Another Day in Montanita

Saturday, February 21st, 2015 Montanita
It didn't take us long to get into the beach town groove.

Last night we wandered through town a bit and then we had another good dinner at Pigro and walked up the beach at sunset to watch the surfers.
In the evening, there are vendors with full bar setups lining the streets.

This morning it was raining hard when we woke up but, with our umbrellas, we still walked into town and bought fruit and pastries for breakfast ($3 total). We eat on our porch outside our room and drink the coffee and tea provided by our hotel.
The rain stopped by 11 am and the sun came out so we went beach walking again. Even when it's raining, it's still hot. It must be in the low 30s every day.
Although the surf looked about the same to us, the lifeguards on the beach were very careful about letting swimmers go out too far. Apparently there can be dangerous rip tides. Basically, a rip tide occurs when the water from the incoming waves builds into a sort of river in one spot heading back out to sea. It's difficult to escape and people get in trouble fighting it. What you're supposed to do is swim to the side, not try to swim straight into shore. That way you can escape. We saw the lifeguards rescue 2 people this morning who were being carried out and losing strength. Scary stuff although it doesn't really look like much to those of us who are unfamiliar with it.
I walked around la punta to see the next 8 km beach to the north at Olon while Anita relaxed on the Montanita beach. Then we walked a long way south but not as far as we had yesterday.

In the early afternoon, we bought a bowl of ceviche ($6), a marinated mix of seafood, from a lady who mixed it all right in front of us from her cart on the beach. Delicious.
In a couple of hours we'll go downtown for dinner and then back out to the beach to watch the sunset and the surfers. Tomorrow we'll take a cab to Puerto Lopez. We could go on the local bus without AC for 1 1/2 hours for about $2.50 each or we can take a cab with AC for $25. The cab sounds pretty reasonable when it's hot.