Ayampe

The bus driver stomped on the brakes and his assistant yelled out "Ayampe!"while waving at Jeff and I to get off the bus here.  We hustled out, retrieved our pull-along suitcases then . . . looked around.

Damn!! It happened again! We got dropped off in the middle of no where with no clue. 

Counting: two empty bamboo framed taverns, a couple of signs, a muddy, long side road, - and US holding the bags, bewildered.  I hate it when this happens - but this is NOT the first time and we're getting better at thinking on our feet.

Ayampe: a sweet piece of jungle paradise meeting white sand beaches surrounded by prideless poverty.

A sign: Finca Punta Ayampe had an arrow pointing down a long, very muddy road toward the beach.  We stood on the roadside, looking at our wheeled luggage thinking, "Holy Crap!  Is this really happening?"

Then a man walked up to us offering to call the hostel to pick us up.  Oh thank God!  Yes, please, that sounds like a great idea.

This 3 story, timber bamboo construction hostel, Finca Punta Ayampe, is awesome - highly recommended.  A spacious room on the 3rd floor with a terrace and a full view of the beach below, costs $18/person/night.  We slept to the music of the Pacific Ocean waves, crickets, and cicadas.  Dreamland.

Meals, if desired, are quite affordable, dead fresh, made to your liking and by far the most wholesome, tasty food we've had yet.

This place feels like we're visiting friends, complete with an English speaking host to catch us up on the local happenings.

Until we got to Ayampe, we've seen very few birds - quite concerning acutally.  But in Ayampe there is considerable bird action going on: hummingbirds, some the size of a large bumblebee, pelicans, frigates, multitudes of colorful songbirds, and a huge eagle-thing perched on a snag at the beach.

White sand beaches, nice waves, tidepools, lagoons, surrounded by primitive shacks: a haven for surfers in the hot season - though thankfully this is the off season.

Snails Grandotes

Imagine a snail that grows to be over 3" long.  Now imagine an army of countless millions of them.  That's what showed up in Ayampe beginning about 6 months ago.  Our host explains that these are African snails brought to Ecuador by a rice grower.  he thought they'd irradicate some kind of pest problem - but to no avail.

When it didn't work, he released them in the wild.  Now they're everywhere eating everything in sight.  When birds eat them, they die of some unknown toxin so it's doubtful that people should eat them.  I'm sure there should be a movie about this.

Two nights here and our host hauled us back to the mail road to catch yet another bus going up the coast of Ecuador.