I Woke Up Like This

Life is good when you volunteer at Donkey Den Guesthouse on the small beach of Santa Marianita in Ecuador.

Kitesurfing and watching the waves crash are two of the main activities on this laid back beach outside of Manta.

In case you were wondering what I’ve been up to for the past two weeks, the answer is, not much. I’ve been straight kickin’ it working as a volunteer for Donkey Den Bed and Breakfast in Santa Marianita, Ecuador, an isolated beach outside of Manta where the sun waits for the weekend to shine. I found the gig at Donkey Den through HelpX. The hotel boasts three pretty sick apartment-style suites, four more private rooms, and a dorm room with five beds. The kitchen and common areas are all outside, because why not? The weather is always warm and there’s a roof to protect against uncommon rain. Most people, staff, visitors, pets and guests alike, congregate around the long rectangular dining table. In fact, sometimes, it looks like the Last Supper, with everyone on one side facing the ocean, looking out for whales or kite surfers or just simply watching the waves crash. I rest my elbows on the beautiful tapestry that serves as a table cloth as I cradle my second cup of coffee in the morning, watching the ocean change colors. Sometimes one of the ten cats tries to test its luck sitting on the table, and he or she is promptly denied via a squirt of water to the face. Sometimes Yahtzee dice spill over the surface of the table as the volunteers and I play our boss Cheryl, who adds up the dice for all of us sleepy heads. Sometimes I lead the girls in some early morning yoga on the beach, the constant sound of the waves hitting the sand as soothing as saying “Ommmeeee.” I wonder sometimes why that sound hasn’t started to piss me off, like other constant, unending sounds are prone to do. The worst it’s done is give me weird dreams, but I’m not alone in that. Something about this beach keeps almost everyone here from having a decent, and dream free, night’s sleep.

Laura and Annette on left, Juliet on right.

During these two weeks of bliss, I haven’t even bothered to groom properly. I can’t remember the last time I put on makeup, or shaved my legs, or properly and consistently washed my hair. Hawt, right? But I give zero fucks because my sick tan has hidden the bags under my eyes, the sun has bleached my leg hair blond, and the ocean cleans my hair every day anyway and gives it that beachy style that bitches be jealous of. As the wise Beyonce once said, “I woke up like this, I woke up like this.”

Then there’s the sand. It’s everywhere, even after a shower, a constant reminder that you are living on a fucking beach. It latches on to your ankles, finds a home between your shoulder blades. It coats your underwear line and the crease behind your ears. You scratch your scalp and find sand under your fingernails. You sleep with it at night, despite a vain, half-ass attempt to brush your feet together and remove some before resting your legs on your already sandy sheets. It is a friend, a companion, by no means a burden. The sand is an accepted part of your daily journey, and I bring it with me on my walk to Ocean Freaks, onto the hammock where I’ll read a book, and to my few hours of pretty chill work per day, which starts with wiping the sand and cat/dog hair from the furniture in the morning.

Work also consists of cleaning the rooms when guests check out, taking the few breakfast orders, cutting fruit, walking the dogs down the beach at night, and any other odd jobs that Cheryl comes up for us. I can proudly say that I helped paint a fence, varnished a bunch of bamboo, and gave the garden a haircut.

