Driving the Coast

Dear Family and Friends,

Yesterday morning we had our breakfast at the Casa Blanca restaurant in Montinita before continuing our trek north along the coast. We pulled out on the highway about 9:00am. Originally we had planned to go north to Puerto Lopez and stay at a lodge that had been highly recommended to us. Then we would take a boat tour to go whale watching. But when Chuck tried to book it online, we were informed that there were no vacancies. We headed out figuring we would find a place when we arrived in town.

We got to Puerto Lopez in a drizzling rain. My personal opinion is I wasn't impressed. The streets were muddy and we did not see one place that we wanted to stay. Since the coast was socked in with very low visibility we decided to skip the whale watching trip this time.

Here is a cute sign on the beach that points to cities all over the world.

We decided to spend the night in Manta, Ecuador.

It was really surprising the number of micro climates we drove through going up the coast. Some areas were very lush, like a rain forest and other areas were so dry all the vegetation was brown and dead looking.

Does this picture remind you of a famous movie????

Behind this building the fishing boats were coming ashore. Birds were hovering low to the ground in hopes of getting a free sample.

We were getting hungry....it was about 2:00pm, so we stopped at a little hut like this one to have some lunch. We had the freshest most delicious fish lunch you could imagine.

As hungry as I was I remembered to take pictures first.

Chuck's shrimp

As we enjoyed our lunch, we commented that the view up north looked a heck of a lot like the Oregon coast.

We continued on up the coast, sometimes in fog, sometimes just drizzle, but never in the sunshine.

After arriving in Manta we had no problem finding a nice hotel with a nice room right on the beach. We could see the people below enjoying the beach, not daunted by the overcast skies.

This is as close as I have been able to come to getting a beautiful sunset picture. The sun almost came through last evening as it was setting.

This morning we are heading inland and north to Guayaquil. We will spend the night there and drive through the cajas and into Cuenca on Sunday morning.

Happy Saturday,

Nancy (and Chuck)