The surf is rolling in and we are rolling out

We had a frustrating few days since Cuenca. As with any time you come to the coast of Ecuador, conditions rapidly deteriorated. We headed down from high altitudes, and stayed a night in Giron, in an interestingly isolated and deserted hacienda. It was cold and windy and would have been a great set for a horror movie.

From there we headed down to the southern coast and stayed in Manabi. Our hotel was stinky and moldy but the rooms were at least cleanish. Manabi itself seemed like a relatively nice town and had a new mall too, which we visited more than once. I realize that it seems silly to go to the mall, but believe me, when you are travelling this much, a clean public washroom, food court, and stores can bring you back some sense of western civilization, at least for a bit.

We picked up some interesting Anopheles in the area, but not many as elsewhere, as the coast is COVERED with banana fields, as far as the eye can see, and continual spray planes fly by, spraying the coast with pesticides banned in other countries. Julio told me that he saw some program about the disturbingly mutagenic effects that those banana pesticides have on the local children. It´s just awful. Banana Republic comes to mind.

We had planned to drive slightly north and stay two nights in Naranjal, but when we arrived, the highest rated hotel in town was literally a mattress on a dirty floor and they were hesitant to rent it to us for the entire night... they rent by the hour. Disgusted, we decided to forego collecting in the area, and we drove north toward Guayaquil. This, for the record, is why it´s impossible to make hotel reservations in advance. Better to go and see them first!

Approaching the town, you see brown fields of bamboo houses on stilts and shacks made of cardboard. Then you go over this bridge across the river, and suddenly you are in upscale Beverly Hills-type place. The people in the giant mansions can look across the muddy Daube river to the shantytown on the other side. It is just so bizarre.

Well I hate to be elitist but we found a lovely looking sushi restaurant in the fancy area of town, so we stopped there for an awesome lunch. I didn´t care at this point that it was expensive, as we had been driving for hours, with no place to stay, and it was just so hot. And the sushi was just so good.

After lunch, we kept going north toward our next town, Daube. Daube was basically worse than Naranjal, another shantytown. By this point it was 4pm and we had no place to stay. The roads of Guayaquil were too intimidating, so we decided to drive 2 more hours north to the NEXT town on the list. It was a bigger town so we were hopeful.

Anyway we arrived in Jipijapa around sunset and with a list of hotels in town. Turns out there was a big festival in the area and there were NO ROOMS. Santy at this point worked miracles and found us a moldy, yet not too bad hotel on the coast. We kept going until we reached the beach, and collapsed, exhausted.

Today we are taking the day to rethink our plans. The lack of places to stay is overwhelming on the coast and we can not do the route we had originally planned. Today, we came down the coast to a cute hippy town and I´m going to enjoy a nice lunch and buy some shell jewlery. Tomorrow we are going to head north to Portoviejo, near Montecristi - a big town with a nice hotel that actually had a website with photos, so we have a reservation. There are many roads branching out from there where we can collect. In a few days we are going to head back to Guayaquil and look for a place there that accesses the bridges in and out of town easily, and collect in the marshlands north and south of Guayaquil.

Finally, on the 21, Santy is coming to Guayaquil with a group. That means we are DONE the fieldwork and I am going back to Quito. I´m so keen to be done. Fieldwork is one thing, but being on the road constantly is another, and I´m really tired of it.

Please keep me up to date with what is new with you!