Scorpions

I don't know whether it is just the time of year, or if the place is always like this, but there seems to be a lot of scorpions around. Many are tiny, but there are some big ones that look like they could give a very nasty sting. We are three weeks into the five week course here at Playa Kamala, and about half of the residents have found them in their cabinas. They have been found, ominously, in the cabanas on either side of me, but I’ve yet to find one in mine. However, if we assume that most go unnoticed, then logically there are likely to be several in each cabana right now. I checked the internet as I thought I should know what to do if anybody gets bitten, but that just put the fear of god in me. We have to check inside shoes before we put them on, and there is always an air of trepidation when we need to root around inside a rucksack for clean clothes etc. Apparently they like to hide in dark places.

This bitch here just walked into the communal work room this evening, before we caught it in a plastic tub and removed it to a less dangerous place (for us). The coin in the box is a US dollar quarter that we put in to give an idea of scale, ditto for the mobile phone. Even when these things are potentially lethal, people don’t like the idea of just squashing them, and prefer to humanely remove them to places that we don’t congregate. However, when the one below turned up while we were eating dinner, the owner of the site caught it and removed the stinger from its tale. Without that it was harmless, but still pretty creepy to have it walk up your arm.

Scorpions are members of the arachnid family, of the genus: nasty bastards

Life on the dune 2

Well that last blog seems to have put the wind up some people, but that was just how I was feeling at that moment. I had an email from one person concerned about life here at Playa Kamala, so I tried to give them a more balanced view, this is an edited version of the response I gave them.

The cabanas are pretty ‘rustic’, but I am in a two story one with my wife, I believe the single story ones that most people have are a bit cosier. At the moment the weather isn't that great, it is fairly damp, and the cabinas are built to let the air in for when it is hot, so we had a problem with the rain coming in and soaking everything. But the handyman here fixed it with some plastic sheeting. Things get a bit dirty because your feet get muddy walking around outside, so you have to sweep out the sand periodically.

There are not many spiders, we have only seen a few small ones, but there have been several sightings of scorpions in the cabanas. One person found a scorpion on their toothbrush this morning. Though, you don't see that many insects at all, and most people are not even bothering with repellent. Though a minority seem to be getting lots of bites from something. The constrictor snake is apparently out there, but nobody has seen it for a while and I don't think it is a risk to humans. The local creatures are not all bad, we can see whales from the site at the moment, even sometimes from the classroom (read as big cabina). There are also two nice dogs that live here and a cat with two kittens. The dogs regularly come into the classes and then sit there in the centre of the room licking themselves.

The only hot water is in your shower in the cabana, that apparently runs out frequently, but I haven't noticed it run out in the time I have been here. There was a bit of a crisis the day before I wrote that last blog, when we were told that the electric system was failing and there might be far more limited hot water and IT facilities. But that crisis seems to have dissipated for the moment.

The IT facilities are fairly limited. There is a basic photocopier; they really should have a better one. There are three PCs and two printers, but having all turned on at the same time blows the electrics, so two PCs maximum at the moment. You need to use those two PCs to print out from, but otherwise most people work on their laptops. There is Wi-Fi reception in all the cabanas, but it can be painfully slow at times, and it never gets very fast. However, many people are managing to use it to Skype home.

As for escaping from the site, it is just that we spend all our time together on a fairly small location. It makes sense to try and do  other stuff at the weekends, just to clear your head before the next week starts. The problem is that there isn't that much nearby. Montañita is fairly close; most people go in a couple of times a week for shopping. It is a 20 minute walk down the beach, and then two dollars back in a taxi (with shopping). Montañita is a very boozy, back-packer and surfer town. So some people will love it, others will avoid it. Activities can be organised here at Kamala as a group, it will be down to you or another student to arrange something, but the staff of the Kamala sight can help with that. We are all going snorkeling and whale watching this weekend, for example.

Overall it is not too bad. Character building they call it, and we will all have characters built like brick shit houses by the time we have finished.

