At home (for now) in Olon

Our first few days in Olon have been peaceful. We explored the little town of Olon, which has a million beachfront ceviche places, some markets, a small playground and various little shops, restaurants and cafes. As you can see from the photos, there’s no Wegmans here, but we’re managing.

In addition to Olon, we’ve explored nearby Montanita, a slightly larger and more touristy town (for Ecuadorian tourists, not US tourists) that has a bigger market, more restaurants and a ton of backpackers/surfers. Talia had an unfortunate run in with cow poop on the beach and I snapped a photo of her running into the ocean to clean her tie-dye crocs, which is just about the most “gringo-in-Ecuador” thing ever. We were a bit overwhelmed by the scene in Montanita in our initial explorations, but it’s useful to have a nearby town that is slightly bigger than Olon.

Kyla is back at work full time, so I’ve been going on the sorts of adventures with Talia that I don’t think Kyla will mind missing. Adventure # 1 was a horseback ride and hike to a nice little waterfall in an area called Dos Mangas. Before I move on, can anyone photoshop a helmet onto Talia’s head before my mom (and her posse of friends) sees the pics of Talia on a horse and scaling a waterfall?

Adventure #2 was a sailboat whale watching expedition. During this trip, I learned two important things: (1) I’m terrible at photographing whales (see evidence below) and (2) those little anti-seasickness wristbands are a load of beachfront cow poop. That aside, it was cool to see a bunch of whales and we spotted our first blue footed boobies (apparently the ones we saw are young, since their feet turn a brighter blue as they mature). I’ll make a separate post with all the birds at some point.

In addition to adventures outside of Olon, the three of us have done a lot of walking around on the beach and hunting for various products that we didn’t bring with us (I’d kill for some unscented laundry detergent, for example). We’ve also been working on identifying various unfamiliar birds and fruits, as you can see from the photos. It’s been fun to explore with Talia, but the unstructured time is also exhausting, so we’re all excited for school to start in mid-September.

There have been a few things that have been harder than expected in the first week. Talia was the first to fall to “traveler’s stomach,” which is a bummer. It’s also been s challenge to find feed ourselves. There are bunch of restaurants in town, and a few markets…a lot is made more challenging by not being able to drink or cook with the water. Next week’s project will be figuring out a good system for grocery shopping.

It’s cloudy season here and that means it’s cool on the coast. We will use weekends to chase the sun in other parts of Ecuador. It’s a good thing that Kyla packed the vitamin D in those 9274629273 bags! We’re off to Puerto Lopez tomorrow!Read more