I walked back on the beach and even hopped in the ocean! The pacific is a lot warmer than the atlantic.
I returned to the room and told Benedicte that everything was open and we should get breakfast. In just about every restaurant, you can get standard breakfast (coffee, eggs, toast, jam and fruit) for a dollar or two. We ate at a place that seemed popular and was fine. Though we did see the owner hitting her 5 or 6 year old daughter with a shoe...
Benedicte wanted to tan, so we went to the pool. By 10:00 it was well over 90 degrees with the sun out. I got bored pretty quickly with tanning and went to run my time trial.
The streets looked pretty crowded, so I decided to run on the beach. I jogged the one mile I was going to run to make sure the course was clear and about two more after that. I switched into my racing shoes, stretched and headed out. By this time, it was nearing noon and close to 100 degrees. There was a nice wind on the beach, though, which helped a little. But it was still HOT.
I ran the first 800 meters in 2:24, which was a lot slower than I wanted. I felt like I was barely moving because I was running into the wind. I looped around and headed back and immediately felt better. I kicked hard at the end and had plenty left to come in at 4:40.
I wasn´t thrilled with the time, but given the heat, the win, and the sand (which is not ideal running terrain), I was satisfied. I jogged back to the pool and cooled off and stetched. I was finally able to convince her to get lunchand so we hit up the same pizzeria from dinner. Since our room has a fridge, we were able to save our leftovers for afternoon snack! Hooray!
The rest of the afternoon was spent on the beach and walking around town. They have a market type area with lots of cool stuff, so I was able to buy some presents for my parents and friends.
Before heading to dinner, we hit up an internet cafe to check our email. About a week ago I had gotten a note on facebook from a girl I hadn´t talked to in a year or so saying something about Phish getting back together. I hear a lot of rumours about this, and did a quick search and didn´t find anything about it and forgot about it. Well, much to my surprise, I had another note from the same girl, in all caps this time, telling me that it was true, Phish had officially announced tour dates. I was still skeptical but I follwed a link she had sent me and sure enough, the boys were back. A three night stand at the Hampton Coliseum in March, 2009.
I immediately sent a message to my dad telling him that it was an emergency and he had to call me right away. We were both pretty psyched and put our names in for the lottery for presale tickets for all three nights. I was in a good mood.
After this, I started to really feel the lack of sleep. We decided to try a different restaurant (which turned out to be basically the same) and went back to the room and crashed. We decided that this would be our rest night and we could go out tomorrow.
I woke up around 9:00, late for me, and we got breakfast. Different restaurant, same deal. But no child abuse here. Mondays are my day off from running, but I still wanted to get some exercise. I went for a nice long pool run in the morning. The weather was nice and hot, again, so it was reminiscent of pool running in Tucson in March. The big difference was that this time it was by choice.
In the afternoon, it was pretty cloudly, so we decided to get a few drinks. The bars are even nicer during the day, when youcan look out at the ocean and the big cliffs down the beach. A nice (virgin) fruity coctail is a great touch on a hot afternoon on the beach.
We spent some time at the internet, where I tried to get skype working but failed. It was then time for dinner. We ate at our usual restaurant. I think I had pizza almost every meal. It was astounding. But it was tasty. It was surprising how few international tourists there were. I would say over 90% of the tourists were from Ecuador.
After dinner, we were walking back to the hotel and ran into a guy who Benedicte had met in Coca (the jungle.) This is really random if you think about it, because Coca is literally on the other side of the country and the fact that he was here at the same time as us was really crazy. He said he would try to catch up with us later so we went and found a nice bar. The difference between Sunday and Monday is amazing. A lot of bars didn´t even bother opening and the few that were were sparsely populated at best.
Her friend and his buddies turned up after a few (still virgin) drinks. They were very friendly and invited us to go back to their hotel which had a private beach where they were going to make a bonfire. We decided against it, though. Their place was pretty far away, and it was dangerous late at night, even in cabs, so we stayed.
The one downside of these open air bars is that there are no barthrooms. So, around 11:00, we decided to to head back to the room for a bio-break. We sat around for a while, debating our plans for the rest of the night, and headed out a bit before 12:00. Much to our dismay, things looked pretty dead. We walked a bit further, though, because we could still hear music and see some lights further down.
Being stupid tourists, we were thankful that a local man told us to stop as we were about to walk into the middle of a pretty serious looking fight. One guy broke a bottle on the curb and that was when we turned around. The lights and music turned out to be just a few sketchy looking people milling around. We talked for a few minutes with a very nice local man, named Luis, who told us that it was very dangerous at night when there were no people around. He also had a herd of stray dogs following him, which he assured us had their rabies shots. Luis was a large, black man with a big scar on his forehead. Between him and his dogs, we felt pretty safe. He was even nice enough to walk us back to our hotel. People from the coast are nice.
I just want to take a second to elaborate on that. Both Benedicte and I were really happy we took this trip because we were both starting to think negatively of the people here. The few people who were nice, it turns out, are from other parts of the country than Quito. Basically, it seems that only people from Quito are really unfriendly. Everyone we came in contact with in the coast was incredibly nice. I think this trip has really changed my opinion about Ecuadorian people.
Anyways, we got back to our hotel safe and sound. We were a little bummed that our night to party had gotten cut short, but oh well. I crawled into bed still a bit shaken upand did not sleep very well.
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