Head(s) Over Heels: The End of Summer: Canoa

We got up super early to drive Isabel to Guayaquil. The trip meant traveling away from the coast and into the city for a bit. After our tearful goodbye, we decided to head dead West to see Salinas beach and then drive up the Ruta del Sol to Canoa from there. It meant that we spent most of the day in the car, but saw some beautiful sights along the way.

We arrived to a cloudy and quiet scene on Salinas beach. Salinas is supposed to be akin to Miami beach during the summer months of Ecuador (Dec - Feb).

We took a little nap (we had gotten up early) and continued along the beach to a more crowded section for lunch.

The sun came out after we ate which tempted us to stay and enjoy the rays for a bit, but we knew we had a long trip up the coast to Canoa so we surged onward.

The Ruta del Sol took us through small beach towns and inland through dry forests and farmland. I actually took this pic on our way back (at the end of vacation) to show you a daylight view of the sunset scene I took below.

One of our few stops was for me to snag this unbelievable sunset.

Another scene from Ruta del Sol. (On the way back to Manta to catch our flight home, we kept seeing the Ceibo trees we had learned about in Aguas Blancas. They stood out on the dry hillsides because of their green bark and reaching branches. My patient husband pulled over on the side of the two lane highway so I could try to capture their dramatic presence. Again, I don't think my picture does them justice, but as always, I wanted to attempt to share one of the beautiful sights that this country continues to offer.)

We arrived in Canoa after dark and walked to the beach the following morning to find a long row of restaurants right on the sand.

Needless to say, we took advantage of these on more than one afternoon for some fruity refreshments.

This was the scene for most of our Canoa beach days: clouds and crowds. Canoa includes a pretty long stretch of coast that many families visited during our stay.

We were most impressed with the stark difference in low and high tide. Here you see how far we had to walk to the water from our sandy set up.

Many hours later, you can see why we chose the perch that we did. (Isn't that crazy!?!)

Our hostel had His and Hers hammocks on the roof.

We weren't completely lazy (although mostly) during our Canoa stay and went hiking on one morning. As said, the tides are drastic here so a portion of the beach is actually cut off during high tide (you can see the cliff in the left upper portion of my photo that cuts off a little cove during high tide).

Up high looking over the beach.

Our little hike up and around took us to a tiny private beach surround by large cliffs and rocks that create a spray-filled shore.

Just off of the tiny beach are some caves that can only be reached during the lowest of tides (you can see we were too late to try to reach them when we arrived).

No caves, but plenty of other discoveries along the way including this little hermit friend.

And these amazing patterns dug into the wet sand by little shelled snails. The picture doesn't really do that patterns justice, as they were etched all over the sand on this untouched portion of the beach.

Aaaaaaaaand just a few shells that I stopped and picked up along our walk....They were unbelievable and I brought most of them back to remind me of our beach days in our Quito abode.