School's been going fairly well lately; after I got everything fixed with classes, the rest went smoothly. My Alfred Hitchcock class it really interesting, as are the rest of my classes. My professors are all really good, so I'm having a ball so far!
I'm considering switching families. My host mother's been pestering me so much lately about different things that it hardly seems worth staying. I'm not having the best time, and I think it's largely because I avoid coming "home" after school. She's even gone so far as to ask my why I walk the way I do; I've become so fed up with trying to explain that it's just how I walk that I lied and said it was a spinal disorder so she'd finally leave me alone.
The other week we went to Atacames, a beach-town on the coast in a province known as the Esmereldas. The bus trip was amazing as far as sight-seeing is concerned, minus the hour-long trek through the Andean mountains. The two-lane wide road often was missing part of the road, which had caved in and fallen to the foot of the mountain. The only thing protecting us was a two inch wide yellow caution tape that bore the words PELIGRO in thick black letters. It was a little nerve-wrecking, especially when all of my friends thought the view was so "SUPER AWESOME" that they all bustled to one side of the bus to look out the window. I later learned that stupid tourists flocking to one side of a bus is a frequent reason that the buses actually fall off the cliff, sending the passengers on a Fugitive-esque adventure, only in this case down a mountain and not just off-road.
When we arrived in Atacames, we stayed in a hotel called Hotel Marcos, which was beautifully adorned with stained turquoise bed sheets and little sand bugs everywhere. It was here that I was introduced to my first live cockroach, smushed on the floor with it legs helplessly flailing above its body, seemingly crying "please don't step on me!" to passersby. Our hotel was across the street from the beachfront; the other side of the street was adorned with a million little tiki-hut type bars that played nothing but reggae and reggaeton. The first night we arrived around midnight and we all helped ourselves to some jarras of a drink called Caipiriña, which includes the country's aguardiente, a sugar-cane derived alcoholic beverage that tastes a lot like black licorice. I can't stand black licorice. So I gulped it down the best I could and hobbled back to the hotel to fall asleep amidst a strobing light fixture and a family of sand bugs.
I don't think I've really captured the essence of our hotel. The lady who initially greeted us was overweight and had a large boil under her left eye, and was excited when we notified her that we needed a room. She showed us the rooms and asked for $7 per night (which is pretty standard for an off-season hostel) which we agreed to, happy that we at least had a place to stay. Upon further inspection, we quickly noticed the lack of toilet seats, the boasted "air conditioning" (which consisted of a table fan screwed into the ceiling) and the maid service, which I'm sure was just a nickname for the bugs scuttling across the floor. That first night we were drunk, so we really didn't care.
We woke up early the next morning and found a place to eat breakfast, and were hassled right away by a man who wanted to take us on a tour of the humpback whales for $15 a person. We bartered him down to 2 people for $15, and we soon found ourselves out on the Pacific whale-watching. The $7.50 was well spent-- every few minutes a whale would show its dorsal somewhere in front of us, and our boat would zoom closer to get a better look. At one point we were about 15 feet away from a whale, which oddly coincides with the times my intestines started to twist and turn inside my abdomen. Turns out the egg that I ordered for breakfast was probably not the best idea. The ensuing two hours were most definitely the most uncomfortable I'd ever been in my life, and I wasn't really sure of the Spanish word for diarrhea, so I just sat still hoping the tour would be over soon. On return to land, I bolted for the toilet-seatless toilet while my friend paid for me.
The beach was a neat place, but incredibly touristy. Every 10 feet there was someone selling shaved ice, ceviche (which probably shouldn't be served from beachside carts), ice cream, and fresh fruit. I swam the first day I was there, but salt walt is super dehydrating, so that was about it for me. At one point I went back to the pool at our hostel because it just felt a lot more clean.
The pool was actually at our second hostel, called "El Tiburón" (the shark), which was pure luxury compared to the first. We tried to sneak out of our first hostel, as we discovered Tiburón an hour after check-out time, but the lady stopped us and told us we were breaking contract. The fact that we hadn't signed a contract played a big role in our decision, and we were convinced of leaving when she tried to make us pay for two of our other friends who arrived the very next day and needed a place to put their backpacks. She claimed that a backpack in a room is like a person staying over night. We rolled our eyes and shoved past her.
Tiburón had hammocks, a waterslide, a pool, new sheets in every room, and no cockroaches (they fumigate, we were told).
(MORE ON THIS TO COME, I HAVE TO GO SALSA DANCING RIGHT NOW)
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