Montañita

Leaving Guayaquil, we had to take two different buses to get to Montañita. The second bus was kind of terrifying because they were out of seats so they basically made my friend and I sit on the engine up front, we were flying all over the place as we whipped around corners along the coast. Beautiful view of the ocean though!

It is THE beach town in Ecuador, known for its 24 hour a day party scene and great surf. A lot of the teachers rented a mansion on the beach, but a friend and I decided to stay in a small little beach shack hostel in the city instead. I still don’t know how I feel about our decision. It was literally a tiki hut with some mats on the floor and hammocks strung up everywhere. Maybe it would have been gross or too rustic, except for the fact that we were literally on the beach. Step one foot out of the hostel and voila, ocean!

 My friends' house was the mansion on that cliff

The town of Montañita is somewhere I would like to return on a weekend when it is not a holiday because it was a little too crazy for me. Either I have suddenly become an old person, or I had a lot of sleeping to catch up on, because I took it super easy the whole time I was at the beach. I spent my days laying in my hammock, reading my book and listening to the ocean, and my nights sampling all the street food. I must have eaten ten different types of empanadas. My new favorite Ecuadorian specialty is Morrocho, a spiced hot milk drink that is chunky with ground corn. I also got to eat encebollados (fish stew), ceviche, sopa de camaron, and lots of other coastal specialties.

 This is what a bar looks like in Montañita. 

Actual pineapple and coconut in your piña colada.

The bar scene is pretty epic. At night time the city itself can only be described as a shit show, and by the last day of break, everyone remaining in the city looked like shells of their former selves. The beach itself was really pretty, and normally there are a lot of cheap cute hostels, so I would highly recommend Montañita, just maybe not during a Feriado.

 Cute city by day, Sin City by night

The beach right in front of the city was way overcrowded