The Pacific Coast of Ecuador Part 1

When you leave Quito to drive to the coast of Ecuador, it is a 6 hour drive and it costs about 8 dollars.  Busses are so cheap here in Ecuador it is unreal.  The first stop on the coast is Esmeraldas.  I planned on spending a night there as it is the major city.  Unfortunately when I arrived at the Bus terminal the taxi driver informed me that it was too dangerous and I shouldn't visit the city.  Plus there was no cheap hostels that would be safe for me to stay.  Esmeralda has an oil refinery and it is a city of 100,000 people.  I am sure it is a  very nice port town, but I have heard from many not to go to Attacames.  Lonely Planet says:

The Spanish conquistadors made their first Ecuadorian landfall on this broad, sandy bank flanked by a sparkling river and surrounded by low green hills. Esmeraldas has been an influential port town throughout history but its modern incarnation is not pretty. Many of its cement structures are either half-finished or half-fallen, the frenzied streets harbor drugs and petty crime and the forests have surrendered to scrub brush.

So I skipped Esmeralda and took a ten dollar taxi down the coast to Attacames.  Attacames is a beach town for tourists, mainly Ecuadorian and Colombian.  It is still fairly cheap and has huge waves for surfing.  Renting a boogie board here costs 2 dollars an hour.  I stayed at the Chill Inn hostel owned my a Swiss Women.  Everyone here spoke German and the only way to communicate with others was through my Spanish.  I did not meet any other English speaking Gringoes in 3 days.  The Chill Inn is a nice hostel very close to the beach with cheap private rooms for 12 dollars a night during down time. If it was more busy I know there would be more English speakers, but I stayed from Sunday until Tuesday in Spring here.

The next place on my list was Sua.  Sua is a 25 cent bus ride 10 minutes south of Attacames.  It is less tourist than Attacames and has more locals.  The beaches were more tranquil too.

 Sua had more beautiful parks than any of the four towns I have visited on the coast.  Everywhere I go in Ecuador has so many wild dogs.  Today I saw a pack of ten team up on one lonely dog.  Then the leader of the pack turned on some local old man, by barking non stop and going close to him.  The man was unphased and just kept walking down the street.  I would have definitely shit my pants.

 The bus terminal and Sua and also another great park. 

Sames was the next place on the list.  Here is a fifty cent bus ride and ten minutes south of Sua.  Here has the biggest waves all day, although Attacames has fierce ones in the morning.  This place is the highest class of the four towns I have seen.  Lots of vacation homes and fancy hotels/clubs.  I met a group of young locals surfing the beach and practiced my body boarding skills.

 Here I walked down the beach for half an hour from Tonchigue to Sames.

Tongichue was a cool little town.  Very local and not much room for tourism  Lots of cool bars on the street and rumours of underground beach Parties on the weekend.

Tongichue definitely lacks the tourist charm, but its beach makes up for it in discarded fish heads and pollution.  Seriously I would not go swimming here, instead down the ocean in Sames.  But it is still worth coming here to check out the town.

Cartagena, Colombia

The North Coast of Colombia and the touristy beach towns I have been too are unique.  The closest comparison I would have would be Mexcio because they have beautiful beaches and are very touristy.  Cartagena is the most famous and biggest beach town in Colombia.  It was one of the places that was safe even during the very dangerous 80s and 90s.  The people in this city are used to tourism being the number one industry, so you are going to get hassles non stop as a gringo.

Here we have a closed up shop.

Man on bicycle riding in front of one of Cartagena's buildings designed with Colonial Architecture.  PS) Under renovation

Man eating Plantane (Platano) walking down the street

Here is my buddy Jeff from Comox, BC, Canada eating Mangoes and drinking beer.  Only got to hang out with this guy for one afternoon because he was on his way to Medellin, but he was a really rad MAHF.  Jeff just couldnt get over how many fucking pigeons there are in this city!!!!!  Behind him a little girl feeds the throngs of birds.

Chillin with the holmies!!!

Civillian Military keeping on eye on things.  I just hoped he wasnt going to shoot me for taking this picture.

The Colombian Mens National Soccer team practicising in Cartagena's brand new soccer facility.

I caught a video of a penalty shot attempt:

The beautiful jaggedy rock garbage littered beaches of downtown Cartagena.  Too be honest this is the most overrated beach town in the world.  The main beach is Playa Blanca which is far away from the city so most people pay a tour company to drive them there and then pay an entrance fee to the beach.  Then when you are on the beach you are hassled by an endless amount of pushy salespeople trying to sell you nicknacks.  PLus the beach is filled with cabanas and hammocks so there is not much room to lay down.

If you want a true beach town withouth the hassles go to Palomino.

A shot of the beautiful courtyard of Media Luna Hostel.  I am staying at the Media Luna Hostel in Media Luna a neighborhood of Cartagena.  It is the nicest hostel I have stayed in during this trip.  Beautiful pool, rooftop terrace and gigantic rooms for fifteen dollars a night.  Its not a great place to learn Spanish though, everyone at the hostel speaks English as a first language.

Check it out here www.medialunahostel.com

The bicycling here is good... not great.  My hostel has some bicycles and they will rent them for free for the first hour.  After that its $1.50 an hour.  So cheap.  No Bicycle lanes so you have to ride on the roads.  

My view of biking down the streets of Cartagena.  Here is nowhere near as bicycle friendly as Bogota obviously.  Here cars practice the art of the Courtesy Honk.  It is when you honk at a cyclist everytime you pass them.  I am still on the fence on whether I like this or not.

Walking down the street and I ran into my friends that I had met in Bogota.  This is my favorite part about travelling when you run into people in different cities that you travel.  The girl with the balloon it was her birthday.  Next to me is my good friend Phillipe.

All in all Cartagena is a good city.  I would recomend you have to check it out for at least a weekend.  It is a difficult place for a twenty-something gringoe male to be.  People don't call you "hey amigo" when you walk down the street like Mexico.  Here they call you "you want cocaine" or "What do you need, i got everything".  Too many idiots have come to this city before me and really changed the dynamic of the tourism.  Even Bogota in the most touristy areas of the city was lightyears better than Cartagena for this.  The other troubling thing is the police will do random searches constantly.  They pick on gringoes, hoping to find drugs on them and then force them to pay $300 to avoid going to jail.  It is a very corrupt city.  I find it annoying and an invasion of privacy to be walking down the street and have police randomly stop me for pat-downs.  It is really bad on Friday or Saturday nights.  One of my friends from Australia, on the walk home from a bar to the hostel was stopped and random searched by four different police officers in twenty minutes.  I was searched within minutes of arriving to the city when I got off the bus downtown.  Of course they found nothing because I am here for the culture, the people and the food, definitely not the drugs.  But there is no shortage of Partyboy Australians, Americans and other Gringoes in this city buying copious amounts of drugs and getting stuck in hostels here, hung-over day after day, without the energy to wake up early and catch a bus to another city.  This city is definitely one of the bigger gringoe vortexes I have seen in South America.