Mompiche, Ecuador

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I was heading to Mompiche with the intentions of spending Christmas and New Year there and most importantly, I intended to surf every day. Mompiche is a small fishing village with a wave that breaks off the point of the cove and rolls in towards the beach. It had a reputation for its waves and also for the atmosphere in the village. It sounded like the place I wanted to surf and chill for a bit.

To make this experience cheaper, I had found a volunteering position at a hostel where I had my bed in exchange for 4 hours a day. I wanted to find somewhere that had food included but it wasn’t possible so I had to take this one at The MudHouse. It turned out to be a good decision and that was down to the owners and people who were staying there. The MudHouse was located on the outside of town and the furthest place from the beach, meaning I had to walk 3 minutes to get to the beach. That gives you an idea of the size of Mompiche, its small.

Mompiche had a mixture of local fisherman and their families, local surfers, foreign locals and tourists. It had a really tranquil vibe with shop owners allowing you to come back later and pay if they didn’t have enough change. This was a regular occurrence with the village being fairly cheap to buy food and absolutely nowhere having change for a twenty note. Even cheaper to buy food were the different fruit and veg trucks that would come past every day or so. Here you could buy all you needed to cook for a few days at minimal price. We ate a lot of guacamole with avocados falling of the back of the trucks at 4 for a dollar. With the local bakery selling cheap bread rolls, there were a lot of guac rolls eaten too.

The owners didn’t want the guests cooking fish in the kitchen so that kind of ruined my plan of eating fresh fish every day and meant I was more or less a vegetarian for my time here. The owners had valid reasons for this request and it probably saved me a lot of money in the end. I also discovered beetroot burgers which I pimped with other flavours and all the trimmings to make them taste amazing. I must be hungry at the moment as I am talking a lot about food and not my time there and now I wish I had a beetroot burger.

Anyway, The Mudhouse was owned by an American/Colombian couple who had built it all from scratch. I dealt with Mendee more than Andres but both of them were incredibly nice people and easy to get along with and they made my time there enjoyable. The work was more or less the same every day. I would work from 6-10pm doing anything that needed doing including check-ins, making beds, tidying around, turning on the lights and serving any beers that the guests wanted. In reality, I sat and chatted with the guests doing the occasional piece of work here and there. Sometimes I would cover in the day time when the owners were busy or I would have a gardening shift but otherwise I would work nights.

This meant I could go surfing everyday whatever the tide times were. Some days I would be up at 6am to catch the glassy morning conditions and other times I would have the day free and surf in the afternoons. Either way I was surfing as much as I could and wasn’t missing out on anything. To save money on a surf board, it was much better to buy it than it was to rent it. At $10 minimum a day it would cost me maybe $300, if not $200 a month if I could get a good deal. If I bought a board, I could sell it afterward and it would maybe cost me $50-100. So this was my plan, try to buy a board and then sell it before I leave.

The problem was that there were only 2 shops that had a selection of boards and 1 of them didn’t have any in my desired size. So the one shop that had a board was my only option and the owner wasn’t being very helpful. The price was extreme and as with everywhere in Latin America, the price is there to be negotiated. I had managed to get a little bit off but not too much and said I would be back later to see if I could afford it. When I went back later the owner had changed his mind and was even less helpful. I managed to get the price we agreed on before and with no other options, I bought the board.

I now had a place to stay, my days free and a surf board to use. The waves were really good when I arrived so I made the most of them. At first, my body could only manage a couple of hours in the water a day with surfing finding those hidden muscles that are rarely used. But after a while, the muscles get stronger, the fitness levels increase and the time in the water can be extended until the tummy tells you it’s time to eat. By the end of my time there I was staying in the water for 5 hours or more. I caught the best waves of my life here in Mompiche and with the way the waves break, it is a really good place to learn and improve.

As with all surf spots, the talk of the town is always about when the next swell is coming in, when the next amazing waves will arrive. There was no difference here with this being the main chat on the streets. For me the waves were already incredible but I was excited to see what they could be. I had to wait a bit though but I wasn’t upset seeing as there were still waves and not too many people. We were meant to be entering the busy season but the tourist numbers didn’t seem to be increasing too much. Before I knew it, we were approaching the end of the year.

For Christmas Day, the whole hostel were going to cook something and bring it to the table. There were a good set of guest there including some that had been staying there for a while already, and in total we had about 20 people sat around the table. There was a variety of food brought to the table (none of which can be found on an English Christmas table) and everything was delicious with sufficient food to stuff everyone full. There were also plenty of beers flying around one end of the table. I had also managed to get a good surf in that morning so the day went pretty well all in all.

