A couple weeks after we landed in Ecuador we decided to settle into a little tropical life for a couple of months. We found a small but comfortable apartment and plunked down the first month’s worth of rent. It wasn’t difficult to embrace the slowed down tempo of life in the tiny Ecuadorian beach town of Olón. While the roosters crowing at all hours of the night sometimes made it difficult to get a good nights sleep, we usually woke up early, had a small breakfast, performed various grounding techniques to start the day off right and then went about our daily to-do’s. And just what could possibly be on our “to-do” list you might ask? Well believe it or not the time really does fly when you’re in a town like this.
Along with her yoga, Spanish classes, and volunteering, Laura was working on an idea for a novel so she spent time doing background research and honing her fiction skills by writing short stories. Javi did a fair bit of meditating, surfing, and working on some long overdue maps he’d been wanting to make, while at the same time learning his way around some new open-source mapping software. We spent the rest of our free time on the beach or at home perfecting our pico de gallo recipes (pineapple, mango, you name it). On the nights we didn’t want to cook, we took a two minute walk into “town” and munched on some empanadas at our fave Argentinian spot, or had shrimp and piña coladas on the beach. Or, if we craved a movie night we wandered over to Sam and Eva’s and got spoiled by their awesome screen setup and her mom’s amazing cooking. If we felt like getting out, we spent some fun nights in nearby Montañita where the party never stops. Anytime one of us or our friends wanted to blow off some steam we all hopped in a 5 minute cab for $1.50 and enjoyed some fruity cocktails and, often times, a musical assault on our ears. One especially adventurous night we even rode bikes there in the middle of the night with a neighbor (probably not a good idea in hindsight). Mostly, though, we stayed home and cooked the usual – rice, beans, and pico de gallo, and just generally chilled out with some beers talking or reading. It was a simple yet highly gratifying and life-affirming existence that was over all too soon, and one which we’d very much like to repeat in the future.
We explored other nearby coastal towns too like Salinas (a bigger town with “high rise vacation condo on the beach” vibes), or Puerto Lopez (with “hop on a tourist boat to a cool island” vibes). However, the MAJOR highlight towards the end of our beach life was visiting Ayangue for a few days to take a PADI Open Water certification class. We both got Open Water certifications and on our very first day of open water diving we had a special visit from a 20-foot manta ray! Our instructor was beside himself with excitement, as the manta rays don’t usually hang out in the spot where we were training. Not gonna lie, it was super surreal and a little frightening to get photobombed by such a massive creature, but after a few moments of observing this gentle sea monster we got somewhat used to it. It hung out with us and the underwater Jesus statue we were clinging to for 15-20 minutes! Apparently it liked the fact that the bubbles from our respirators scared off some annoying remoras. We were a little afraid that we had gotten too spoiled and that our standards would be set too high, but later we’d find out that there’s always something amazing and new to see underwater (more on that later).
Getting scuba certified was something Javi had wanted to do for years, and for Laura it was a strong lesson in facing fears. Both of us were super stoked to have this experience and learn a new skill we could take with us on future trips. Certainly not a bad way to end our time on the Ecuadorian coast. After what ended up being a two month stay it was tough to say goodbye to Olón but we knew we’d be back someday. Plus it was time to mosey on and explore the rest of the amazing diversity this relatively small country has packed into it. Given that US passport holders only get 90 days worth of visiting, we had a lot left to explore in the month we had remaining. The rest of our mindblowing Ecuadorian adventures are up next.
Tropical Living
