Canoa to Bahia and back?

Saturday, March 21st 2015 Bahia de Caraquez
Last Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day. We had no idea that I was part Irish until my sister Sheila started researching our Scottish roots and discovered that some ancestors had left Ireland for Scotland during the potato famine. The passage was inexpensive and there was work in a Scottish rope factory. Until now, we had thought that we were completely Scottish (except for being descended from French kings long ago, as my Dad always said). Anyway, having never celebrated St Patrick's Day, it seemed a good time to start.
First we went to the Bambu Hotel for happy hour from 5 to 6. We ran into a couple of Canadians and a young German woman that we had met the night before at dinner at the Amalur so we joined them at the bar and later had dinner with them. The Bambu had great banana coladas, rum and passion fruit cocktails, mojitos and so on, all 2 for 1 and only $4 or $5 each anyway. After happy hour we all made it to a table for dinner, which included green pesto sauce on spaghetti, before one of the Canadians and the German retired early.

The other Canadian, Bob from Vancouver, joined Anita and I at Suki's beach bar for beer and good times. Suki's is another one of the expat bars in town. The owner is an American woman, I think, married to an Ecuadorian man. Between serving drinks, he rolled himself joints behind the bar. Many in the crowd, including me, were wearing at least some green. A bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey was making the rounds among the expats but we managed to avoid that. The party was rocking and we were actually out past 10 pm.
For the rest of the week we did the regular stuff, although I was laid up most of Thursday with the "tourist disease" although not as bad this time as I had in Mindo. Anita and I both ate and drank the same things all day Wednesday. I got sick and she didn't. Mystery. Anyway, a hazard of travelling and not that bad.
Although there are lots of places to eat, including a yellow van with meat broiling on a spit in the back, we've been having breakfast the last few days at the Bambu. It's only $3.50 and it has a nice view of the beach. The horses go by every morning to set up shop on the beach, taking tourists for rides.

This morning we checked out of La Vista Hotel and got a cab ($12) which turned out to be someone's crew cab pickup truck to take us to Bahia de Caraquez. We had reserved a room at the Bahia B & B Hotel for 3 nights. We thought we'd be tired of Canoa after 2 1/2 weeks and could spend a few days seeing Bahia before we got the 8 am bus on Tuesday to Quito.
Our room is okay but Bahia is just a small city on the ocean. Within an hour, we both felt that we'd seen enough. We shortened our stay to one night. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, we'll take a taxi 4 km to the bus station and buy our tickets for Tuesday. Then we'll either take a taxi or bus back to Canoa for 2 nights and hope we can get a room back at La Vista. On Tuesday morning, we'll reserve an early taxi to get us to the Bahia bus terminal well before the departure time of 8 am. Why stay in a little city when we could stay a couple more days on the beach in Canoa? We've included more pictures of Canoa and a final one of where we had dinner here at the yacht club near the big bridge across the inlet.

 There's lots of labour carrying all the gear out to the fishing boats.

The view from our room at La Vista.

The entrance to our hotel off the malecon.

Big bags of small juicy limes are carried into each restaurant and bar every day.

We never get tired of the Canoa sunsets from our balcony.

Anita is waiting for dinner in Bahia.