A Manta summary

Ok, so we're leaving Manta tomorrow morning for a stop over in Guayaquil before flying to Galapogas for a week long boat tour around the islands.

I thought i'd write a list of things we'll miss and some things we won't as we move on ( in no particular order) :

What we'll miss:

- Living in a coastal town where you can surf every day
- going surfing every day!!..
-.....in warm water
- Nelly's awesome cooking - the food where we've stayed has been amazing
- Learning to converse in another language - I've really enjoyed our nightly chats with Camila - our host.
Also, it's been nice to get over the simple and lightweight pointing / sign language conversations you tend to have on holiday and really understand a little more about what locals think of their town / country / government etc and also what the culture is like
- our room where we're staying and having a swimming pool in the garden - we've been so fortunate
- saying hola / buenos dias to the usual suspects going about their daily routine as we walk to school
- the mangy dog outside our house that I thought was dead for the first week until it started walking round a bit this week
- Mocca - the coffee shop we go and do our homework in every night after school
- Eating fresh fish most days - muy rico!!!
- watching the ecuadorian approach to safety on the road:
- seeing 12 people get out a 4 door saloon - 3 in the front, 5 in the back and another 4 in the boot!! + babies!
- seeing a married couple on a motorbike - no helmets on and the mum breast feeding their baby as they rode round the streets
- the variety of completely bodged together cars all in wild and wonderful shapes dues to necessary customisation to keep them going - I saw a taxi with no doors the other day but a lowered suspension and fat tyres! - bad ass!



What we won't miss

- the pollution - oh my goodness! - you never feel clean and your lungs don't feel right + there's this ever changing festival of smells everywhere you go
- getting up at 5am in order to go surfing everyday. ..
- ...and the rooster that woke us up every hour before I eventually get up
- parsing verbs for hours every night + irregular verbs and all the exceptions to the rules!!!
- talking in the present tense! - learning spanish has mainly been in the present tense to get us started so it always sounds like I'm giving a commentary on my life to whomever I talk
- carbohydrates and sugar! - It's so easy to get fat here - no one eats vegetables (except Nelly where we live who cooks them beautifully) and often meals will have both rice and potatoes with meat or fish
- clouds! - it's permanently cloudy here and...
- ...humid! - it was 87% humidity this tuesday