I've decided to completely change my plans and go to Peru. Traveling through Ecuador is really difficult right now. All flights are grounded and most roads are blocked. There's no way for me to get north to Colombia and I don't want to get stuck here. I'm taking a bus 8 hours to Máncora tonight (Sunday) and I'll spend a few days there figuring out my next steps.

Past week

Bye Host Family!

Gonna miss her

After many goodbyes in Manta, Alex and I made it to Montañita in a rather expensive 2.5 hour taxi ride because the bus between cities is still not running. We've spent the past 2 days partying it up in Montañita, but the town is a bit disappointing. They haven't had sun for almost 3 weeks and the town is pretty empty. That being said we got two solid days of partying in before we parted ways: him to Guayaquil and eventually the Galapagos, and me to Peru.

Three things I've realized about myself here in Montañita:

I get bored of clubs after about 2 hours
I feel like shit after 2 days of partying. Specifically, it feels like depression.
Partying is not fulfilling to me

Lax safety regulations make partying dangerous and fun

Esperanto Hostel

Kittens!

Kitesurfing

Alex and I finished out our second week of kitesurfing with a bang! I finally figured out how to move smoothly through the water upwind and managed to spend 2 hours straight in the water without having to come back to shore. It took a full 24 hours of practice to get to this point. Way longer than I expected! Davo (the guy on my left) got some great arial drone footage which I’ll upload later.

Goodbye to the Ocean Freaks. It was a great time!

Spanish

Had an interesting conversation about language with a German man that is married to an Ecuadorian and has lived here for 8 years. His perspective is that English is a pretty easy language to learn compared to Spanish or German. Specifically because English utilizes pronouns to denote direction of action rather than conjugations. One thing this sparked in my mind is that you can't mirror people when speaking Spanish.

English:

Q: Can I go?
A: Yes, you can

Spanish

Q: ¿Puedo ir?
A: Sï, puedes

In English, the response is a mirror of the question but swapping in a different pronoun and order. In Spanish, the primary verb in the sentence can't be mirrored because the conjugation changes the direction of action. Disclaimer: this is an overly general statement and does not apply to all situations.

Generally for me in all forms of learning, I mimic other people's actions until I understand enough to do it myself. For instance, in kite surfing, I wasn't able to do a transition from left to right until I watched my teacher do it right in front of me. Then I mimicked his movement and sure enough, I did it fine. One thing that makes Spanish difficult is that I can't mimic the verb conjugations. I have to take the conjugated verb they use, find the root, and conjugate it for myself.

Ecuadorian Politics

Things have gotten steadily worse over the past week. Everyone I spoke to in Manta was convinced the strike was going to end last week or at least get better, but it hasn't happened. The government has moved from Quito to Guayaquil to avoid the worst of the protests. Today, the president and the leaders of the Indigenous Nations sat down to negotiate.

r/mildlyinteresting

I met a baby horse

Stop and Shop and Star Market make me feel at home

Other random things

Easy to read nutrition facts!

The sparrows here are yellow

There's a Chabad!

Thanks for reading!