They'd all told us this was the most beautiful beach they'd ever seen. It's an unbelievable crescent shaped beach about a mile long that has not been darkened by shops or condos. Just simply beauty with no distractions of human structures. And no trash.This undisturbed white sand curve of natural beauty is anchored on each end by completely vertical cliffs and surrounded on 3 sides by an what for us is an extremely unique national park of dry forest....

I know. I know. We haven't written for a long time, but we've been really busy having fun. Remember talking about going over to the main offices of our school while we were in Quito? Well Ligia the director, whose office is in Quito, is here in PL for the weekend with a student named Ensu (which probably isn't spelled right, as she's South Korean) and we've been having a ball.Ligia is such a kick! Saturday morning all of us went to the fish ma...

If you've ever ridden a night bus in Ecuador, you know about the pat-downs. On the surface anyway, Ecuador is very concerned about security. We were all searched before we could board--one woman to search the whole load of us. Our bags, our persons--they patted down some people and did a cursory look with others. Bob was really hoping for a strip search, but I guess we just don't look suspicious enough. We could have had all kinds of nasty ammo on us; the...

We're sitting in the hostel waiting for when we take a taxi to the bus station. With not much to do today, as the clouds are hanging low and all the mountains surrounding us have disappeared, we decided to go to the American Embassy and register.Why you ask?One one of our travels we met a lady who worked in an embassy in one of the African countries and she told us to always register with each country we visit. Then if "something" happens, they can help us ea...

We arrived finally, 3 days plus an hour and a half late. We sat on the tarmac at Atlanta waiting for them to put a new sensor in.It's best to fly with all your plane parts intact, we've decided.But we're here now.It's like 2 in the morning before we get to bed and the next morning I don't know if I'm just sleepy or if it's the altitude, but I feel kinda awful.We'll see what happens after a cup of tea.