Manta, Ecuador to Puerto Lopez, Ecuador

We stayed at an expensive hotel (relatively anyway –  it was $73 a night) and decided we should sleep in and work on a place to stay for a couple nights. We finally dragged our butts out of bed about 10 – searched out some breakfast and some internet.

By 12 we had eaten and found a place to head to – Puerto Lopez and a little hostel that promised “guaranteed hot water” and “wifi service” – only about 120 kilometers away. Excellent!

So we suited up, packed all the stuff and got on the road about 1pm. We rode on a brand new road with no lane markings and spanking smooth asphalt surface for about the first 30 miles and then the road sort of dropped off to a nice road but with rough patches. And of course it wouldn’t be Latin America if there wasn’t some construction underway.

The scenery along the “Ruta del Sol” was nice – we saw beaches that stretched on for miles and not too much for towns along the way. As we pulled into Puerto Lopez we went from the nice asphalt road to the dirt streets of town –

We rode around the dirt streets looking for the hostel and after a couple loops around town we found the place. The lady who ran it – Gladis was super nice – not a word of Enlgish but she worked the 3^rd grade Spanish for us.

Dan pulled out the silver Sharpie pen so that Gladis could sign the bike – and it didn’t work too well so he began shaking it to get the ink down to the tip – well, this turned out to be a bad idea and the ink was flying out all over the bike, the seat, Dan’s helmet and riding jacket. Of course, John found this to be funny but Dan just looked at the ink sprayed all over and was thinking about how much work it was going to be to clean it off …

We got checked in and quickly found out the internet didn’t work because the computers, telephone, stereo etc… had been blasted in a power surge… great.

It was a humid evening and we searched out some food and a little booze. When we got back to the room we setup the mosquito netting and got into bed – well, we quickly diiscovered the fan didn’t have an “oscilating” mode – so it only pointed in one direction. That setup a little negotiation about who was going to get up and point the fan in what direction… we did a “virtual” rock/paper/sissors and Dan won – he elected to have the fan pointed at him this evening and let John have it the next night – but that meant he had to get up and move the fan.

Tomorrow, we have some bike maintenance to do, laundry, and catching up on the blogs, and other computer stuffs…

Cheers!