Following my Christmas vacation spent in Canada, seeing family and cross country skiing with my dog, I flew back to Quito, Ecuador via Houston and Bogota. Jono picked me up in the Safari when I landed, and we immediately decided to head to the southern coast for some surfing.
On the way, we did have a brief run-in with Ecuadorean police who were trying to extract a bribe. Fortunately he clearly had limited experience with foreigners and quickly gave up when we bluntly told him we didn’t need to have the ministry permit he claimed we needed.
We passed the night en route in Guayaquil, which appears to be the fast-growing business capital of Equador that looks like it may be displacing Quito. The town has somewhat of a reputation for being a rough port city, both among travelers and in the Lonely Planet guidebook, but to us it looked like a pretty decent city. What was most noticeable to us was the good highways and roads, many gated communities, malls, and office buildings on the outskirts, a well-built and policed downtown, and spectacular newly renovated malecón (waterfront seawall). We spent the Thursday evening having dinner and beers at a food court area on the Malecon, looking at lights of the city down the bay and a tall ship turned party boat cruising off shore. Guayaquil was in a way another demonstration of a trend we are clearly observing almost everywhere we travel – that in most of the world the lifestyle of middle class professionals is very similar and becoming more so all the time. Whether we think a world of condos and box malls is what we want to be creating is a separate debate…
The next morning we took the fast four lane highway towards the coast and then north, stopping at the well known resort town of Monteñita for lunch, and finally continuing twenty minutes farther north, to Playa Ayampe, where we planned to surf for a few days.
In stark contrast to the fiesta madness going on at Montanita, Ayampe is a quiet little beach, with a single unpaved access road leading in from the highway. A couple hostels and little hotels are on the beach, as well as a few restaurants. We stayed at Finca Ayampe, a nice chilled out and very quiet guesthouse on a hill overlooking the break. The beach break was clean and slow but also quite big, making it quite a challenge for us. It was a fun few days of surfing though! Here’s a view from the deck of Finca Ayampe down the hill to the beach and me getting ready for the session…
After a few healthy days of sleeping and surfing here, we decided to head over to Montanita for a couple days to a more lively scene and to meet my friend Ernesto, who I know from exchange in Lyon.
Ernesto showed up with his entourage of 10 cousins (mas o menos) ready for some real Ecuadorean style partying. Montanita is party non-stop, especially in January and February when it is absolutely packed with vacationing Argentinians, Chileans, Peruvians, Ecuadoreans, and a smattering of international tourists. It’s really the young Argentinians that make the place crazy though. At least a few dozen kiosks armed with blenders, huge liquor selections, and piles of fruits make any possible concoction for as little as $2.50 USD (less for simpler drinks or beer) and the streets and beach are one crazy non-stop party that starts in the afternoon and really doesn’t peak until 3am. Oh, and there’s also some decent surfing on the beach out front…
After two nights of intense partying, we thought of visiting Ernesto’s family in Cuenca. Unfortunately, since we didn’t go to bed until 5:30am on the last night and we had to start an all day drive that needed to start at 8am to make it to Cuenca before sundown, we had to give up mid-way and spend one more night in our favourite hotel in the city of Guayaquil (where we were now regulars, this being our third stay) before heading south again to look for some surf on the shores of Peru.