Just a Day at the Beach

Kicking Back at the Beach

Sorry for the delay in posting. We’ve been busy the past week and a half; but I have all those stories here. We have been in Ecuador for about three months. We have been taking our time making our apartment into a home, complete with house plants, paintings, furniture, and even lime and orange trees. All the while, some of our other more adventurous collegues have been touring the country on their weekends and seeing some of the sites. We decided that now we were comfortable with our home, it was time to take some adventures.

Another couple friends of ours were feeling the same way, and with a long weekend coming up, booked a sweet beach house on Air B&B. It was a big house on the beach and a total of 10 teachers, three dogs, and a few bags of snacks were shortly on the way.

Due to our current lack of a car (may change soon, stay posted) we had to figure out alternate transportation. Shannon rode with our friends Adrian and Ashley and their new puppy and I rode with our friends Betsy and Roman, along with Howie and their dog, Lucy. To say the ride was uneventful would be about as big of a lie as I could tell.

Small Shanty Town

One thing that you need to know about Ecuador is they have the WORST drivers in the world. I am not trying to make some sort of hyperbole saturated statement. They do not pay attention to speed limits, lanes, traffic lights, or passing regulations. In the city it’s fairly common and relatively easy to navigate if you’ve ever driven in NJ or NY before. The proper mindset is, if they don’t want to crash, they’ll yield to me. This is how EVERYONE acts, so if you drive passively or defensively, you literally won’t go anywhere. Well, that’s just in the city. In the countryside, it is much worse. Ecuador as a country is about the size of Nevada, yet it takes a long time to get from Quito to anywhere due to the elevation. There are many winding mountain roads. On said mountain roads, there are very seldom any stretches of straight road for more than 50 feet so obviously there is no passing. That obvious statement is wrong. People in the countryside of Ecuador drive as if a normal one lane each direction road is a two lane highway. I saw countless people drive over 80mph over hairpin turns and pass each other as they are in oncoming traffic going around mountain bends. It is a very nerve-wracking and dangerous experience, but it is common place among Ecuadorian drivers.

People Selling Produce and Goods
Along the Roads

I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't tell you about some of the things we saw along the drive. We saw a few mountain cattle. I’ve heard of mountain goats, but never mountain cattle but these things got pretty high up on the sides of very steep mountains to graze.  We also saw some sweet donkeys just roaming the mountains randomly, and at least a dozen very formidable looking Ecuadorian men stalking the streets with 3 foot machetes. We saw some beautiful rain forests and jungles. Also, while this may be unbelievable, we ran into some signs on the road that were advertising land for sale that cost $1.50 per square meter. Now before you go investing, this is in a super rural area of the jungle with no electricity, running water, or signs of civilization for hours; but if that’s your cup of tea, I can verify it’s a real thing. One of the things that struck me along the way is the great disparity of wealth between Quito and the rural areas. Quito is a sprawling city and by no means does it exude wealth in the way of a Dubai or Tokyo. It just seems like an average run of the mill South American city. There are cars, restaurants, and some poor seedy areas. The rural areas surrounding Quito are poor. I’m talking the kind of poverty where nearly every house is made of spare sheet metal, straw, mud, and if you’re lucky, a segment of chain link fence. It was a side of Ecuador that I had known about, but seeing it was really a revelation for me. It made me appreciate everything I have even more than I already do.

The driver of my car, Roman was able to luckily navigate these crazy drivers and shanty towns and deliver us to Same, the beach town where we were going within the projected 7 hours it was supposed to take. We decided since we were the first ones there, we would pick up some food for everyone and stopped at a little pizza place along the road. It was a nice setup. After a 7 hour drive, I obviously had to use the bathroom and they had a nice little walled in outside bathroom much like you’d see at a public pool. I started going to the bathroom, and to my absolute surprise and if I’m being honest momentary terror, a bright green and yellow frog the size of a fist crawled out of the bottom of the toilet and jumped onto the rim of the toilet. I repeat, a frog the size of a fist crawled out of the area where things are flushed. I quickly finished and retreated out of there realizing that the plumbing over the weekend might get a little suspect.

You'd have to ask Shannon for specifics about her ride, but I gather that it was slightly less pleasant, with a puppy getting car sick in the backseat with her about 7 times. 

The Living Room

When we got to the house, we found some of our friends already there and we got settled into a nice night of hanging out on the giant terrace overlooking the beach. It was great. The house had enough space to accommodate 10 people and 3 dogs and it cost us $75 for each person for the whole weekend. It was a sweet deal.

