Pelicans and Frigate Birds

So, the dawn broke on a strange scene – a slightly grey Pacific Ocean, a steady crash of breakers on the grey sand, an underdeveloped development that looks as if it has run out of cash and frigate birds (wow! I love frigate birds). They are huge things, gliding effortlessly through the sky in small formations. There are also pelicans and it’s amazing what good fliers they are for a bird that looks so cumbersome on the ground.

Mirador San Jose is a very strange place. It’s clearly a chunk of Pacific coast that some development company bought with the intention of turning it into a retirement home complex, only it hasn’t quite worked. They sold it as “Retire in Paradise” to Canadians and it might sound quite attractive – a secure, self-contained development of large villas, good weather and a private Pacific beach. You can see why some thought it might be  good idea, but perhaps only 20 per cent of the plots have been developed, there are huge chunks of vacant land, many of the villas are for sale and the infrastructure is unbuilt or crumbling.

Our villa was quite nice. It’s owned by a French Canadian woman who rents it out on Airbnb and it has reasonably good facilities. Decoration is stark (all white) and it lacked some TLC and a lived-in touch. There’s a nice rooftop terrace which has no chairs for example. Everything is bleached by the sun and corroded by the salt spray. Our villa was on the edge of the development and there was nothing immediately surrounding it.

One might image your despair having bought a place off plan to find that this tropical paradise means you’re isolated, there’s no doctor, decent shops or thriving social life. There are very few people around in reality.

Our holiday home at Mirador San Jose

There's a lot of land left for development

Lots of the villas that have been built are now for sale

Children don’t worry about fountains without water, they just head for the beach, which is what we did. The sea is warm, there are stones to throw, shells to collect and (best of all) humpback whales to see just off the coast. You can spot them very easily, they empty their lungs with a puff of spray when they surface and you can also spot their huge tails when they dive. We spotted one or two further out that were breaching.

The humpbacks come to this part of Ecuador in their hundreds each year in August in order to give birth and breed. They then travel down to the Antarctic feeding on krill. We’re going to hire a boat and go whale watching later in the week, so I hope they stick around. Today, I was wishing I’d brought my binoculars.

For lunch, we decided to eat out in Puerto Cayo, which is the nearest town, about 10 miles down the coast. Along the coast road, there are lots of developments starting up, probably the same idea as Mirador San Jose. I hope they’re better planned and better funded. I say town for Puerto Cayo, but it is actually a tiny fishing village where the boats are pulled up onto the sandy beach. As soon as you pull off the coast road into town, the road quality deteriorates and you’re dodging potholes and jumping chapas. The rough tarmac becomes a dirt track and you can turn up a rough main street to a square where there a few shops and a volleyball court (Ecuador’s favourite urban game, it seems).

We selected a restaurant for lunch that Tom and Lucy has used before (and it hadn't given them food poisoning). It was called Restaurante Margarita and was plastic tables under and thatched canopy on the side of the building. The host was a friendly chap and the menu was basically ‘fish’. I had a dorado, which was rather nice. No bones and quite a meaty taste – a little like tuna.

Sunset over the Pacific from the roof terrace of our villa

The sun was quite warm, so we decided to go to the pool during the afternoon. There were three other people there when we arrived. The children’s pool was dry, but there was an adult pool with a shallow-ish shallow end – too deep for Julia to put her feet down but she was game. The water was bloody freezing considering we were one degree below the equator.

In the evening, we watched the sun set over the Pacific from the roof or our villa and then played Telefunken. I won (against the odds), perhaps it was beginner’s luck.