The Ox is Slow but the Earth is Patient. Old Chinese Proverb.

For those of you late to class, Ecuador has three major geographical divisions: jungles, mountains and volcanoes and the coastal regions. Leaving the jungle and mountain regions behind, we left Riobamba at 9035 feet altitude to head down to sea level and see what was up with some of the beaches in Ecuador.

We found out that with a little effort you too can have some of them to yourself.

Stopped in Ecuador's second largest city, Guayaquil for a couple of weeks to do some government work at the US Embassy and extend our visas at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Stretched out along the Guayas River is a large promenade that has a museum, entertainment, gardens, restaurants and river tours,

The Guayas River has some type of plant mats floating on the surface; probably has something to do with nutrient run off. It was interesting to watch the tides change, the herbage pause and then head in the opposite direction. A gondola was built to ease car traffic to a residential area across the river; served as a cheap tour of the city for us.

Parque Seminario in downtown Guayaquil is packed with iguanas.

I was doom-scrolling the day's news when Lilly pointed out that I had a visitor. As we checked each other out, we collectively yawned and continued to be indifferent to each other

Chaos left town to Salinas, which is touted as "like Miami". Well, maybe some parts of Miami, but certainly not South Beach. More like Atlantic City; sure there are condos and hotels along the beach, but venture two blocks inland and it is one room cinder block houses. Families like the beaches in Salinas because they are very shallow, wave-less and safe for the kiddos. As those qualities are judged as unfortunate to me, I never went in the water but sat on the beach, people watched and shot the shit with the persistent vendors.

The only thing more persistent than the beach vendors was the sound of car alarms going off. I asked our gringo host about it and he said it is the Ecuadorian National Anthem. It was Easter Holy Week and the place was jammed with families loading the accouterments that they feel is necessary to take the kids to the beach: coolers, pails and shovels, towels, ring floaties, boombox; if they forgot anything they could always buy more from the persistent vendors.

For some reason, every time that they went to their car, the car alarm went off, sometimes a dozen or so at the same time and from early morning to early morning. I went to a few ex-pat forums and found some plausible reasons. One was that they like to set them off to call attention to their new SUV. More likely, the other was that the South American car alarms are for some reason more sensitive to motion. So for example, when a truck-full of teenagers cruised by sonic-ly thumpin' da bass, probably on purpose, they could set off quite a few alarms rolling down the strip. Even little Ricardito could set off the alarm in the parked family ride if he leaned on it in a certain way.

You can see the "like Miami" skyline of Salinas from this decommissioned navy base near Salinas.

La Chocolatera, a peninsula that sticks way out in the Pacific is now a protected area. They say the slamming waves and dangerous currents resemble hot chocolate but it didn't look very hot chocolately when we were there. Lots of Sea Lions out there on the rocks.

Hike a little ways from the parking lot and the place is yours.

Headed a couple of hours down the coast from Salinas to the surf/party town of Montañita, our base in all these coastal explorations. 

Surfing and partying, Montañita was the polar opposite of young family-centric Salinas. This was an area known as Cocktail Alley. Our host said that they recently made the clubs close at 4:00 am; they used to go until 7 or 8 am. Ah, the Thump Thump of EDM.

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Stumbled upon a little acoustic beach jam by the band One Drop.

From Montañita, on a half day adventure, we went down the coast to Puerto Lopez to investigate a trip out to Salango Island, which is known as a kind of poor man's Galapagos. As we were looking for the tour companies, we happened on the fishing boats that were just coming into the port. It was actually kind of smelly and gross. 

The fishermen were unloading their boats and taking the catch to those un-refrigerated trucks. Small retail vendors bought some of the seafood off the boats and sold it raw or in restaurant shacks as ceviche, right there on the beach. These vendors also cleaned their fish at the water's edge of the beach. The fish guts and the trucks full of fish worked what looked like some kind of floating pelicans into a frenzy. Circling above this circus were thousands of  the opportunistic Great Frigatebird, who practice kleptoparasitism. The Frigatebirds cannot get wet, but they can chase other seabirds in order to make them regurgitate their food mid-air. Evidently, this larcenous strategy is evolutionarily less costly than direct feeding.

Fish couldn't be any fresher but be that as it may, it didn't make us want to rush on down to ye ole seafood store.

We looked into a visit the Galapagos. For you gentle readers that have googled *a trip to the Galapagos* and I know from Google Stats on this blog that you are out there, and have somehow read this far, a few things to consider: 

1) The islands are 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador and as such the only options are expensive cruise options and expensive plane rides. 

2) Once there, you have two choices for lodging: expensive and more expensive. 

3) There are expensive fees charged as well, that help with conservation maintenance on the islands. 

4) There are 127 islands, islets and rocks in the park (21 volcanoes, 6 recently active!). You can wander around alone on the four inhabited ones, but an obviously paid, registered guide is required to visit the others.

