Atacames

View from the hotel room

Atacames is another coastal town, where a pleasant little swell was unfolding itself onto the beach. I had some fun little waves, but on our last day I emerged from the sea covered in brutal bites from obviously mutated sea lice. I looked truly freakish, with a coating of bright red raised bumps everywhere, and with a pith helmet and moustache I could have passed for an early English jungle explorer in the days before insect repellent. Some hardcore Ecuadorian skin lotion, possibly also useful for stripping paint, took care of things, but even as I write this five days later, the bumps and intense itching return periodically to haunt me.