The month of August has been a month of contrasts for me.

The first part of the month was spent in San Francisco de Quito, the beautiful Pichincha city of Ecuador and the world´s second highest captial after Bolivia´s La Paz. It was here that I crashed a wedding. Not perhaps in the style of Vince Vaughan or Owen Wilson, as I actually managed to secure an official invite before proceedings kicked off, but a crash in that I knew no-one at the wedding with the exception of my cousin who helped orchestrate my attendance.

The marriage was between Cristina and Derek. Between Ecuador and Ireland. Derek is an Irish ambassador in Latin America and there were a few bottles of Jameson smuggled over to Quito by the contingent from Dublin. Both sets of families could not have made me feel more welcome. The wedding was very well organised and we were lifted hand and foot to lunches, dinners, and excursions around the Otavalo and among the hills of the narrow city valley at the foot of the volcano Pichincha. I can´t thank Cristina and Derek enough for having me.

The civil ceremony was a suited affair held in Cristina´s mum´s lovely home overlooking much of the city in the hills of the Bellavista region. Here I enjoyed meeting an eclectic mix of nationalities and eating the Ecuadorian delicacy of Ceviche, which is essentially a delicious fish soup with popcorn. We were also treated to freshly rolled sushi and no shortage of live Colombian music and dancing.

The religious ceremony took place a few days later in a beautiful church in the old colonial part of the city, one closed to the public, no less. I managed to struggle through the Spanish readings and homily due to a combination of my intimate knowledge of the Catholic mass and the fact that I listened to my brother lisp around our kitchen in Dallan Ave on his return from Madrid in Castilian. After the deed was done the whole wedding party, including yours truly in his rented tuxedo, was taken through the cobblestone streets of Quito lit at night by horse and carriage, escorted all the way to the fabulous Hotel Plaza Grande by Ecuadorian policia.

At the hotel there was a fantastic view from the balcony onto Plaza Grande. There was practically a whole room devoted to chocolate delicacies. There was a Cuban guy sat rolling fresh havana cigars for the early part of the evening. There was amazing food delivered at infinite intervals. There was a complimentary champagne and cocktail bar open until 6am. There was endless live music and dancing. We even managed to get an Irish couple to give us a few do-si-dos to Sharon Shannon. I don´t know what the Ecuadorians made of it.

Contrast this then to the most recent two weeks which I spent travelling down the coast of Ecuador from Esmeraldas and Atacames in the north to Montañita in the south. I have been a beach bum. And I don´t mean that I was lying on a beach sunning myself in front of calm Carribean waters, eating rich food in the evenings and watching the sun go down caviar in hand. I mean a beach bum in the true sense of the word ´bum´. My experiences have been in untouched and remote fishing villages during a cloudy Ecuadorian winter, staying in basic huts on the beach or shared dorms in the more visited areas. And it has been all about the surfing and the communities.

Take for example the few nights I spent in the tiny village of Mompiche. Getting here in itself is an achievement. The one road in and out of Mompiche is a ridiculously bumpy and long dirt track accessible only by four wheel drive. For those that volunteered with me in Africa earlier in the year, think of the road from Akwidaa to Green Turtle. I managed to hitch a ride in a massive truck with another local lady to the village and she pointed me in the direction of somewhere to stay. Hostal Gabeal. It had a wooden tower at the top of some of the rooms where you could view the waves roll in as the fishing boats battled out past the surf. One of the most beautiful views I have enjoyed in Ecuador thus far.

And so my days in Mompiche were spent with the local surfers. Chanco, an Argentinian tatooist and boyfriend of one of the Ecuadorian girls working in the hostal took me out surfing. He enjoyed it as much as me, largely I think due to the fact that he was completely stoned at the time. I also met cocktail hut owner, Casi Guapo, his name translating literally as ´almost handsome'. When I was first told about Casi Guapo people said I should wait and see how perfect his name was for him without explaining why this was so. When I saw him I understood. If you want to know, visit Mompiche and have a look at Casi Guapo.

