Oh Hey, From Mompiche!

Oh Hey, from Mompiche!

We finally made it to our first Ecuadorian destination – a remote little beach town that can be accessed via a 40-minute plane ride from Quito to Esmeraldas, and a 2-hour taxi ride from Esmeraldas. Said cab (or at least our cab, whose owner we’ve also asked to come pick us up on Wednesday) smells of gasoline and stings your eyes with more dust than I believe we would have experienced had we walked here, but such is life.

Mompiche hasn’t been taken over by tourists yet, just surfers who come for the big swells in January-March, and as such we’re in the off season. It’s misty, more laid-back then a fully reclined deck chair, and about three times louder than you’d expect. Impromptu movie nights happen in most of the tiendas, when we went to bed last night in the loft of our cool little open-air bungalow we got to fall asleep to the full-blast audio accompaniment of a screening of The Justice League in a makeshift outdoor theater less than a block away and attended by about a dozen people, and no matter how far you wander there’s an island-remix of some classic 80s or 90s tune wafting your way from one establishment another.

We’ve swiftly identified Ecuador’s two rivaling national beers: Club and and Pilsener, the former of which we both squarely prefer. I’m going to have to say that Beliken (Belize), Karlovacko (Croatia), Medalla (Puerto Rico) and of course the Galactic King of all domestic beers across the world, Bintang (Indo) all beat both of these, but that by no means indicates that we will drink less than 500.

I’m brushing up on my Spanish and I’m actually wildly proud of my proficiency (thanks DuoLingo!) – I can say things like “how much is this bottle of rum,” “I want to pet your dog please,” and “can I have a paddle board tomorrow to get lost at sea?”

I understand about 80% of what everyone says to us, and an interesting part of being in such a remote location is that most people have no interest in attempting English with us which has given me a good opportunity – as well as higher stakes if we plan to eat dinner anywhere and not order The Brains by accident – to diligently listen. I also told a dog to “siente te” yesterday and he legit sat immediately. It was great.

It’s been perpetually cloudy since yesterday so to-date we’ve slightly modified our dreams of snorkeling and spear fishing (the heavens seem to diametrically opposed to letting us go spear fishing, ever) and we spent a good chuck of the first full day walking the entries expanse across the impressively pristine beach that spans this little town – to the South you can walk till you run into impenetrable mangrove and jungle cliffs that we’ll try to motorbike through tomorrow; to the North you can walk past increasingly decrepit old hostels and surf shanties until the water starts to overtake what’s left of the sand. It looks like the North end of this town used to be much more bustling until the ocean quite literally started to eat the beach it fell on.

The best part of the town so far is… wait for it… THERE ARE FRIENDLY DOGS EVERYWHERE!!! We’ve made three dog friends so far, including Snapper (name given by us), a teeny black lab who lives next door, tirelessly follows us down the beach even into all the craggy rocks, and likes to teethe on my leg when I’m not looking. No rabies, chill out.

We’re shacking up in a storybook beach shack that only has about 75% if it’s walls and butts up right to the beach waves in the front; the only two drawbacks are that the shower is cold and makes me not want to shower again until we leave (relax, relax, I will) and that the mosquito nets straight up failed last night and I got bit so many times I couldn’t sleep whereas nothing bit Kevin and he rested peacefully throughout the night. A bug (or realistically probably 17 bugs) bit me under my effing eye and when I woke up I had the great pleasure of wandering around all morning looking like Bob Costas at the Sochi Winter Games.

Perhaps the best thing about Mompiche so far is that there is a grocery truck that drives around the beaches and the Main Street on a loop for an hour every morning and every evening, except instead of playing the Good Humor ice cream jingle the trucks’s P.A. System goes on Machine Man-speed and yells out through the loudspeaker everything it’s selling which, because I’m awesome at Spanish, includes “LETTUCE!EGGS!APPLES!PLANTAINS!BANANAS!RICE!SUGAR!WATER!” I love it and it’s my favorite part of being here. Kevin enjoys making up accompanying raps and I’ve told him we could probably just retire early and hang out here forever if he licensed them to the grocery men.

Tomorrow if it stops raining out, we explore paddle boards, motorbike taxis, hidden beaches, and some horse riding if I can drug Kevin and get him onto the back of one before he knows what’s going on. Until then, hasta luego!