This morning I took a bus straight from Cuenca to Montañita to meet another group of friends that have been staying at an Air BnB there for a few days. Montañita means "little mountain," and it is a huge tourist attraction on the south Pacific Coast of Ecuador in the province of Santa Elena. The beach is gorgeous, and my first night I got to watch the sunset. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was one of the most beautiful sunsets I have seen. It looked like it was just floating over the shoreline, slowly dropping down, and then all of the sudden it disappeared. I've never seen a sunset like it before. This place is super busy with souvenir stands and shops, choclo stands (which I may or may not have visited at least 5 times while here), and all kinds of food vendors. My friend Sarah met up with me later tonight, and we got to get dinner together and go out partying (which is a huge part of life in this beach town). As soon as it gets dark out, the streets light up, music starts blaring from the clubs, and people start to party. It's fun to be in this environment and experience life here for a little bit, but after a couple of nights Sarah and I were ready to explore the other beaches that Ecuador has to offer. The next morning we hopped on a bus to La Playa Los Frailes, which is an enclosed National Park and one of the cleanest, most beautiful beaches I have seen. It closes before sunset, so we were glad we left early enough to see the beach. We got to lie down and relax, and the beach was almost empty (definitely a big change from Montañita). We stayed here until closing time, and then paid for a ride to get to Puerto Lopez for our final beach destination. It was actually kind of scary coming out of the beach because there was a group of young adults catcalling us and saying inappropriate things while we were on the moto-taxi that took us back to the park entrance. They kept purposely driving right alongside us and yelling things to us. The driver of our moto-taxi slowed down to make them pass us, but then a little bit later we saw that they were pulled off to the side of the road just waiting for us. We tried our best to ignore them and pretend like we didn't notice them, and when we got to the park entrance we barely entered the car to take us to Puerto Lopez in time before they were also leaving the park. Luckily they couldn't do anything because we were already in the car, so they just yelled a few more things and drove off. After that scary and annoying encounter, we were able to relax again. We made it to Puerto Lopez and enjoyed a coconut on the beach. We also met this adorable pup named "Arepa" while eating a delicious dinner of shrimp, patacones, and a piña colada. It ended up being a really great end to our night, and then we headed back to the bus station to catch our bus leaving for Quito at 8.
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Ashley KoboldMy amazing experience studying abroad in Ecuador. ¡Qué chévere! Archives
December 2019
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