Chillin on la playa

After hiking around Quilotoa to remote Quichua village towns with amazing people and scenery, we schlepped 16 hours of bus rides to the coast of Ecuador. To us, it was an entirely different country than the mountain towns we had become accustomed to. People actually wear flip flops and tank tops!

The first beach town we spent a few days at was Puerto Lopez. The touristy activities were too expensive, so we ended up chillin in hammocks and walking the beach quite a bit. The first night we met a couple hippy kids, one girl from Austria - Melony, and a guy named Jemi who said he is from The Light when you ask him where he is from. We cooked for them a couple nights, hung out with them on the curb selling their handmade crafts, and ended up staying at Jemi's property he had been gifted by a friend. It was interesting to say the least to get the perspective of a native to South America (we think he was from Brazil) about global politics.

The beach of Puerto Lopez was nice, but very littered with garbage and washed up fish from the commercial boats, not to mention the over abumdance of motorcycle taxis holloring us down for rides when everything was a 10 minute walk (the industry was reliant on tourists mostly, and it's the off season right now). So... we went to a town 17 km south and the beach was immaculate, and all to ourselves. We befriended the woman who managed our hostel - Sandra - and it turned out to be more of a bed and breakfast than a hostel. We were stoked to buy produce to cook for ourselves, which seems to be a good solution for our digestion.

Another 8 hours of buses yesterday, and we are now in the beutiful city of Cuenca, probably Ecuador's most charming... as they say in the Lonely Planet. We are getting all the emails and updates off now before heading down to Loja later today where we will start working on our first farm for a month or so. It is called Never Never Land, after Peter Pan, and there we learn more about farming and forever be kids, as one must be at such a place as Neverland. We are looking forward to having a bit more purpose than just being tourists.

So for now, check out the link www.neverlandfarm.org, and we will try uploading some pictures soon. We may not have much internet accessability, but we hope to still check once a week. From the ABOUT page on the weblink, there are instructions to leave us messages if you would like to call.

Much love,
Andy and Lauren