Blogs from West, Ecuador, South America - page 2

South America - just what is it that allures so very many to this continent, and just how many vital superlatives does it play host to? Well, clearly, something must have worked out in the realm of the positive, since it was this traveller's third visit to the continent, and an experience which would amount to a total of 7 countries visited on the continent. Ecuador is neither the wealthiest nor most prominent nation in South America, and in tourism terms, is perhaps most famous for visitors to the Galapogos, an outlying set of islands just off the western coast which this traveller was not even going to touch upon. The first port of call happened to be the nation's largest conurbation of Guayaquil which turned out to be a highly strategic starting point for an ... read more

In 2008 I spent a night in Guayaquil before finding a last-minute flight to the Galapagos Islands. My only memory of the city is my bewilderment as I ventured into the raucous, bustling concrete jungle on a Friday night. A friendly local approached me and I had little choice but to let him help me navigate the chaos. So the only thing I was looking forward to this time around was finding some warmth after the relative cold and rainy Cuenca. I had two days to wait for my homeward flight, so I tried to make the most of it. ISLA SANTAY It's worth the visit just to get some peace so close to the city itself. There is a walking-biking bridge across the river from near the malecon. It's free to enter, but take a ... read more

Original plan of meeting Nadia at 09:00 was changed to 10:00 as Nadia thought Daisy would like a little more time to rest and she was correct. This gave me a bit of time to catch up on the travel blog as well. At 10:00 Nadia drove us to the Guayaquil Historical Park, which was the main attraction I planned to see but unfortunately when we got there, we were told the park was closed just for that day for maintenance, so that was a bit of bad luck as I originally planned to go there the day before but as it closed at 16:30 we didn’t think we had enough time. You win some, you lose some. Instead Nadia drove us to an interesting commercial development which has offices but also lots of cafes and ... read more

Montañita (17/05/2018-20/05/2018): Surfing Waves I heard Montañita was wild, so I thought I better visit. This little hippy beach town is one of the top surfing spots in Ecuador, and is well known as one of South America’s prime party destinations. On my way on the bus, I made friends with a crazy, half British half Portuguese girl named Jordana Dangerfield. Yes, that is her real name. She was tall, fun, fiesty, and had a bronze goddess tan I would have died for. Upon arrival to this little town, we thought "oh god, what have we done?!". Montañita was tourist restaurant after tourist restaurant, souvenir shop after souvenir shop. Dread-locked hippies selling their hand-made jewelry and tacky market stalls lined the streets. Little did we know, once night time hit, this quiet beach town really came ... read more

Manta part two! Okay so the port of Manta is a working area.....see by the photos, mainly tuna fishing. (i don’t think it’s really fishing when you dredge with a net though). There doesn’t seem to be a, line caught, fishing policy here yet! The ships and lorries are just outside our balcony and they worked all day yesterday and are starting up again now. Once Dave recovered sufficiently from his pass out spell, we headed out again. The artisan market was really nice and I bought an ivory nut necklace. As before, the nut is as hard as ivory, looks like ivory but is completely made from the seed of a plant. Once dried, the ivory nut seed is hard enough to drive coaches over without damaging them. It can then be dyed, carved and ... read more