5) To visit the outer and remoter islands and rocks, most people use various sizes of cruise ships (16-100 passengers) with scuba diving and other daily excursions from the boat. If you are not on an all-inclusive cruise, you are going to have to hire a boat through a tour company. Whatever option you choose, even at the lowest level, it is going to be expensive. However the sky's the limit if you want to rent a Putin-esque super yacht.

Of course, what ever your budget, it's gotta be the trip of a lifetime to hang out there with Charles Darwin wannabees and the Blue Footed Boobies. But we had a decision to make.

Having lived on the at least as expensive and maybe even more so, archipelago of the Hawaiian Islands for years, we knew our way around volcanoes and barren lava fields. We knew our way around whales, sea turtles, iguanas, the rare seal and some exotic birds. The big question for us was how serious are we about bird watching? How much were we willing to spend to be stuck with part of a group that is serious about Darwin's finches and the Blue Footed Boobie?

Turns out....well.... look at the boat in the picture above. We are cool with birds, but we are not...birdwatchers.

More than a few Ecuadorians tipped us off about Isla de la Plata, the poor man's Galapagos they said. Located only 17 miles from Puerto Lopez. Isla de la Plata offers many of same reefs, geological features and fauna as the Galapagos without the investment of time and treasure.

 

With a little research we found the even more accessible Salango Island, a park about an hour away. Sea lions and Blue Footed Boobies in Spades.

There were only 4 of us in the boat that holds 30 and the cost was $30.00 pp for about a 5 hour tour. Lilly asked if she could snorkel and the 21 year old captain said sure, go for it. So off the side she went. 

She swam to the island and had her own private Idaho for a while.

 

In post game analysis we decided that although cool, we are not overcome with the joy/expense ratio of bird watching for hours, much less days on end with fellow birdwatchers from Nebraska. On Salango we got a mini taste of the Galapagos and that ~ 5 hours was sufficient.

Our Airbnb host, an ex-pat from Quebec, who has been in Ecuador 22 years, was cool enough to take us to her 250 acre farm/nature reserve outside of Montañita.

Where her Ecuadorian man, Pedro, grilled fish for a nice afternoon lunch.

They are trying to create some type of nature education center. A graduate student/caretaker of the property said that except for the tigrillo, he thought most of the apex predators were extinct in the area. 

The Santuario Blanca Estrella del Mar, a Catholic Church and private school, certainly had dibs on the best place for Sunday Mass in Montañita. Thought I heard some Yanks that appeared to be attending a semester abroad there.

They even were kind enough to include a replica of a Roman Empire torture device.

Ayampe was about 30 minutes down the coast. At one time it was touted to be the new up and coming Montañita. For now it is still very quiet with dirt roads. It seemed to be a sort of mix of Indigenous people living in one story concrete houses and hippie/surf culture. Supposedly there are a lot of Ayahuasca retreats hosted here as well.

 
Of course yoga classes with teachers that have local indigenous names like Ashley and Lucie.

Couldn't do without a Hare Krishna retreat center, now could we?

Christian Church doesn't look like it gets a lot of use.

Lilly had some family issues to tend to back home, so it was the bus back to the airport in Guayaquil. Bye-bye Lilly Mamacita, good luck with everything and see you in Peru in July!

I headed back up in the mountains to Cuenca for the remainder of our stay in Ecuador. It was a long and winding bus ride from seashore to 8500 feet, so I broke it up with an overnight in Guayaquil. I looked for something close to the bus station which turned out to be more of a dump than it appeared on line.

Cuenca has four rivers running through it. The Tomebamba cuts right through the center of town and the scenic walk passes by the university. Looks like Cat 1 rapids to me but I never see anyone kayaking, maybe too shallow and rocky.

I wander and ponder around the Historic Center often, as it is not far from my house. El Centro offers a central market seemingly staffed by all indigenous women, cafes, parks and university stuff. It is situated up on a bluff on the banks of the Tomebamba, so there is no getting around these railing-less steps (ugh); poor man's high blood pressure medicine though.

We reserved this house in the upscale El Vergel neighborhood before Lilly knew she was needed in New York. The place is gigantic and here is just one of the living rooms; I hardly go into half of the others. Price for 5 weeks was $22 a night.

Like all wealthy neighborhoods in South America, the entrances are secured with large steel gates and more. As a result, the neighbors open the gates, drive into their compounds and then lock out the baddies, so there is very little contact. I did meet one neighbor who worked in the medical field at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Small world in a small neighborhood.

About 45 minutes outside of Cuenca is another spa town, Baños not to be confused with Baños de Agua Santa outside of Quito, where we visited a few months ago.

The thermal waters of Baños de Cuenca come from the inner part of this geologic fault which looks like a huge wall, known in town as “La Loma de los Hervideros” Took some doing to find it, but this crack divides two tectonic plates. As they rub together deep within the Earth, they create the volcanics that heat the rain water that feeds the springs that produce the thermal mineral water that cures everything.Besides the thermal waters, there are thermal mud caves.