After negotiating the difficult task of getting out of Mompiche, it was to Canoa where I was to meet some gringos with whom I would travel down the coast. In between surfing, sometimes three times a day in Canoa, it was hammock time, reading whatever bollox had been left in the hostel book shelf and at night watching the local guys (sometimes successfully) try to grind on some gringo girls and the gringo girls get excited by their grinding on the local guys in this exotic location. The pace of life was far removed from Quito and even further removed from home.

And it would become even further removed as I got a bus further south down the coast and hopped off in the smallest of all the places I visited. Ayampe. Getting of the bus at Ayampe was an impulse action and I soon discovered that there was nothing here except an incredible beach. I stumbled upon a great little place called La Buena Vida which was run by an American guy called Keith and he took me out surfing for a few days when we had the entire beach to ourselves. The current was so strong and the conditions so messy that I spent much of my time in the water getting beat up by the waves but it did wonders for my balance and paddling power. Meanwhile Keith was out the back doing airs on 8 ft waves as whales jumped around in the background and every once in a while he would give me tips and advice. It was a magical place.

Finally it was to Montañita, a small town known for its surf, its argentinian hippies and its never ending parties. Here I stayed in a hostel right on the beach in front of la punta and enjoyed the calming sounds of the waves crashing up on shore as I dozed off to sleep in my hammock. Ecuadorian David, who I can only describe as being a Carles Puyol lookalike, took me out surfing and gave me a variety of boards to try out with each session. It was so much fun and I was riding across smaller waves rather than just taking them into shore by the end of my stay. One day I even took a toothpick board out the back to the famous point break at the north end of the beach to see how my paddling and duckdiving was coming on and I just sat admiring the view in the line up conscious that one of the glass monsters I was bobbing around on would destroy me if I tried to pop up. I would have loved Chris Carr to have been there as I know it would have been a little bit of heaven for him.

So too must I contrast the levels of English spoken in Quito and in the west. The English goes from poor in the capital to non existent on the coast, with maybe the exception of Montañita and I had a rude awakening in my first few days as to how little Spanish I have. Recently however, my ear has atuned and I am surviving, rolling with the lingual punches so to speak. Another contrast between Quito and the coast is the sheer height of the capital city. I suffered a lot on first arrival, and soon realised that my shortness of breath, dizziness and fatigue were not down to my incredible lack of fitness, but to the altitude of the city into which I had just flown. Obviously on the coast, I was at sea level, and the highest I got was falling off a three foot wave. The ethnic make up of the Ecuadorians also appeared to be extremely different in the mountains in contrast to the seaside, many of the Chullas Quiteños being Quichua-speaking highland indigena, and many of the people on the coast seemingly darker in ethnic make-up, perhaps due to historical slave movement to coastal regions by the Spanish at the time of their colonisation.

I suppose one major contrast I could make at this time is between Croke Park on 29 August and the place where I watched Down beat Kildare in the All Ireland semi final. As thousands of red and black supporters made their way down the M1 for what was to be an incredible game and one of the most wonderful days in Down footballing history, I was on a cramped overnight bus for 14 hours trying to make my way back from the coast through Guayaquil up to Quito to watch the game in the only Irish pub in Ecuador, Finn McCools. An English guy, Lee, opened the bar at 9am Ecuadorian time (3pm Irish) as we grappled with the RTE website and tried to subsribe to Premier Sports to get the game. As a result I bit my nails to the radio for the first half and to my delight was able to stream the exciting second half. This group of players have been through some dark days in the past couple of seasons but have always worked unbelievably hard. Their attitude, work rate and the sexiness of the football they play means they totally deserve to be in the All Ireland final. And so I have another problem on my hands - where am I going to be on 19 September?

Again, from now, things will become even more different than before. Tonight I travel to Baños, from where I am going to make my way east into the Oriente. From the mountains to the coast to the jungle. It is here, in Merazonia, that I will be volunteering at an animal refuge in the Ecuadorian amazon for a few weeks. Time to get to work. The contrasts seem set to continue.