Truly, there is not much to do here except kite surfing (it took me a week to give in and take lessons and another week to fall in love), perfecting the art of chilling out, and getting to know the people around you. There’s Cheryl, who retired to Ecuador from Canada and has been running the Donkey Den for a little under a year for the owner Linda, a 70 year old Floridian princess. Annette and Juliet are best friends and my fellow volunteers from the Netherlands who have been traveling together through Central and South America and learning to kite surf along the way. Laura, another volunteer from Dublin, has just arrived and already we are making plans to meet up in Cuzco in a few weeks. Jooast and Lillian are basically part of the family, too. They live in a bright yellow Volkswagen that they bought in Chile and have been driving around South America, also kitesurfing, but they take showers and cook meals at the Donkey Den. There’s Sam, the kite surfing artist from Canada who lives in Dominican Republic. There were the Uno Nazis, a German couple who are really, really serious about Uno (Clarification: I called them Nazis because they are strict card players. Their German-ness only made it more funny). We have 10 cats and 3 dogs, all rescues. The cats are Tiger, Tigger, Tommy, Kiwi, Shortie, Fido, Mozzarella, Joe, Rodriguez, and Bubba. Shortie has a temper, Fido is an asshole, Mozzarella is cuddly and Rodriguez is a prince. The dogs are Barney, Bailey, Pepe. Barney is a lady, Pepe is a gentleman, and Bailey runs really fast. Maira and Fernanda are sisters and Santa Marianita locals who come to work every morning. Fernanda sees to the general cleaning of the property, while Maira prepares the delicious breakfast, sometimes just for the volunteers if there are no paying customers. We, as volunteers, are entitled to a free breakfast every morning, which I milk profusely, cutting myself a bowl of fruit before I order the Scramble and a side of stuffed french toast.

Annette and Juliet with an apple pie they made during a blackout

Then of course there are the Gringos, the ex-pats, the Golden Girls. The motley crew of Canadian and American retirees who congregate around their ring leader, Linda, to drink coffee and booze at our table, buy breakfast on Gringo Sunday, and share information about how to survive in a third world country with zero knowledge of the language spoken there, a big bank account, and a trusted contractor. A true talent indeed when all the locals are out to get you…she said sarcastically.

Now that I’m gone and embarking slowly on another adventure, I truly miss my life there. I miss searching for friends on the water by looking for their kites. I miss Cheryl telling me that I’m going to make some man an excellent wife every time I cooked her dinner. I miss Annette’s girlish laugh and Juliet telling me to enjoy my meal as I sat down with any plate in front of me. I miss Laura singing showtunes and leaving me in stitches with her quick wit. I miss being barefoot all the time and watching the sky change. I miss the rare nights when the clouds weren’t hiding the stars and I could look up and see thousands of them. I miss the donkeys walking up to our garbage for a snack. I miss the man who does drive bys in his truck, blasting over a loudspeaker that he’ll sell you “pina, mandarinas, verduras, cebollas…etc.” I miss burning my feet on the hot sand and dodging rocks on my walk to the kite school. I miss feeling the strong undercurrent of the ocean pull at my ankles. I miss waking up with sore muscles. And I miss kitesurfing. I always thought that I couldn’t stay in one place for more than two weeks while traveling, but now I wish I could go back and carry on the life that I started for myself there.

Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be back. But until then, onto the next adventure.

by Rebecca Bellan

October 20, 2014April 28, 2015

Kite Surfing: The Obsession

Kitesurfing on Santa Marianita beach, Ecuador

I have fallen in love, and his name is kite surfing.

Once you stand up on that board, there is no going back.

I feel like I’ve just fallen in love with the boy of my dreams, and I have to leave him. Yesterday, after a week of waiting for my kiting instructor to give me the OK, I took a board out on the water, and I stood up! Now that I’ve finally felt the true potential of this sport, I can think of nothing else but where and how I can be reunited with my love again. In a panic last night, I scoured the internet for good kite surfing locations in Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia. Anywhere. I am addicted, and will cut back on other expenses just so I can pay for a few hours here and there of lessons, and maybe pick up some gear along the way. I’m even researching flights to the Domincan Republic because my new pro friend Sam has offered me the use of her Star Kite-sponsored gear and her place to crash in.

After breakfast yesterday, I looked out at the shining sun and the kites starting to decorate the sky, and I thought, If I don’t make it on a board today, I’m giving up. I strolled over to the kite school to see if I could maybe get a lesson, not truly caring anymore and starting to think that maybe me and kite surfing weren’t meant to be. My instructor looked over the schedule. “Are you free right now?” he asked.