You rub it all over you and sit in this natural steam cave until it dries. It also cures everything.

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The Inkan ruins of Pumapungo, about a mile from my house. Nice to have ruins right in the middle of the city that you don't have to make a day trip to visir. I guess the abridged version is that some nomadic pre-historic tribes eventually settled in this area and became the Cañari people. The Cañari managed to repel the imperialistic Inkas coming up from Peru for quite some time but were eventually overwhelmed and said fuck it and assimilated into the Inka Empire. 

Literally about 10 years later the Spanish arrived and the Cañari people allied with the Spanish to repel the Inkas and hopefully gain their freedom. When Indigenous people aligned themselves with the Spanish, they usually ended up dead or as slaves in the gold mines, but in this case the Cañari remained quite important in the management of The Spanish Empire.

Pumapungo was a palace/barracks/astronomy center built by the Inkas. The Spanish found it kind of abandoned so they razed it and used the stones to build Spanish Cuenca, but these foundations remain.

That grate in the middle of the picture above was a tunnel that led to a crypt under the pyramid replete with mummies and where they held spooky ceremonies.

Wandering around, I thought I was in Ireland until ....wait a doggone minute, that ain't no sheep, that's a goddamned llama.

These ruins not far from the house are kind of cool. In 1972, as they were excavating the area to build a palatial manor for one Fernando Estrella, they found these ruins. Under closer examination by professionals they found a Cañari wall (750-1463 AD). Along came the Inkas (1463-1533) who built some kind of walled guardhouse with niches, formed using two ton lintels. You can see the lintels above, laying above an aqueduct; evidently they were brought here from a quarry hundreds of miles way; Inkas didn't have the wheel or beasts of burden either. Then the Spanish (1533-1822) came along and used the old Inkan stones and lintels to build aqueducts and a series of wheat mills. Last mill was built in 1906. Then in 1972 along comes Señor Estrella to build his mansion and in 2022 Chef Ted is wandering around checking out the vibe.

Lot of cultures occupying the same acre for a long time. Tells you something about the permanence of empires.

With that sweet reader, we have reached the end date of our visa and are wrapping up our six month tour of Ecuador. Roughly the size of Colorado, Happy Ecuador really packs in a lot of action for such a small country. Who knew? 

NOT SO FAST!

I say Happy Ecuador, but as I write this, we are in the 18th day of a country wide strike. Some decidedly unhappy Ecuadorans, read Indigenous people and their supporters, are blockading the nation's highway system in a challenge to the right wing government of President Guillermo Lasso. South Americans love their revolutions and this one is for the usual reasons: corruption, inequality, high gas prices etc.

In the neighborhood I live in, I didn't even know there was a strike until my Airbnb host texted me, about six days in, to ask me to be be careful with my propane usage (cooking, hot water, clothes dryer) as there were roadblocks on the highways and thus no commodities would be arriving for the foreseeable future. Then I noticed the normally well stocked gringo store, SuperMaxi, with tarps thrown over the empty meat, veggie and alcohol counters. Then the local bus system was cancelled and the taxis were limited due to threats and an increasing gasoline shortage. Then I read this in the Washington Post.

Dude rioters, just wanted to let you know, and I am down with the struggle, that you all are cutting into my thermal springs treatment time. Furthermore, my visa expires on July 7 and I have already paid in advance for a flight leaving from Guayquil on July 4 and a month's rent in Lima Peru.  Just sayin'.

Wherever you go, there you are. 

I guess the troubles here are not all that much different from my doom-scrolling a few US papers everyday. From afar, from the Internet, and if you believe the news, the USA generally does not seem like a happy country. What is the deal with these Karens, with these aggrieved Trumpsters, these mass shootings every week in the USA? 

I was thinking about a quote I saw the other day attributed to Porfirio Diaz, President  Dictator of Mexico (1876-1911):

"Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States."

The cartels might chop each other up in parts of Mexico trying to sell drugs to Americans but in spite of that, no Mexican kid goes into an elementary school and machine guns a classroom full of kids....ever. Never will these Ecuadoran Indigenous strikers, no matter how bad it gets, kill 20 or 30 people attending a church service.

Other than the ahem, small matter of the strike, Ecuador seems like a really happy country. Everywhere we have visited in the last six months, the majority of the tourists have been from Ecuador. I had never really met anyone from Ecuador or even thought about it before coming here. From our rosy tourists' Airbnb Garden of Eden point of view, it seems that they are too busy enjoying the natural beauty, the reasonable cost of living in their own country to think about going anywhere else or shooting up the grocery store.

As Lilly and I will probably always be ex-patriots to some degree or another, for a variety of reasons, we do ponder what country will be the final stop when it comes time to hang up the passport.......

Ecuador has been promoted to the short list. 

We have just brushed the surface of South America, visiting only Columbia and now Ecuador. 

Alas gentle reader, the ox is slow but the Earth is patient.

Thanks for stopping by