The longer you stay, the more you see and feel.

Ahhh, 30 plus days in Montanita! Time reveals various layers of local life that typically go unnoticed. Vendors and hawkers still smiling while recognizing we don't need that woven basket or piece of costume jewellery. Mui bueno.

National surf champion

 Whitey is always whitey regardless of suntan. Children are so honest and sometimes just stare as we walk by! Kinda funny as we're a bit of a rare sight. One day while walking alone I noticed many faces looking at me, later to realize I had two pairs of sunglasses on, one on my head and the other covering my eyes, no wonder their looking at me! What a goof!  LOL!!! What else have I done without noticing!

The locals LOVE their soccer and daily we watch the action on the beach. They play a soccer type game drawing a rectangle in the sand with a line thru the center. Vollying with feet and heads back and forth with similar rules used in ping pong or tennis. Also there's daily beach soccer where the locals display great skills and strategies. Many wear their national colour of bright yellow with corporate logos looking quite pro.
The predominant catholic fertile families tend to be large with 4-6 kids. They also like to hang out in large groups including pets when doing anything.
One night it was funny to watch the neighbourhood kids playing in the streets setting off an alarm on a chain lock then do the old hide and seek. One father scolded the kids then joined in on the prank. Hilarious!
Another major rescue at the beach, such powerful rips here! Watched two life guards and a surfer save three people! OMG, I came back to the room feeling very emotional, a few tears to release! These lifeguards in Montanita are amazing! Hope they get paid well as they certainly deserve to be rewarded.
To save money we'll bring our own store bought wine to our favourite restaurants avoiding the forty dollar menu wine. At first we did it on the sly then the servers insisted we place our box of Clos wine on the table and even brought out grande sized wineglasses. Gotta love it! Saving money is making money!
On the beach or from our deck we witness many sights including various forms of transport. Para gliders, powered para gliders, hang gliding, ultralights, bikes, motorbikes, quads, dune buggies, surfing, boogy boarding, unicycle, powered unicycle, flying drones (great for filming surf competitions), horses, cows, and a girl running the beach with springy shoes which made her 6 inches taller while bounding along like a Kangaroo.
Every night we'd witness spectacular sunsets followed by the first star and then the distant lights of fishing boats out working the rest of the evening! Never boring. Thank you Montanita for such a great experience, we will truly miss you!

Ceviche!

Fine wining and dining.

Los Frailles

Hopped into a taxi with Steve, Cody and Lindsay to check out  Los Frailles beach which is about an hour north of Montanita. This beach is part of Ecuador's only coastal national park, the Parque National Machalila. It is one of the most threatened tropical forests in the world. Created in 1979 this park preserves a small part of the country's rapidly vanishing coastal habitats, protecting about 50 km of beach (less than 2% of Ecuador's coast line), some 40,000 hectares of tropical dry forest and cloud forest and about 20,000 hectares of ocean including offshore islands of which Isla de la Plata (poor mans Galapagos) being the most important. En route the taxi driver takes the corners at faster speeds than I would, screeching tires and all! We arrive, sign in, pay the park fee, and go through a little security check. There are signs for picking up all your garbage and leave nothing unchanged! Forward thinkers yippee! Not too much here as there aren't any stores only a small tented area to purchase drinks and rent umbrella's. There are three ocean bays to checkout and fortunately we picked the best one, later I read one beach had manta rays and the other had heavy riptides with no life guards! The waves here were mild rollers, perfect for cooling off, swimming, and body surfing. I recognized many different cacti previously seen in Arizona. Prickly pear, sedums and tall spindly candelabra cacti and others to remain nameless Very cool to enjoy while seaside. After a salty day we had enough fresh water to rinse and make our trip home a bit more comfortable! While leaving the beach it started to sprinkle, perfect timing! Our original taxi driver picked us up and safely slowed down for the wet road conditions, mui bueno! He was even happy to pull over and pick up a few cold cervesa's! Great day at the beach!

One night Cody and I went for a walk in our local hood and wandered into a pool hall to play a game. Because of the high humidity they have these gloves that cover 1/3 of your hand for easy smooth gliding! I felt like a pro! LOL! Later Cody played the pool hall owner and they were close in ability (Cody's a good player)! He'd win then the owner would, it ended up with Cody paying $18.00 for his losses but that also included his beer tab! Heavy rain hit us walking back to our hotel which just added to the quality time with my nephew!

Woke up to more rain and flooding in the streets!  Noticed a huge crowd down the beach and could see that the river had busted loose so I head over to check it out. What a scene! Lots of locals slogging upstream and hand catching fish! This river is more like a slew having walked by it and smell alone told a stagnate story. Today is Easter Sunday and perhaps a biblical event has given the people an abundance of fish to eat! The black paste from the muddy waters covered the lucky locals who dared to waddle in. People were using their shirts, garbage bags, buckets, or whatever to haul fish. What a sight and what a blessing for local mud and fish lovers! This went on for hours! Happy Easter to all!

More beach time, more malicon posers and more performances in the streets. Always something to see, look at it! What we do notice is the lack of good live musica! Lawrence or The Bagdaddies would really make it big here!

Well the day has come for Cody and his girlfriend to depart. Walked them to the corner to meet their taxi and ran into our buddy Roberto, even he sensed they were leaving as he came over to say his goodbyes. Hugs and waves as they began a long trip home.

It was so nice having some travel/hang time with Cody! Unplanned and here we end up in Ecuador on the same plane, coincidence...... perhaps not! Everything happens for a reason and we were happy to meet up. Travel brings out the best or worst in people, Cody's good energy makes him welcome anywhere. Cheers.