Montañita, Ecuador - lots of interesting people It started out as a very high fever. I thought I was going to freeze to death but the thermometer said I was nearly 104°F. In the middle of the night on day two of the fever we went to the hospital. There were two nurses telling jokes to each other in the corner who were visibly annoyed that we showed up. They woke up the pharmacist who took some blood, told us that I didn’t have dengue and sent us home. No investigation into what it would have been. Just told us to go away. Later we found out that you can’t test positive for Dengue until after 6 days of fever.
The next day I went to a different pharmacist down the street from our hostel and asked for antibiotics because I thought maybe I had an infection or something. They gave them to me without question or explanation of any side effects or anything. I later found out that you can get as much of anything you want from any pharmacy here – for example a guy from our Spanish classes bought 20 or more vicodin, valium, oxycotin and some other mystery drugs that are apparently stronger than all of those. He bought them all at once and took most of them in one day. Apparently this is one reason that a lot of people come to Montañita.
The doctor recommended that I return for monitoring in a few days, however when we did return, no one there could find any record of me ever being there so after A LOT of persuasion we got them to run some new tests that we took with us and emailed to our health insurance providers in Canada. Luckily google gave us the heads up on my symptoms and nothing suggested the dangerous type of dengue (the one where you haemorrhage and your insides turn to mush) so I just had to wait it out.
After 12 days of fever between 101-104°F I finally awoke without a fever. For the next three days I had random full body hive flare-ups which google alerted us was normal for the recovery stage of Dengue. It took another few days before I was able to eat a full meal again and about two weeks before the nausea finally left (now).
The next day I went to a different pharmacist down the street from our hostel and asked for antibiotics because I thought maybe I had an infection or something. They gave them to me without question or explanation of any side effects or anything. I later found out that you can get as much of anything you want from any pharmacy here – for example a guy from our Spanish classes bought 20 or more vicodin, valium, oxycotin and some other mystery drugs that are apparently stronger than all of those. He bought them all at once and took most of them in one day. Apparently this is one reason that a lot of people come to Montañita.
The doctor recommended that I return for monitoring in a few days, however when we did return, no one there could find any record of me ever being there so after A LOT of persuasion we got them to run some new tests that we took with us and emailed to our health insurance providers in Canada. Luckily google gave us the heads up on my symptoms and nothing suggested the dangerous type of dengue (the one where you haemorrhage and your insides turn to mush) so I just had to wait it out.
After 12 days of fever between 101-104°F I finally awoke without a fever. For the next three days I had random full body hive flare-ups which google alerted us was normal for the recovery stage of Dengue. It took another few days before I was able to eat a full meal again and about two weeks before the nausea finally left (now).
Unfortunately my opinion of Montañita is not too good, likely in part based on the fact that I felt like crap the whole time we were there. However I did manage to attend 20 hours of Spanish lessons at Montañita Spanish School, which were very good, and we did a couple of smaller day excursions as well. I just had to get out of the hostel we were staying in.
a small part of the plague There was no Internet in the room, it was very dirty, and the whole place was crawling with locusts. The locusts started the day after we got there, and first day of the fever. We experienced a good rainfall, apparently the first in a long time, which resulted in the hatching of the locusts (known as griegas in Montañita). There were likely hundreds in our room alone, hiding in the curtains and our clothes. After a few days we realized that they were eating our clothes and the rubber earpiece on our headphones. Soooooo nasty….. We put our bug net up over our bed to try and keep them from flying into our faces at night but a few still crawled in each night. We would wake up to one of them biting an arm or face.
Andrew had a much better experience in Montañita – he enjoyed the waves, surfing every day or two between Spanish lessons and bringing me to the hospital. We met some very cool people as well and shared some good times on the beach and exploring parts of the area.
The town itself was very weird. In the center the streets are lined with art, jewelry and clothing stands, and when the sun goes down many of the stands morph into bars and liquor stands. There are always performers juggling, doing art, playing music, singing, riding unicycles – you name it. People party in the streets all night long, music blaring out of every shop, stand and car. Early every morning at about 5 or 6:00 we were awoken by people on mega-phones (ridiculously popular here) advertising some kind of product they are selling, playing some horrible, loud, scratchy music, or just talking nonsense. The noise actually never stops in Montañita, it just evolves throughout the day.
Outside of the town center the landscape is desolate and garbage-ridden. It was sad to find out that most people, including tourists, throw their garbage everywhere, on the beach, or in the street. They justify it with a garbage tractor that sweeps the beach every morning, though probably not before the tide takes 90% of the garbage out to sea. And while walking around in the center and even outside of it, you couldn’t help but notice the frequent wafts of sewage and vomit, likely coming from the pools and streams of milky “water” flowing down several of the streets.
Outside of the town center the landscape is desolate and garbage-ridden. It was sad to find out that most people, including tourists, throw their garbage everywhere, on the beach, or in the street. They justify it with a garbage tractor that sweeps the beach every morning, though probably not before the tide takes 90% of the garbage out to sea. And while walking around in the center and even outside of it, you couldn’t help but notice the frequent wafts of sewage and vomit, likely coming from the pools and streams of milky “water” flowing down several of the streets.
museum tour with one of the original archeologists We did enjoy a couple of day excursions that made the experience a bit nicer. We went to a small museum in the next town with our Spanish teacher, Jessica. The curator was one of the original archeologists that dug out the artefacts from that very spot. He also lives at the museum. Most of the artefacts are out in the open and you can pick them up and play with them (though you're not encouraged to do so). These are things that date back to 200AD and older.
a great pair of boobies! On another day we went to Isla de la Plata, also known as “the poor man’s Galapagos”. We have decided not to go to the real Galapagos on this trip because it would cost us at least a month or two of our trip's budget. But we certainly want to go in the future! I’m not sure I would compare Isla de la Plata to the Galapagos, but it was pretty cool anyway. We saw lots of turtles and sharks from the boat and land, and we saw a ton of blue-footed boobies! That was the highlight for us. We happened to be there while the babies were hatching and got to see how the parent boobies take care of their young. Sadly we also learned that if two eggs hatch the parents must pick the larger one to feed and let the smaller one die because they only have resources for one… Other than that the day was very nice.
Finally when my fever was gone and I had gained enough strength, we decided to leave Montañita. We fled from the beach and plague of locusts and made our way into mountains to a town called Baños, famous for its hot springs. Andrew insisted that we stay somewhere nice for a few nights so we could get back into our groove after everything and give ourselves a break from the low budget travel. Looking forward to relaxing in the hot springs and letting the minerals work their healing magic!
See you in the next post.
-Chelsea
See you in the next post.
-Chelsea
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