After Christmas, the numbers started to rise and Mompiche started to get a bit busier. With Ecuadorian and foreign tourists turning up, I started to have to do a little bit of work in the evenings. I also had to battle a bit harder for the waves in the day time. The New Year’s Eve celebrations here were to be a parade in the streets followed by the burning of Muñecas (dolls – in this case they were life size papier-mâché dolls in old clothes and stuffed with something flammable) and fireworks. They also had some life size boats made from cheap wood and cardboard which I think were to burn. I was working from 6-10pm again so I missed the parade and the burnings.

Once I finished work I sorted myself out at the hostel, had a couple of beers and then took my board to meet Jana, a German girl who I met when I arrived. We had decided to go and surf for the turning of the New Year. What a night it was! Upon entering the water and disturbing it, there was bio-luminescent plankton everywhere. You didn’t even need to move with the waves and current surrounding you in glowing blue flickers of light. It is hypnotic at times with the bio-luminescence mesmerising you and inviting you to play with it more. I would have been content with just splashing around in the water but that wasn’t the reason we were there, that was just an incredibly amazing added bonus.

I was there to surf and with the help of the plankton lighting up the waves as they were breaking, it meant that you can see them coming in the dark of the night. And the waves were coming in clean and regular. The only danger was the inability to see Jana swimming back out as I was catching a wave. To prevent an accident we kind of screamed with joy whilst on a wave. That way the other person knew to get out of the way or warn the other person of their position. With great waves and the glowing plankton, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to bring in the New Year.

Once the surf had ended, we headed back into town to join the party. There were a couple of locations blaring music into the streets with people dancing and partying in the street below. I joined my mate Mateo, who I met in Colombia, and we danced, drank and then ended up at a party on the beach. The parties were very tame compared to other places, I am sure, but they were perfect for what I wanted. They ended with beach fires continuing into the morning and I think I called it a night around 5-6am.

The arrival of the New Year coincided with the arrival of the waves and the waves brought the people as well. With a big swell arriving, Mompiche was busy for the first week of 2020. The atmosphere around town and in the water changed too with a lot more aggression and arguments occurring in the water. All the local surfers were out there, as were the Ecuadorians who had arrived from up and down the coast, and then there were the tourists too. The water was crowded and people were getting stressed out over the waves. The majority of the waves were caught by the locals and there were some good local surfers here.

It was lucky they were good because where they were catching the wave, there were a load of rocks. If you got the take-off wrong, you had to cover your head and hope it wasn’t too bad, especially when the bigger waves arrived. There were still rocks where I was taking off but there were fewer and they were easier to avoid. Unfortunately the rocks had to be there otherwise the waves would have nothing to break them. To arrive at the waves you had to walk along the beach and then walk over the rocks to another small beach to save you having to paddle so much. This was at, or around, low tide – when the waves were generally at their best. When it was high tide you had to paddle a long way to get to the beginning of the breaking waves.

There was another method which involved walking up the hill to the cemetery on the headland and then heading down a steep track and onto the rocks by the little beach. Trying to save time and energy we went this way once and all was good until I stepped in a puddle on the rocks. A shooting pain shot through my foot and leg, it was like something had bitten me. I looked at the bottom of my foot to find blood dripping out of it so I made it down to the water to check it out. There was something sticking out of the bloody hole in my foot, something weird. It was a semi-transparent white rubbery thingy, like a ligament, protruding 2-3mm from the hole. Nobody knew what it was, some thought it was part of me, others thought it was a worm trying to enter my body to lay eggs and others thought it was an alien.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t coming out as it was attached to me inside my foot. But I knew it wasn’t part of me, I could feel it. But unable to remove it and seeing as I had walked all this way, I thought it was best to enjoy the waves whilst they were there and I would deal with it later. Upon returning to the hostel 2 hours later, I was able to remove it with a pair or tweezers or possibly break it off inside of my foot. After asking around, it turns out that I stepped on a Stingray which reacted by stinging me and leaving its barb behind. Fortunately for me, the Stingray was tiny and although the pain was strong, it didn’t have sufficient venom to cause the serious pain that the larger Stingrays are capable of administering. It did hurt for a week but the pain was manageable, just an annoyance. I still have remnants of the hole today, 3 months later, but that is just in the dead skin on the bottom of my foot.

The last option to getting to the waves depended on luck and timing. If you arrived at the beach early in the morning, there was a chance a fishing boat was heading out to sea. The locals were more than happy to give you a ride and you could help them get the boat into the water in return. When this happened, you could get a ride to with 10 metres of where you wanted to surf in no time whatsoever. I arrived at the beach at around 6am one morning and got lucky with my timing. We helped the 2 man crew to get the boat into the water and then jumped in. That’s the moment where it didn’t quite go to plan.