I ran back to Donkey Den to change, excitingly telling everyone there that I would actually have a lesson today. I threw on a sports bra and shorts and bounded out of the gate as guests and staff alike wished me well. They had all heard me bitch endlessly about how bad I wanted to stand up on the board before I left. I half ran, half skipped back to the kite school, rubbing sunscreen on my face and shoulders on the way.

Frainin and I did the usual stuff, setting up the kite and walking upwind with it. He had me body drag down the beach two times before he deemed me ready to get on the board. Actually, he said, I should have body dragged one more time, but I annoyed him so much that, thankfully, he decided to skip the third. He took hold of the kite and I held the board as we walked downwind for the third time that day. Even though I was wearing a helmet and a life jacket, I felt pretty cool as I passed other newbs in helmets still learning how to hold the kite or body drag. I was walking with an actual board with the actual intention of riding the fucker. On the way I passed other kiting friends and acquaintances. Jooast, a Dutch instructor who cooks meals at Donkey Den with his girlfriend Lillian, gave me a high five. His pupil, a guy from Switzerland who drinks beer at our table sometimes, wished me good luck. I saw Doc, AKA Javier, another instructor at the school, and he, too, wished me well. Annette and Juliet, my fellow volunteers, were handling their kite and shouted out, “You go girl!” I nearly moon walked the whole strip of the beach.

Frainin stopped and looked out at the waves pensively. He then demonstrated in the sand how I would get on my board in the water, then had me mimic his movements. I laid on my left side, with my left hand holding the handle on the board. He told me to press down on the board with my elbow. Then I had to come upright and move the board in front of me, using my left hand only as my right was on the bar, pretending to hold up the kite. Once the board was in front of me and I had my feet in the straps, I bent my legs and scooted my butt forward, flexing my feet to bring the board up on an angle. Frainin grabbed the lines and, acting as the kite, pulled hard to bring me up to standing. As he continued to pull, I felt my body go into the familiar stance of a kite boarder trying not to fly away with the kite. I straightened my left leg, bent my right knee and leaned back, holding the bar in front of me and trusting in the strength of the pull. Frainin gave me a mischievous smile and let go of the lines, letting me fall onto my back in the sand. He explained that to get the kite to pull me up, I’d have to bring it down to 10 o’clock and quickly back up to 12, repeatedly. This would put my left foot forward and take me out to sea, similar to body dragging. 12 to 2 would put my right foot forward and take me to the shore.

Into the water again. My left arm clumsily supported the board while I held onto Frainin’s harness as he and the kite dragged us out past the waves. He attached the kite to my harness. Ah, that familiar pull in your gut. I angled the board in front of me with little grace as my instructor held onto the back of my harness. I tried to keep the kite neutral at 12 with my right hand and use my left to hold the board steady enough to slp my feet in. OK, I was in the right position. Now all I had to do was move the kite. Tentatively, slowly, carefully, I brought it down to 10 and back up to 12. “Faster,” said Frainin exasperatedly. I told myself to stop being a wuss and brought it down hard to 10 and fast back up to 12. Push the bar up on the line a bit to depower, pull it closer to you to power. Relax. Loosen your grip on the bar a little. And suddenly I was standing up. And just as suddenly I was back down and Frainin was telling me to keep the kite at 12. “OK, good. Again.” 10, 12. Depower, power. I’m up and trying to keep my body straight, but my ass keeps dipping threateningly close to the water. My legs are shaking with the strain, but my brain is starting to understand what it has to tell my body to do. After a couple more soft crashes, Frainin tells me to face the beach and do the same on the other side. Let’s just say, my right side is not my strong side. 12, 2, I’m standing up and falling immediately back down. Right, I’m supposed to switch my legs. Straighten the right leg, bend the left. I tried again and ate it hard enough to lose the board. Frainin grabs a hold of it and tells me to body drag out of the water. The waves crash behind me and on top of me, but the kite pulls me out of harm’s way and makes me feel invincible. Obviously, I make it out way before Frainin and experience a sensation of glee and freedom at holding onto the kite without an instructor around. I feel like it makes me better when I have to listen to my instincts instead of Dominican-accented Spanglish. When he made it over to me, he told me I did a good job and asked if I was happy. I answered honestly. “Sort of. I need to try again. We’re going back out, right?” He tells me that we’ve already been gone an hour and a half when I only paid for an hour, an he has another lesson to go teach. Something about the way I stomped my feet and pouted like a child must have either softened his heart or scared him because he granted me another half hour.

