A small fishing village called Puerto Cayo and Los Suenos

12th November 2015

The taxi dropped us at Los Suenos in Puerto Cayo ..remember we had just endured a 10hr bus trip from Quito.. and left – he did blow the hooter to acknowledge to someone that we had arrived.

We were greeted by a man who clearly worked here. The owner was not here and eventually his son showed us to our room and informed us that we would get further information the next morning. We had not eaten anything since breakfast and had shared a bottle of water on the bus. Coffee was needed desperately. Once we were in our room the son left. There was nothing like coffee or snacks available anywhere so we went to bed like naughty children on an empty stomach. Before retiring for the night we showered and unknowingly drank the water when we brushed our teeth. That must be on our list of one of the worst tasting things we have ever tasted. Not a good start I think.

13th November 2015

We got up early and ready to begin whatever it was we were meant to do and to meet the rest of the personal here. Wrong! Our neighbours in the room next door Matthew and Michelle Tupy were instructed to show us around. Michelle is an absolute darling and gave us coffee straight away. The breakfast (you get one free meal a day) is two eggs and some bread – really!! It was only much later in the day that the owner made an appearance and greeted us when we made a point of introducing ourselves. As for the manager I only met him a few days later and the assistant manager is always drunk. So this makes for some very interesting conversations to be had.

The building of this place is about to collapse it is in such a bad state. The owner wants to demolish it and build condos, however he hasn’t got the money to do so. He is refurbishing the restaurant and that is where our help comes in. The work is nothing at all. Ali is fixing some chairs and I helped to clean the restaurant kitchen.

Twice a week a veggie truck comes along and you can get some really nice food. He also sells cheese, not the cheese like we know it – it’s a combination of Feta and Mozzarella cheese – very nice. It makes me think back to when were but kiddies and the veggie truck would bring everything we needed.

By 1pm we were done (we only started at 9.30) Matthew and Michelle kindly took us in their awesome hippie kombi to the tiny town of Puerto Cayo to get a few basic necessities like coffee.

Puerto Cayo is very small. It has two little convenience stores, a hardware store and a few other stores that we had not gone into and a transvestite hairdresser – no I am not joking! The beach isn’t anything to write home about really. It has a long row of eating places on it and no one eating in them. It is windy and we have also yet to see the sun, yes I know it is winter here but still! All the towns here have the tuktuk scooters for taxis and before you ask, no this isn’t the taxi we got when we got off the bus. We got a real taxi, actually it was a Hi-Ace to be exact. Oh yes there is one pizza stall, we have yet to have one but we have it on authority that they are very good.