The captain had to time the exit to get past the large wave before they are beginning to break. Our captain managed to stall the motor and then in the panic to get it started, he absolutely floored it to try and get passed the wave rapidly approaching. We kind of arrived as the wave was starting to curl over and rather than floating over the wave, it kind of broke on top of us forcing the boat to go through the wave. This obviously pulled the boat to a sudden stop and sent us all flying to the back of the boat. I was already at the back of the boat so everyone and every surfboard came crashing into me. But we were the right way up, a little bit wet but we were still floating and the boat was in one piece. It normally goes a bit smoother than that time but every now and then you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Other than eating, surfing and standing on Stingrays, there were more things to do around Mompiche. The next cove along was called Playa Escondido (Hidden Beach) which I never actually went to after getting lost once and ending up at a different beach. This beach was called Playa Negra (Black Beach) because the sand was black. There was a lot of a metallic mineral in this sand here, titanium or zinc or something, I don’t remember. Either way, the sand weighed 3 times more than normal sand and sparkled in the sun. It was a beautiful place to go and relax, have lunch (guacamole rolls) or even surf too. Being a 30 minute walk from Mompiche I ended up at Playa Negra on numerous occasions.

Another 30 minutes further down the coast lied Isla Portete, a small island just off the mainland with not much on it. I went there one day with another English guy and we ended up staying the night. With the headland blocking the sunset in Mompiche, Isla Portete was an excellent place to view it. It also is a good place to see turtles hatching if you are in the right season. I was there towards the end of the season and although others saw turtles whilst they were there, I didn’t have such luck. It didn’t dampen the experience with the island being so beautiful and relaxing. It also has a long beach with palm trees set back from the water’s edge.

Palm trees are struggling in Ecuador with there being a kind of plaque that is killing them off. There aren’t too many in Mompiche with the survivors looking a little worse for wear in some cases. In fact the Mudhouse had 12 palm trees when it opened with the last ones being cut down whilst I was there to prevent them from falling on someone whilst they were dying. It is a real shame as nothing can be done to slow the spreading of this disease that is ruin the look of the many paradise beaches around here. Hopefully the trees will fight back and start to line the beaches again in the future.

I had pretty much done my month of volunteering at The Mudhouse by now but it was difficult to leave. Not only were the waves keeping me there but the place and the people too. Mendee didn’t have another volunteer lined up so I was able to stay a bit longer. A lot of the people who had been there a while were leaving as the waves left and I didn’t have much time left in Ecuador due to my Visa running out. It seemed like a good time to go so I started to try and sell my surf board. Whilst Jeff (surf shop owner) was fixing my board from an incident with a rock, I asked him if he knew anyone looking for a board. He said he might.

The next day, I had a visit from a nurse who was on an obligatory work experience from the city to help the poorer areas. She was going to be here for a while and wanted to learn to surf. Jeff had told her that my board was perfect for her and she was interested in buying it. She took a few days but eventually bought it for $25 less than I paid for it from the surf shop. With the repairs I had done, it cost me $60 to surf for a month and a half and I can’t complain about that. So I now didn’t have a surf board, there was also a new volunteer at the Mudhouse and I was ready to go. Or so I thought.

Some waves arrived again and there were much less people here than around the New Year period. I rented a smaller board from Jeff for a few days and stayed at The Mudhouse as a guest. With my new found freedom and a smaller board, I was able to enjoy the waves more and for a much longer period of time, spending maybe 5 hours a day in the water. In the evenings I was able to relax and have a few drinks with Mary, an American lady who had come to live in Mompiche. She was helping out at the Mudhouse and also at the horse shelter in town. I really enjoyed chatting with Mary, and sharing cocktails, and found her life experiences really interesting.

The new volunteer, Tucker, was trying to sell food and drinks from the hostel like they had done before. He knew about food but not about drinks so he needed my help. I probably worked harder whilst he was volunteering than I did when I was! If Tucker wanted to sell cocktails, we had to try them out first. With that, Mary and I were more than happy to help. Earlier in the day I had blended fruits with water and froze them in cylindrical forms. Come the evening, we could chop off some frozen fruits, add more ice and a hefty drop of liquor and whack it all in a blender. Within minutes we had Daiquiris of various fruity flavours flying out of the bar and down our throats.

With time running out in Ecuador, it was time to leave The Mudhouse and Mompiche. I had a friend from Colombia arriving in Ecuador to publicise her brother’s hostel. She was going to tour a few spots in Ecuador in 2 weeks and they happened to be places I wanted to go to. It made it easy for us to travel together and when she went back to Colombia, I would continue my journey to Peru with the timing perfect for my Visa requirements.

That’s where I will join you again next time, as I finish off my time in Ecuador and head through the jungle to Peru. At the moment I am quarantined in Peru so I imagine the ample spare time will enable me to bring you up to date with where I am now. Hopefully anyway.