Out past the waves, and already my body was learning how to deal with the board in the water. I got my feet in, gave a little practice 12 to 10, and then swung the kite hard, bringing me to a standing position. I was soaring for a while, cheesing hard as I watched my board cut through the impossibly blue water. Then I looked around and realized that I was pretty far out to the ocean, and brought the kite back to 12 so I could rest and get my bearings. I looked back and saw Frainin a ways away, pointing toward the shore line. Reluctantly, I angled my board the other way, brought the kite back down to 2 and made it a few feet before I crashed and lost my board again. Clearly my success rate is pretty low on my right side. I tried for a while to have the kite drag me to the board, barely hearing Frainin yell instructions at me over the surf. I soon gave up and just body dragged out. Frainin met me at the shore and took the kite from me so he could go back in for the board. Before he headed into the water, he seemed genuinely impressed that I was able to stand up for so long. “You went at least 20 or 30 meters. It takes most students a whole day, maybe two, to stand up like that.” Maybe he was just flattering me because he knew how much it meant to me, but I was in the clouds for the rest of the day.

I’m heading to Peru today. I hear Mancora has good kite boarding….Stay tuned!

by Rebecca Bellan

October 18, 2014April 28, 2015

Any Way the Wind Blows…Kind of Matters To Me

Read about my first lessons learning how to kite surf!

Controlling the kite and the wind is a real challenge, and one that I am more that up for.

“Do you think the wind will be good today?” We here at Donkey Den Bed and Breakfast on the remote Santa Marianita Beach outside of Manta, Ecuador live in anticipation of a constant gust of wind. Every morning, the guests, visitors, and gringo locals around the rectangular, tapestry-clad dining room table ask each other the same question. Sometimes we whistle to make the wind blow (an old sailor trick), sometimes we look out on the horizon for white caps on the water, sometimes we hope the shining sun will cause thermic winds. You can hear it before you see it, your eyes usually on a book or your phone to distract you from the disappointment of still air. The seashell wind chimes start to clang together and the palm fronds hiss as they sway. You look up and scan the horizon, and with the blessing of the wind god, you spot a kite in the air. Soon the sky is littered with kites twisting and turning and pulling their surfers along the warm Pacific waters. The other volunteers at Donkey Den and I look imploringly at our boss, Cheryl, as she sips her third cup of black coffee and says, “Go ahead, girls. The wind’s picking up.”

Sunscreen. Sports bra. Harness. Pump. Kite. And we’re off. My Dutch girls Annette and Juliet are far more experienced than I am. Their blue eyes shine vibrantly on their impossibly tanned skin, a couple of sun kissed Amazons sharing a board and an F1 kite that they bought in Peru. They learned in Brazil have been more or less making their way around Central and South America, alternating between simply traveling and staying in kite surfing meccas like Corn Islands, Nicaragua or Mancora, Peru to up their kiting game before heading back to the Netherlands. They have had about three solid weeks of experience all together, but to me and my three hours of lessons, they look like pros.

Juliet on the left, Annette on the right

Each day, I nearly sprint the length of the beach to the kite school called Ocean Freaks for a lesson, a combination of excitement and hot sand on my bare feet adding a pep to my step. However, the past few days have gone as follows: I see my instructor outside, his afro tied into a bun. Frainin Santana is a 24 year old, Star Kite sponsored, Dominican who came to Santa Marianita to compete in Fly Fest, a kiting competition that took place here a few weeks ago, and who is sticking around for a bit to practice kiting and teach.

