Just before school started, we took our first trip to the Ecuador Coast. Our plan was to visit our Austin-Texas Peace Corps friends, Katelijne and Damon, see their town, Sua, eat some seafood and go whale-watching. Oh, and chill. All in 4 days. Remarkably, we succeeded. Damon and Katelijne were great hosts, taking us to the best restaurants, where we ate incredibly fresh ceviche and encocado, a rich coconut-based (but not coconut-tasting) seafood stew. They also did a great job organizing the whale-watching trip for us and several other Peace Corps folks. We’d given up hope of seeing any whales when a mom, dad, and baby whale (the baby being bigger than our boat) changed our mood from despondent to ecstatic — listen for Joy screaming on the audio track of this VERY brief clip.
The afternoon after the whale-spotting, we went to a rustic eco-resort called Playa Escondida, where we did the chilling out portion. At low tide the sea went way out, and both mornings a family was wandering around with a bucket, stabbing into little cracks in the rock with a long wire that ended in a curved hook. Since I had no idea what they were up to, and I felt it was my God-given right to know, I followed them until I caught up with them. “What’s in the bucket?” “Octopus,” came the reply. If me stalking them down the beach was annoying, they didn’t know how good they’d had it. I made them take the lid off the bucket. Wow! Octopi around fist size were piled on each other and some were squirting out ink. So then I made them give me one to hold. Two mornings in a row. Very cool, very sticky suction cups. Oh, and they changed color too, from light to dark brown and back, faster than any chameleon.
