Ecuador's Southern Coast

Dec 5th

From hat building to yaht building. The next day brought about another first, and not just for the trip, a first ever. Seeing ship being built.

This was happening along the Malecon in Manta, we were told that there was nothing special about Manta and that may be true for some but for us it was not 100% accurate.

 While the city did not provide much excitement for us it was still something to see the ship building and the expat influence. As we rode out of town along the shoreline we notice a bunch of tall condo buildings and gated communities dotting the landscape. Not surprising as there is an larger airport here as well as a proper marina, and we all know that ease of access makes vacation property attractive.

Riding the Southern coast of Ecuador is simply amazing, we had read that the South coast is where all the best beaches are and for a change the books were spot on.

We passed through towns like Monanita which is a well established beach resort town, and there were many others that are not so famous like San Pedro. All had one thing in common and that was an amazing beach with a quaint town. The road sometimes followed the shore line and other times would dip inland where there would be banana farms, or sugar cane fields and sometimes it would be very arid and desert like with not much growing at all. It changed constantly but kept us in awe the whole way to Salinas.

Just North of Salinas we met a couple of large bikes going the opposite direction, we did the customary wave that bikes do then we realized it was Felipe and Oscar, the two Colombian riders we met in Ipiales. The give-away was Oscar’s orange and white jacket covered with badges. We hit the brakes and luckily they did the same as we would not likely catch up to those 1200GS’s. The roadside meeting was short and sweet; they were already heading North towards Colombia after riding to Canyon de Pato, Peru. We were shocked how many miles they had put on in 10 days and joked that it took us 3 days just to get to Quito because they made it there the same day that we crossed the border together. They also said that they got hailed on and severely soaked and were very cold by the time they got there. They had ridden through the storm that we decided to wait out at the border town, now I am really happy we stopped that day. It really seems like a long time ago but it has only been 10 days.

Salinas is like Bahia on steroids, the beach is lined with condo towers, hotels, restaurants and bars. The bay itself faces North East and is sheltered from the prevailing Pacific winds by the towers and other buildings making the beach enjoyable and the bay a safe haven for boats. The boats moored offshore range from small fishing boats to small yachts, there was even a couple of naval ships anchored way out in the deep water. We later found that the end of the peninsula is a naval base which explained the two ships.

The street one block off the beach is where all the local restaurants are along with the supermarket and other support businesses, there was of course all kinds of other business’ in the main part of the city which is located just East of the peninsula and beach area. If you were to look at a map it would make my description crystal clear. We really enjoyed walking the beach observing the family interactions, the sand is very fine in the main areas and broken down oyster shells in the areas where the water crashes against the boardwalk. Both were very clean and the next morning, while enjoying our continental breakfast on the patio of our hotel, we seen crews of people walking side by side combing the beach for rubbish, this is cheaper than raking the beach with a machine as we had seen evidence of in Monanita. Soon enough it was time to load up the bikes and move on, we are making our way in a North East direction to visit Elizabeth at her cacao farm in the Amazon jungle.