He sees me walking up and shakes his head at me. Instantly my spirits fall. “No wind today,” he says. Or, “Waves too big today. You could get hurt.” I look around at the few kites I see in the air and start to protest. He insists that it’s no good for learning, that the kiters on the water are pros, that he doesn’t have a big enough kite for me to practice on for me to catch the wind, or I won’t be able to make it out past the crash of the waves with a kite in my hand. Yada, yada, yada. So instead I grab a boogie board from the school and set to work riding the warm pacific waves and skimming on my stomach on the shallow surf. Or sometimes I just sulk back to Donkey Den.

Back at home base, I watch the hammock chairs sway in the wind, eager to get to my next lesson before my help exchange ends (It is now Saturday, I leave Monday) so I can finally learn to stand on the board. Frainin has promised me that I will be kiting on my own before I leave, but he doesn’t control the wind, so I don’t know what his word is worth. My first two hours weren’t as thrilling as I had hoped. I paid $108 for all three, a discounted price provided I bartend for the surf school this weekend. After harnessing up and putting on an embarrasing helmet to let others know that I’m a beginner, I set to learning the language of the wind. Frainin taught me how to feel which way the wind was blowing, which way was upwind and downwind, like a stream. He then instructed me how to blow up the kite, a 9 meter Slingshot, how to untangle the lines, and how to attach them to the kite. All the while, he barely lifted a finger. He told me that I needed to do it on my own because when I have my own kite, no one will be helping me. I like this philosophy. After we set up the kite, he held onto the bar and told me to launch it for him. I flipped the kite to an upright position, holding it tight to my body so it wouldn’t hit me in the face, and when he gave me the thumbs up, I let go and watched it soar. I had gathered from watching other kiters that the universal symbol for launch is a thumbs up, and the universal symbol for catch my kite is a few pats on your head. Frainin expertly held the kite at its zenith with one hand, then leaned in the sand and drew a half of a clock with his finger, explaining that when the kite was directly overhead, it was at 12 o’clock, and so forth. He attached the kite to my harness, and I instantly felt the pull in my core as he explained things about the line that I didn’t fully understand and wasn’t fully paying attention to at the time. I just wanted to get my hands on that bar. After he attached the safety line to me, he continued to hold onto the bar and then, to my dismay, lowered it to the ground. He made me practice pulling the quick release and safety leash about ten times until he was satisfied that I could unhinge myself from the line in case of emergency, then relaunched the kite.

Steering a kite in the wind is about subtlety. Grasp the bar too tight, and you put too much pressure on the lines, which tightens the fabric of the kite against the wind and makes it harder to control (for me). Pull too hard on either side, and the kite will move quickly and could crash. The closer the bar is to your body, the more power you give it. It is a dance of power and de-power, light pressure on the left to bring the kite to 11 and 10 o’clock, and light pressure on the right to bring it to 1 and 2 o’clock. Keep your eyes on the kite. Bring it back to 12. De-power, tug the left a little, and power to hold it at 12. All easier said than done. Frainin was constantly telling me to relax my grip and shoulders, holding onto the bar above my hands and moving it how I was meant to move it. When I felt it through his movements, the wind making the kite do a figure 8 from 2 to 12, I thought Oh, I get it. He let go, and I nearly dropped it. Two hours of looking straight up, and my neck was killing me. I tried to look down for a second’s respite and crashed the kite at 3 o’clock. My instructor talked me through launching it myself, lightly pulling on the left until the wind inflates the fabric, then yelled at me to depower so I don’t pull too hard and send it crashing at 9 o’clock, then urged me to power so the kite stays at 12. I was starting to get the hang of it. I practiced steering the kite to left and right, holding it in different positions and walking with it, and learning how to turn my body and feet with the pull of the harness, changing my stance every time the kite threatened to lift me into the air. Just when I started to get cocky and allow my neck a rest, the kite went wild. In an attempt to center it, I powered hard, despite Frainin’s shouts to let go of the bar. This action sent me flying into the air and crashing onto the wet sand a few feet away. I giggled at the rush of taking off into flight. My instructor lifted me up by the back of my harness and admonished me to learn to let go. I lost control of the kite a few more times during my lesson, and it dragged me by my heels around the sand before I realized, reluctantly, that I’m new and can’t always control the kite and need to let go and let it crash.

