Canoa: Back to the pacific

Coming down from the Andes to the Pacific coast was quite a shock. In 2 hours time the bus took us from the arid andean plateau through cloud forest all the way down to the hot and humid valley. This was for the landscape, but the same was also true for the people diversity. It was really like enterring a whole new country. In fact Ecuador is very much defined by this peole and landscape mosaic that is very rich in spite of its small size.

The village of Canoa attracted us not only for the cheap cocktails and delicious "ceviche de camarones" but also because it has a flying spot overlooking the pacific ocean. We enjoyed a nice soaring flight along the coast with the many soaring birds.

Hiking to take off

 

Playing over the ocean

The Galapagos are not that far

The ridge

Canoa

Beach Landing

For the next few days we found a couch surfing opportunity in a magical place situated a bit further north along the coast. The place located in the middle of nature and overlooking pristine beaches was owned by Mauro an Ecuadorian guy from Quito that came to the coast to develop an eco-lodge project. The lodge was still in construction and therefore there was no water nor electricity yet which was pretty nice to fully disconect from the backpacker atmosphere.

View from the lodge

The lodge structure, entirely in bamboo, was super impressive.

One of the buildings

Breakfast

Mauro was keen for us to assess the potential for a paragliding site around his place. But the terrain and vegetation seemed to be too complex to get it to work.

View from the potential take off

Our days at Mauro's were pretty quiet, we helped Mauro with the garden and went for some swims and nice strolls along the beach.

 

The only population on this beach was a little fishermen village. There the life was definitely going at a very slow pace between fishing and hamoc time.
We've been surprised to find a school in this tiny village. Alba a Spanish girl working there as a teacher invited us for a visit. It hapenned to be an independent school which concept is to teach the children with situations of their daily lives. For example learn about the species around them, calculate the time of the tide or doing some cooking lessons. The school architecture was really cool with most of the rooms directly openned to the sea. The library section was also very impressive with a ton of books on many different subjects.

One of the school buildings

Inside the school

Thanks to Mauro for his hospitality!

Bonus Pics:

Helping in the garden