Arriving with a bus jetlag, we ended up in Manta surrounded by taxi drivers where you bags get snapped out of your hands and carried towards a yellow cab. We arrived at 6 am and were in Canoa at 7 am.

I was especially happy to get into better weather and finally seeing the sea. As said before I did not have any real vacation in three years so being at the beach, the salt, hear the sea – the beach is the place where I feel best. And Anais liked it as well.

In the beginning, she was a bit scared about the water but in the end, she really liked the water and the swimming. Which meant we had to prevent her from running into quite big waves.The water is magnificent in Canoa. It is not too cold and not too warm. It gives you a cooling down from the hot humid climate and the waves are great!

I bought a blue playset with shovels and stuff and it is her favorite part of our trip so far. All the other toys were hardly used but the beach playset she liked really a lot.We had a bit of a mosquito bugs problem. Myself and Anais got bitten if we did not put on mosquito repellent. Canoa is a really small fisherś place without even an ATM. We stayed at Hotel Amalur right in the center. If you could say it is a center. It is more like a dust city at the beach with no paved roads.

Canoa was hit really hard by the earthquake back in April 2016. Some people were still living in tents and improvising their lives after the earthquake. Canoa is also known for surfing and it seems that everybody does surf there all day. The town was pretty empty – we sometimes thought we were the only tourists in town. All in all, we had a great beach vacation there. Sometimes we even had the whole beach to ourselves. In the weekends the crowd got bigger but most of them were from Ecuador – not foreigners. We just relaxed more than a week and enjoyed the laid backness of the place, the beach, the waves and the food.

Anais played great at the beach and Tanja did take some surf lessons.  Tanja was able to stand on the board and learned surfing. She got lessons from a 20-year old kid who works as a barkeeper and surfs from their early age on.

The coast is very different from Otavalo. Much less indigenous people much more Spanish influence. People are relaxed but not as relaxed as in Otavalo.

We spend way too much time in Canoa, in the end, we always met the same people. The surf guy on his small bicycle, the waitress from the hotel with her boy bicycle riding, the blond backpacker that fell in love with a Canoa man. I went one day to Manta to get the stuff shipped to Holland we bought for www.nutur.nl. It was a crazy ride with a bureaucrat and a taxi driver from Canoa through Manta searching for an official invoice. The food was ok but we got sick a few times. The beach bars are not 100% hygienic. You even have to watch out with cocktails.

There are some characters like in every town. For example, the two sisters running a cocktail bar at the beach. We even met some “expats” at a street corner. One looked like Bob Marley himself – the expat version. There would be much more to tell but we are already at the end of our Galapagos adventure part. I also need a much better Internet connection to do stuff for this blog

It isn’t a town to get stuck but we got stuck somehow….

Time flies when you are having fun. We got picked up at the hotel in Quito by a big van filled with one great family. Patty & Rumi picked us up with their three children Sammy, Yarina and Malki. We drove through an amazing scenery landscape to their home near Otavalo. On the way stopped and picked up some nice flowers and some homemade ice cream on a stick. The place we were going to call home for the next three weeks was exactly what we needed after our self-inflicted stressful life in Holland. We were staying in between maybe three (in)active volcanos with an amazing scenery. The weather was steady around 20 degrees. Great weather to take a walk.

All the respect goes to Patty who was providing us with breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day if we wished for. The farm had cows, chicken, cava, pigs, cats and – of course – dogs of all sorts, shapes and characters.

We love animals a lot. In Holland, we have two cats and Tanja’s wish is to have a dog soon. We live on the third floor in the center of Amsterdam. A dog is not really an option.We just loved being around many animals and eating pure food Patty provided us with. Most meals were simple but very delicious. The food seems more pure unprocessed here and hence the great taste.

The farm had also a fruit and vegetable garden and hammocks. Our favorite place between 9 and 12 were the hammocks as the sun was blazing on them. At night it cools down quite a bit and sunset is always at around 6 pm and sunrise is at 6 am. We quickly adapted to a new sleeping schedule. We were sleeping most days way before 8pm. We slept usually until 7:30 am. This means effectively that we were getting at least 10,5 hours sleep.

Our bodies needed it. Keep in mind that in Holland we are lucky to get 7 hours sleep. The cold nights also made it much easier to get under the blankets quickly. There is no central heating in their house, so the only option is three blankets and sleep quickly. The family life also added to the relaxing atmosphere. The family is just one big piece factor for us. Of course, there were frictions but really minor and usual stuff you get when kids grow up to be adults. We have all the respects for the family for being so close and supporting each other.

The Activities we did were just breathtaking. Totally different from Quito. We ended up in rural Ecuador, to be exact in Turuku. The farm was situated at a foot of a volcano and next to a picturesque church. We visited a few times Otavalo which is a short taxi drive away or walked towards downtown Cotacachi. We also went hiking one day a the local volcano crater filled with water and had family Sunday trip with the whole family an hour drive to a different volcano crater lake.

Another highlight was going to the thermal waters an hour drive away. We spend a few hours swimming in sulfur straight from the inside of the earth.