Beach time!

Mike and I headed for the coast of Ecuador on Friday night to stay in Puerto López. We left at 7 pm on a bus and arrived just before 5 am the next day! We were planning on staying through this coming Monday, but I ended up getting a fever (bummer!), so we skipped our Isla de la Plata tour and headed back to Quito last night. We will probably go back for a weekend in December when there are turtles on the beach and lots of sun we've heard! After one and a half nights in the most sketchy hostel we've stayed in, we moved in to this cute little cabin, where they had hammocks all around, great breakfast, beautiful flowers, lots of kitties to pet, and a great view of the beach. They made their own chocolate at the cabin hostel, which we bought and asked how to make as sort of a Nutella spread. Delicious!

Los Frailes beach was beautiful as usual, and the water was very warm, despite the breeziness in the air! The beach is situated in a national park reserve, so it's very clean and peaceful. You can't stay in Los Frailes past 4 pm, so we would just take a short 10 minute bus ride back to the bus station in Puerto López. From the bus station we would take a mototaxi back to our hostel. We swam for hours at Los Frailes, and went there everyday! Every night we went out to dinner at this awesome restaurant called Carmitas in Puerto López; they had some amazing shrimp ceviche with patacones, and grilled wahoo fish. Ceviche is amazing! Mike and I have also developed a slight addiction to Pinguino ice-cream sandwiches, so our diet for the week pretty much consisted of ice-cream, fish, and patacones. 

Towards the end of our trip, we met some girls from Germany and played Uno with them at this Spanish restaurant. They ordered seafood paella, which we tried, and it tasted just like we were in Spain again. The owner was actually from Spain and his girlfriend was from Italy; they set up the restaurant just over a year ago. Mike and I had some yummy Tinto de Verano and Crema Catalana, which is like crème brûlée. It's very much a different culture on the coast. Lots of relaxing, which was a great escape from the city!