Manta - Montañita: about 100 km (going through small villages), 4 hours on the bus, cost: 3 pounds. Again, I found a nice room for 3 pounds a night.
Montañita is a hippie town. There are many restaurants, coffee bars, hostels, hotels, travellers in the streets, loud music coming from the bars, street vendors et cetera. You can easily get drugs here and the police don't care about it, therefore travellers looking for a drug experience come and love it here. This is the deal...
At night I went out, I was looking for a salsa place. There was a lot of good salsa music coming out of the bars but people were not dancing. So I went to the beach, met some local people, several times refused alcohol and marijuana, had a walk around, chatted to some people, came back to the beach, had some techno dance and that was it. What I noticed and what surprised me a lot was that the local people and foreigners go to different bars. Locals to the cheap ones (but with excellent latin music - I went there) and foreigners to the expensive, posh bars with American rock music. I don't understand - if you need rock music in a beautiful bar, don't travel.
Montañita is very small and if you don't do alcohol and drugs, there is not much to do. However, I am very glad I came here - it is an unique place in Ecuador.
I went to bed late at night - in the whole town the music was extremely loud. I fell asleep having impression that my bed was in the middle of a big techno club, even my lovely earplugs didn't work. But... I was very happy - it was the real Montañita experience.
Something very funny happened to me this morning. I was sitting in a coffee bar when a guy approached me and he asked "are you Couch Surfing?" I looked at him, very surprised, and I said "yes". He knew my profile from CS Cali website and he did remember me... ha ha ha... very soon people will know me all over the world, I just need to travel a little bit more...
In the picture on the left: my hostel and my balcony on the first floor.
