Brandon Visits Ecuador
April 23, 2004
Today we pulled into Ecuador! We pulled into a big fishing port and they
don't have pier services that can handle us so we had to anchor out and ride
liberty boats in and out of port. Once they put down Liberty Call, myself
and 6 other guys from the ship went to wait in line to get on a liberty
boat. Unfortunately, the boat that we had to get on turned out to be our
ship's RHIB (Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boat)... it's those military boats that
look like rafts but have pretty fast outboard motors and can go a pretty
good speed... so we loaded in and took off... everyone thought it was going
to be pretty cool to be able to ride in the RHIB... *NOT*!!! I don't know
what the sea-state was at the time, but the waves were decent-sized and as
we cruised through the water they would hit the side of the RHIB and crash
over us... by the time we got to shore, I was DRENCHED from head to toe! We
spent most of our time between two places: the mall (they only have one, and
it's fairly small... about the size of the one in St. George, except
two-story), and a local little dive where we went to eat and play pool. The
mall was a trip, though! The parking lot had 3 watch-towers like you would
see in a castle and at the top of the towers they had armed guards watching
the parking lot... and I'm not talking about "armed" with batons and
hand-guns, either... I'm talking about sawed-off shotguns and AR-15's
(soviet-style M-16's)!!! The mall was really nice, but wierd also... they
had a hardware store similar to Home Depot inside the mall, and they also
had a grocery store inside the mall. Walking around inside the mall were
more guards with AR-15's and at the entrance to the grocery store was a
guard with a sawed-off shotgun). It was crazy! The second day in we went
and saw a movie (about half of them were still in English but just with
spanish sub-titles), hung around the mall some more (they have a pretty good
fake version of Carl's Jr., for those of you who know what that is!), I got
a haircut and got the back of my neck and my sideburns trimmed with a
straight razor for the first time ever, and did a bit more shopping. We
then went to a nice little outdoor restaraunt on the other side of town...
it was nice, but didn't look superb, just quaint. But let me tell you what,
the food was OUTSTANDING! A couple of the guys got "Super T-Bones"... those
things were over 2 inches THICK! Myself and one of the other guys ordered
Blue Marlin Swordfish... we weren't expecting much because it only cost
$4.70... but we knew it was local and fresh b/c all day long we saw huge
dump-trucks full of tuna and swordfish going from the pier to a warehouse.
LOTS AND LOTS OF FISH! So we figured the fish would be good. When they
brought it out, it was amazing... it wasn't like in the States when you
order and pay $15 and get a little cube cut of fish... this thing filled up
the ENTIRE PLATE! It was AT LEAST a foot long! And it turned out to be the
BEST TASTING fish that I have *EVER* had! It was awesome! It was easily a
$30 plate of fish in the States! My whole meal, including the appetizers,
sodas, and tip, came to $10! Let me tell you what, fish must be like GOLD
in Ecuador... these trucks were STILL running back and forth between the
warehouse and the pier at 8 o'clock at night when we went back to the ship.
Once they got one loaded up, they would put an armed guard standing on top
of the load as it drove through the city! How's that for insane??? It was
a nice country, but you could tell that it could be a very dangerous place.
The only thing I regret is that we didn't do the dive here... I ended up
hearing that it was AWESOME! Hopefully we'll be back!
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