Life on the dune

Living in a rustic cabina is wearing us down. It is nice and peaceful, if you don’t count the continuous roar of the ocean. But it is a hassle just existing here. Everything always has some sand on it, and everything is a bit damp. There are no wardrobes or cupboards to keep clothes etc in, and you have to check everything you put on for scorpions. A British health and safety executive would have a seizure if he checked out the wiring, and indeed it has recently started to cut out due to an overload of the system. That coupled with the local power cuts has resulted in a further limiting of our access to IT facilities and hot water.

Last Friday, as classes were finishing a little earlier than usual at 7:3opm, we decided to escape to a real hotel with walls, and hot water and only minimal indoor grit. We had to pay $20 to get a taxi to the Alandaluz ecoresort, and then it was $64 per night. We had booked in and intended to stay for the weekend, but after the first night, straight after breakfast, we were told by the desk staff that they had booked our room for somebody else, and if we wanted to stay another night, we would have to move into a seafront cabina, fully equipped with grit and dank. So that was it, we could move on or pay $64 per night for what we had come to avoid. A quick search of the internet revealed that there were no other hotels with vacancies within 30 miles of us. Comfortable weekend over, we had no choice but to head back to our cabina, with the sand and the damp and the scorpions and the local snake called matacaballo (horse killer).

This is starting to feel like we are stuck in the Prisoner, seemingly idyllic coastal living, but any attempt at leaving will be thwarted. Or perhaps we are stuck in an episode of Tenko.

Scene from Tenko

Life at Playa Kamala

1/3 of the way to being an English teacher

Well I am now nearly two weeks into the five week CELTA course, and it has not been too bad really. I had received warnings from several sources that it is an incredibly stressful course, but I’ve not found that yet. Although, I have noticed that some people on the course are really suffering mentally. We have all individually taught for 140 minutes so far over 4 lessons. It starts short with 20 minute lessons, the 40 minute lessons, and we start giving 60 minute lessons from next Monday. Next week is also when the first coursework deadlines are, and is supposedly the peak point of course-stress. The classes we teach are to local Ecuadorians who are offered free English lessons. They are all really keen and motivated, we couldn’t ask for better learners while we are being trained. Usually there are between 5 and 10 in each class.

Myself and other trainee teachers, on the way to the training centre, day 1

We have all been stuck on the same beach/mangrove/dune for a fortnight now. It is pretty basic living. There are some shops in the nearby town of Manglaralto, but they don’t stock much and there is a river between us and them. You have to paddle to get there. One of the course trainers, who only started the job two weeks ago, has already packed it in due to the isolation and ‘rustic’ living conditions.There really isn't that much else to blog about, all we do is study, teach and eat, with the occasional walk to a local town to stock up on on water, chocolate and other luxuries.

Walking along the beach to Montañita, a gang of dogs came along for the trip




Thanks to Tony Robinson for these two images.

The Beach

For the last two days we have been at Playa Kamala, a small beach resort on the Pacific coast. We are two days into a five week intensive Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA). The course is run by the Ecuadorian company Southern Cross, but the qualification is accredited by Cambridge University. Once passed, this will allow us to consider jobs as English teachers, worldwide. So far the course hasn't been too stressful, this evening we did our first actual live teaching to Ecuadorian students. Seemed to go OK, but they were just 20 minute lessons.

The course is residential, based on a formally run-down hippy beach resort, near the hippy-hedonist town of Montañita. It is a job in itself trying to study and work, while virtually living on a beach. The roar of the pacific ocean is ever present, even when in bed. There are no shops, but there are scorpions and geckos around and there is at least one boa constrictor in the near-by mangroves. The cabinas are not at all air tight, so being indoors feels just like being out on the beach, but we'll get used to it. Either that or we will kill a pig and start bickering over a conch shell.

In Guayaquil

Today we head off to Playa Kamala, where we will be doing an intense course in becoming English Teachers. The last couple of days have been in crazy, crazy, Guayaquil. It is not so bad really, but the pace of life here is fast, just taking a taxi feels like you are playing Mario Kart. It also has a vague feeling of menace, but I’ve been told it is no more dangerous than other Ecuadorian cities. I suspect, we are just experiencing the contrast between the cool, calm, sierra cities and the hot, humid and fast costa cities.  Guayaquil is not dissimilar to other large Latin American cities I’ve visited further north, e.g. Guatemala City and San Salvador. One interesting thing about the city is the wild iguanas that live in the parks, particularly Parque Bolivar. These are big lads, many are over a meter long and are not shy. Some of the more idiotic locals feed them peanuts.

