Reporting from: Manta's best sushi restaurant.
The day was divided nicely into 2 parts: morning shopping and afternoon relaxation.
Richard from Ecuadorean Coast Properties showed us a number of condos and buildings. I attached a picture of one of the places in Part 1. As I also mentioned in Part 1, beachfront condos are quite affordable here. The one in the picture above was my favorite. I did not get any pictures from inside of it however. It is a nice 2 bedroom condo overlooking the beach, very nicely furnished. The one thing I noticed about all the places we saw was that nothing looks "cheap". All places had very nice tile work and nice appliances. Some of these little gated communities made me feel like I was in Florida or California.
There are not many condos in the US that can beat the places we saw. In my humble opinion, some of the ones we saw beat lots of places in the US. And of course the price is right. I still believe that Ecuador is what Costa Rica and Panama were 10-20 years ago. Now those places are all built up and good deals are hard to find for nice places. One analogy I can make is that of buying stock in a company that you know will do well, but sometimes you have to wait longer than you thought because you got in very early. I will issue a recommendation: Buy Ecuador before this place catches on.
Speaking of catching on, House Hunters International just finished filming an episode down here with Richard and Garrett as the stars. The episode will air in June or July and I will make sure everyone who has followed us here in Ecuador knows when to tune in.
Rather than go on and on about our condo shopping trip, why not just have have a look at Richard's excellent website to get a better idea of what Ecuador has to offer: www.ecuadoreancoastalproperties.com
Since shopping always tires out the males of our species, no matter what the goal of the shopping trip, we headed south to Santa Marianita. But first, lunch at one of the better restauarants in town. Part 1 shows the meal I had for the whopping total of $4.50. These lunch specials are designed to have a low cost and no choices. You get what they are serving, or jump to the main menu and pay more.
Santa Marianita resembles the other small beach towns we have visited, only perhaps even more sparsely developed. The terrain consists of sandy bluffs and rocks right up against the beach. Today was overcast, temperature in the low 80s and a nice breeze coming off the Pacific. With a cooler of wobbly pops, 4 guys, a dog, a surf board and a Land Rover Defender, we arrive at the beach to find it completely deserted. Since it is Monday we share miles of beach with maybe a dozen or so other people today. Garrett and I took a ride in the Land Rover up the beach which is not something I get to do very often. There is something liberating driving with two wheels in the ocean and two on the sandy beach.
On the way back to Manta, we caught a glimpse of a very unique event (at least for us). We arrived in San Mateo to find all the fishing boats coming in with their cargo: marlins and swordfish. One of the pictures above is a pair of Ecuadorians attempt to lift a marlin and carry it to the guy who starts to clean it. I have a 5 minute video of this, and it is pretty cool to watch. If I can get a good solid high speed connection I will try and post it somewhere. Suffice to say it really felt like authentic Ecuador.
Dinner tonight is at the hotel restaurant best known in town for its sushi bar. The sushi is very good (my tuna sashimi was quite good, and most of you know how picky I am about that) and this proves to be our most expensive meal of the trip so far, meaning we paid about average sushi prices as back home. No deal to be had on that here.
Tonight the view off the hotel deck shows a particularly beautiful sunset which I attempt to capture above.
Did you know: Panama hats did not originate in Panama, but rather here in Ecuador.
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