After two hours, the sky was overcast and the wind was dying. Frainin promised me that I would get in the water the next day. It was noon when I went back for my third hour. After setting up and launching the kite, I squinted up at it, the sun bright above my location so near the equator. A night’s rest made controlling the kite easier. After warming up a bit with the kite, Frainin had me hold the it with one hand at 2 o’clock and walk upwind for quite a while. I tried to alternate between looking at the kite and not steeping on rocks as he zigzagged me into and out of the water in an attempt to teach me how I’ll be moving in the water. A kite won’t simply take you in a straight line from Point A to Point B; you’ve got to move diagonally. When we had made it all the way back to Donkey Den, he hooked the kite to himself and we started to go into the water. I didn’t really understand what we were doing, and he didn’t really explain. I was instructed to hold onto the back of his harness with my right hand. He held the kite at 2 o’clock with his right hand. With our right hands otherwise engaged and our left arms pointed straight towards the sea, it fell to the kicking of our legs extended towards the beach to get us out past the crashing waves to calmer waters. I nearly choked to death on the water and was struggling to stay afloat without the use of both of my hands, so I let go of his harness. He instantly whipped his head around as I started to drift away from him and sternly told me that I needed to stay attached to him. Reluctantly I held back on, but I only had to struggle with the waves for a moment longer because soon Frainin was angling the kite in the ways he taught me to angle on the sand and propelling us in zigzags through the water. The kite lifted our upper bodies out of the water as we soared downwind to the right then the left. After a few joyous minutes of being a passenger, Frainin held the kite at 12, then, waiting for the right wave to take us home, quickly angled the kite to 2:30, pulling us to the shore, the waves crashing behind me. I expected nothing like this. My surprise at how nice it felt to glide through the water and at how fast we were going made me laugh hysterically as we walked the kite back down the length of the beach.

Now it was my turn to control the kite. I didn’t see how I would create the same effect. After nearly drowning on my way back in, this time with myself holding the kite with one hand while Frainin held onto my harness, and after trying to get used to the salty sting in my eyes, I finally made it out to softer waters. I put two hands on the bar and powered, holding the kite at 12. I took a deep breath and tried to remember my lessons. Once you realize how to hold your body, with your feet either to your sides or behind you, never in front of you, it’s not so different from doing it on land. With a squeal of delight I realized that powering hard at 12 will lift me out of the water. Soon, it was back to square one, proving to Frainin that I could bring the kite down to whatever time he told me. I started bringing it down to 2 and back up to 12 faster and more fluidly, making figure 8’s in the wind. Like so many other things your body learns to do, you can feel when you’re doing it right. Oddly, my mind went to the time I learned how to throw a football, and how good it felt to feel the old pigskin spiral off my fingertips. Soon Frainin was giving less instructions and only offering a few words of praise as I felt myself being uplifted and dragged happily through the turquoise water. I created figure 8’s with the kite on the either side, zigzagging through the water, looking nowhere but up at my kite, until my instructor told me to bring it down to 3 and take us to the shore. Again, I giggled the whole way, sand pouring into my shorts as the water became more shallow. We completed this exercise one more time, and then my hour was up.

Now it’s Saturday. The conditions have been abhorrent for learning the past three days. Everyone tells me to be patient, to which I animatedly reply that I can’t because I’m leaving in two days and I need to get on a board TODAY.

Unfortunately, as I sit and write down my recollections, I am in charge of watching the bed and breakfast for the next few hours. Cheryl is playing bridge, and the other two volunteers, along with any of my potential instructors, are on the water. I can only hope that the conditions remain ideal in the next few hours so I can get a lesson and some practice in.

by Rebecca Bellan