The Asian Invasion of Ecuador: April 2012

Thourough preparation is vital to the success of the Asian Invasion of Ecuador. Here are the briefs of the preparation.

I'm counting down the days till the school year is finished (26). This also means that I don't much time to get my ducks in order for my 2 year move to Ecuador. I've been mostly spending my time thinking on the fun stuff I want to do once I'm there and not taking care of stuff I need to do here before I go. Mostly I need to figure out what I'm going to do with my "stuff." Car, motorcycle, toys, furniture... Its expensive to ship anything to Ecuador so I am planning on moving down there with 2 piece of checked luggage (at 50lbs each), 1 carry on, and a backpack. Considering my 2 surfboards will need to be checked, there isn't room for much else.

Everything is time sensitive... I can't sell my car too early, what will I drive until I leave? I could ride my motorcycle but I also need to sell that as well, not going to keep it in storage for 2 years. Storage? what am I going to keep in storage and what am I going to get rid of. Get rid of? How am I going to get rid of it, just donate it to Goodwill, give it to friends or try to sell it on craigslist or Ebay. And don't even get me started on the visa situation. Everytime I contact a consulate or embassy, I get different answers.

So where am I in the process? I got my travel shots and some malaria pills. I have an awesome 2 month travel itenerary penciled in for this summer before I start work (but nothing booked). I have an apartment arranged in Quito, sight unseen just photos they sent me. I know I need to be at work on August 20th.

So needless to say, there is going to be a lot of things that need to be done within the last few weeks before I leave. I'm not too stressed about it though actually. I'm just enjoying my time here with my friends and looking forward to a new adventure in my life. Btw, I plan on leaving Denver on June 1st, we'll see if that happens.

According to intel, the country of Ecuador contains 2237km of coastline. A strategic use of an amphibious landing will be crucial for the success of the "Asian Invasion" of Ecuador. The following excerpt describes a training mission.

Mission Status: Completed

Spring break means one thing for me... surfing and beer. Last spring break I headed to San Diego and into Northen Baja, Mexico for a surf trip with my buddy Brandon and his friend Chris. What we noticed about surfing in Northern Baja was actually what we weren't noticing... a lineup (many people in the water lining up for the next wave). We didn't make it far down the coast last year and since then I've been wanting to return and explore more.

A year has past and it was time to head down there to explore. Brandon and I loaded up Liz's Outback (thanks polola!) with 5 surfboards, rations of food and beverages, camping gear, and drove 18 hours straight after work to the Mexican border.

Getting into Mexico was easy, they just waved us right through, no passport check, nada

There are always these giant Mexican flags everywhere!

It is now about noon, and we wanted to surf after driving all night, we get to our first surfing destination and...

it is flat, no hay olas :(

We drive to 3 more beaches till finally!

we surfed and went to bed at 4:30pm... woke up at 8am the next day!

In order to keep this blog relatively short, the rest of the trip included: surfing, lots of driving to another remote location, more surfing, repeat... also driving the car right onto the beach and camping, 2 night at Coyote Cal's Hostel, hanging with 2 cool surfing dudes from Oregon, touching a gray whale, meeting "Miguel the security guard" (story on that below), picking fresh mussels and did I mention? more surfing.

One story I do have to tell. On one of the nights, we were at a surfspot called Shipwrecks. We read in our surf book that it was not safe to camp here due to robberies. So pondering our options, we found an empty vacation home and decided to sleep next to the house (between the house and the brick wall) to hide from possible trouble. A few hours after we've been hanging out there (napping and drinking beer), it was about to get dark and a man walks up to us.

Man: "Do you guys have permission to be here"
Us: "No, we are sorry, we didn't know where to go, we will leave now"
Man: "Yes you should leave"

So Brandon and I are about to pack up our stuff and leave when the man comes back to us and tell us

Man: "You guys can stay here tonight"

Turns out he is a hired security guard who stays at this house a few nights a week since the owners live in California and only come down a few times a year. We ended up hanging out and drinking beers with Miguel. He invites us to come back and stay the next night as well, which we didn't. This was typical of our experience with the people in Mexico, very nice and sincere. Too bad people are so scared to travel to Mexico.