Canoa, Ecuador

Ecuador's coastal towns range from large ports to tiny fishing villages. On the spectrum are surfing towns large and small. Canoa is a small fishing village turned small fishing village too tired to resist becoming a small surfing town. It has a wide stretch of beach with cliffs to the north and an island to the south. The waves are consistently around three feet and are very gentle. It is a good place for surfing and a perfect place for learning to surf.

The night bus here was pleasant enough. It was quite cramped which was not conducive to sleeping for me but we managed a few hours between us. At about 3:30am I may have cursed salsa music but I have since realized that it had no control how loudly it was played over the bus speaks. I forgive you Salsa music but you will have to give me some time to warm up to you again. I was less enthusiastic about being dropped off in an unfamiliar town at 5am without knowing which direction our hostel lay.

Things seem to work out in the end. We found our hostel and though we woke the owner up at an unreasonable hour he gave us a reasonable price, a room right away, and as long a time to sleep as we liked. It was so nice to sleep after that bus ride. Felix, the owner, has been wonderful to us since with plenty of good advice and information. Our hostel, which is really a hotel is very clean and Felix is always hard at work tending to the needs of the place.

So far we are enjoying Canoa quite a bit. We even caught half of the Superbowl but we ended up getting rained out. It rained so hard the streets turned to streams and the power went off. We had to run about a half a kilometer or so to our hotel by which time we were soaking wet. The rain was warm and we loved it.

The last few days have been spent relaxing on the beach and discovering hang out spots within the town. Our current favorite is the Surf Shak from which I am writing. They are a hostel, restaurant, and rental facility owned by a young couple from Colorado. Today we are planning to play in the ocean and tomorrow we will hopefully be surfing.

Ta ta for now.