Once the teaching training starts on Monday, I’m likely to be very busy, by all accounts it is the most difficult and intense course most people ever undertake, and it goes on for five weeks. But assuming we pass, we will have qualifications that allow us to find jobs in almost any country we wish to. Will post more from the beach, when we get time.

Our route so for

From Cuenca to Guayaquil

Today Helen and I have been travelling separately from Cuenca to Guayaquil. She has flown to Quito to collect bags from storage (at the South American Explorers club) and then to take another flight to Guayaquil. I have come direct by bus, so I am now reporting live from a burger bay in Guayaquil airport via my laptop and free Wi-Fi. The wonders of I.T.

My previous experience of long distance bus travel in Ecuador wasn’t good. But this time it was a great journey. The route from Cuenca high in the Andes to Guayaquil on the pacific coast takes about 4 hours and gives views of spectacular scenery. First you rise high in the mountains and then, start to descend. At this point, looking down out of the bus window, you can see the clouds.

Eventually after half an hour of twisty downhill roads, you meet the clouds. It took twenty minutes to pass through, what is probably now best called fog. But when we emerged the Andes were gone, the land was flat and the vegetation had changed from sparse to tropical. The fog was now above us, and probably now best called clouds. You just don’t get bus journeys like that in Sheffield.

View from the bus window

Well I’m still in Cuenca, which is one of the main cities in Ecuador. It is also the most pretty with loads of colonial buildings, it is also favoured by USA citizens. Since I posted details of my cuy / guinea pig lunch, I’ve had several people ask me how it tasted. Well there wasn’t that much of it, cuy are not very fleshy it would appear. It took ages picking off enough for a fork-full. When I did find enough, it tasted much like roast chicken, but more fatty. Also, here is a picture of the cuy shortly before I ordered it in the restaurant:

From Loja to Cuenca

Arrived in Cuenca yesterday evening, after spending four nights in the really cheap 'Londres' hotel in Loja ($10 per night, about £6.70 for two people). Loja is a really nice small city in the Southern part of the Ecuadorian Andes. It has a great climate, being at a lower altitude than the other sierra cities in Ecuador. The guidebooks said that this was the place to try out cuy, the local name for guinea pig. So on Sunday (the most popular day to cook cuy apparently) we set off in search of 'Salon Lolita', which despite its dodgy sounding name turned out to be a really nice open air restaurant. The cuy could be ordered by size and either as a full or half. Cautiously I ordered a half, which turned out to be the arse end. 

And before people get all moral about this, cuy was a food source of the indigenous Americans long before they were children's pets in the West.

Cuy before

Cuy after

To leave Loja we took the bus to Cuenca, this promised to be a relaxing 5 hour drive through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. In fact it was a very squashy, humid and generally uncomfortable trip on an overcrowded coach. Think of a London bus in rush hour, with a 5 hour journey. But it was cheap and got us there, and we did have seats, unlike some of the poor souls who had to stand.

1st Blog

Well I am in an internet cafe in the high Andes, in the city of Loja. This is just a first blog to get things started. Hopefully, I can keep this updated and of interest to friends and anybody else interested in how I get on relocateing my life from England to Ecuador.

So far, Helen and I have just been getting used to the country, and have been here for almost excatly 7 days. Much of the first week was taken up with the burocracy of gainng work permits and Ecudorioan ID cards. Bizzarly, you have to provide your own stationary. For the first attempt, we were sent out of the immigraciion office in Quito to buy envelopes for them to store our paperwork in. In addition, we were sent to a bank to pay in $10 each to the governments account. On return, they took our passports and ushered us out with a ´Mañana´.

The next day we returned and were sent out to buy more stationary. This time card folders for our application, finally after waiting two hours for the police officer in charge to return from lunch, we were given ID cards.

Now with that sorted we have come to Loja, a city in the Southern sierra. This is a place with several universities, so we are checking it out as a possible place to look for work, once we do our teacher training.