Our holiday
on the coast is drawing to an end and we have to head back to Ambato tomorrow.
I must say, I have been enjoying sea-levels doses of oxygen, but I must be more
used to life at 2700m by now.
It was
another overcast, but warm, day and the sea was crashing in. We decided to have
another trip to Playa Los Frailes and we made a good, early start. If you don’t
get there early, you’re likely to be queuing on the road to get in as there’s
limited car parking. Some people park up just down the road and there’s a good
business to be had by the little three-wheeler motorcycle taxis ferrying people
to the beach.
Parking is
restricted, but the main problem is the bureaucracy at the entrance to the
beach. This bit of the coast is a protected area and everyone has to be
recorded. For us, this means checking passports. I have to give my passport
number and nationality. Being Ecuador, there are three blokes taking details at
gate. The first stops the car, the second reads passport details to the third,
who keys the information into a laptop (presumably an Excel spreadsheet. The
first one then waves you through.
There was a
line of cars blocking the main road queuing to get in when we left, but it’s a
massive beach with room for hundreds more people.
At the toilets,
there are two people on duty. One takes your money and gives you a handwritten
ticket to say you’ve paid, you then walk down the path for 10 yards, hand the
ticket to another person who says you can go into the toilets. They only charge
25 cents a time, so it must be just about paying their wages.
The sun was
out at Los Friales and the waves were quite high, crashing into the beach in
dramatic fashion. Tom spent an hour in the sea being tossed about and the rest
of us had a quick dip. When he came out, his ankle was sore. It’s a shame we
didn’t have a boogie board, it would have been very easy to surf the waves
today.
It’s
strange how the weather behaves on this coast. Los Friales was lovely and sunny
(quite hot), but just a few miles north, it was cloudy again.
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| Family shot sans Julia (below) who doesn't always like having her picture taken. |
We ate at
Margarita’s restaurant in Puerto Cayo and then, in the afternoon, I went for a
walk on the beach with Nidia, Julia and Aureliano. Nidia just goes paddling in
the sea with all her clothes on and encourages the children to do the same.
They were soaked. It’s a very un-British thing to do, probably because you’d
freeze if you did that in Norfolk. It’s probably a good thing that there’s some
Ecuadorian influence on them, otherwise they’d grow up like Margaret and I with
our “you’ll catch your death of cold doing that” attitude.
I had been
keen to go to one of the bars in the Mirador San Jose, but the one nearest to
us (called One Degree South, a friendly one run by English-speaking Canadians;
the others are French-Canadian and are a bit gruff in the best French café
tradition) is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Tom, Emilia and I
went across (Lucy joined us later) and we found a small bar serving food and
drink with four elderly Canadian couples dining out.
We got into
conversation and they were very interested in us (and me in them). “Do you all
live here,” I asked? “How do you like it?”
“You mean
in paradise,” was the reply, quoting the sales brochure for San Jose. “What’s
not to like?” There seemed to be a little sarcasm creeping in, but they all
said they were happy. I think they’d be a lot happier if there were more people
around and the place had been the vibrant community they’d been promised.
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