View from the Terrace

The next day, we spent just about all of our time on the beach, in the pool, or swimming in the Pacific. Interesting side note, I had never seen the Pacific before this trip. The owner of the house who was renting it out to us was very accommodating and showed up shortly after we woke up with about 15 lbs of Mahi Mahi for us that was freshly caught that morning. In the afternoon, he arranged for his empleada to come to the house and fry it up fresh for us along with some freshly fried plantain chips. 

Hanging Out at the Beach House

We were ecstatic. Fresh seafood, no need to leave the beach, and delivery included! When he came back at lunch time to check on us, we started to get a little weirded out. He asked us if we had everything we needed, and then cracked open a beer and sat with us as we were hanging out. It was starting to seem like he was renting out his house to make friends and we were just there to rent his house. We politely hinted at him leaving and he lingered for another half hour or so before getting out.

Beach Day, Ecuador Style

Shannon, Adrian, Ashley and I took the dogs for a nice walk down the beach and about a mile or so down the beach, we found a great restaurant that had a nice little patio overlooking the beach and ordered some more fresh seafood. Shannon and I split a nice fried whole fish, which was another first for me and it was fantastic! We picked the bones clean and after eating and drinking our fill, paid our $8 or so and got out of there to spend some more time on the beach.

Selling Goods for
All Saint's Day

The next day was much of the same. The starting to get creepy landlord was there when we woke up. He delivered 15 lbs of marlin and 15 lbs of shrimp for us and then lingered a bit too long. We left, hoping he’d be gone when we got back. We walked to the same restaurant for breakfast and had fresh rolls, eggs, fresh juice, coffee, and plantains for $4 each and spent the rest of the day on the beach. This day marked the aforementioned All Saints Day and our beach house was about a half block away from a cemetery. We were able to witness some of the traditions from the beach at a respectable distance of course. There were food stands, and flowers being sold on the side of the street and many people shared a meal with their departed loved ones.

When we went back to the house for lunch, we found that the empleada was there finishing up on two batches of fresh ceviche, one shrimp and marlin mixed, and one just marlin. It was absolutely out of this world.

After a nice lunch of ceviche, we went back down to the beach where the weather was again perfect and went swimming. We were at a part of the beach where at knee level, the sand gave way to large flat rocks the size and shape of a couch cushion. I miss-stepped and slipped on one as a wave was coming in and cut the side of my foot pretty deeply on the side of another rock. A little salt water and sitting down and I was find. 

Fire on the Hill!

We all awoke from beach naps to the sound and smell of a campfire and noticed that the woods on top of the hill near us was on fire. It started out as a small plume of smoke and evolved into a full blown forest fire. The local fire fighters and military were called in to fight it and after a good couple of hours of hard work, they got it under control. 

On our way back to the house to get ready for dinner, we saw the landlord again. It was getting really weird. He was just hanging out, and this time we directly told him he was being inappropriate and we wanted some privacy to hang out with our friends. He didn't get the hint and stayed another hour and a half...

99 Bottles of Beer on the
Wall

That night we went for a walk and found another delicious seafood restaurant on the beach which had a pretty neat interior. There were bottles hanging everywhere and it was dimly lit, mostly with candles. After some waiting (Ecuadorian time…) we had some Pescado Encocada delivered and ate our fill yet again. Pescado Encocada is a coastal Ecuadorian tradition of a coconut cream based sauce with fresh fish or shrimp and it was perfection.

When we got back to the house, all of the water was shut off. We weren't sure if that was good 'ole Ecuadorian plumbing or if there were more sinister things afoot. Some of us theorized that the creepy landlord shut off the water in order to have us call him for help. This idea was given some legitimacy when one of our group went outside to smoke a cigarette and found the landlord asleep in his car outside of the house. It was very creepy.

The morning that we were leaving, Shannon and I asked everyone if they wanted to go back to the breakfast place before we hit the road and some of our friends met us there while the rest said they would catch up later. On our way back down the beach to the house, we saw them and they told us that on their way to the restaurant they were watching their dog play in the surf and two teenage boys came up behind them with kitchen knives and robbed them. They took $20, a cell phone, and a necklace from them. It was a disappointing, yet strong reminder to us all that while paradise can be found within pockets of a poverty stricken country, even paradise itself carries some risk with it.

We made our way back shortly after that and along the way we could smell the cacao being fermented and roasted. It was heavenly. Imagine, a while village that always smelled of chocolate. We of course stopped to by some fresh fruit, vegetables, and chocolate and made our way back to Quito after another 7 hours of dodging maniacs and holding on as we went around the winding roads of Ecuador.