Bahía de Caráquez and around
One of Ecuador’s most agreeable coastal resort towns, BAHÍA DE CARÁQUEZ, an upmarket place of spotless, white high-rise apartment blocks, broad tree-lined avenues and leafy parks, sits on a slender peninsula of sand extending into the broad mouth of the Río Chone. Yachts from around the world bob and sway in the town’s marina.
Following mudslides and a damaging earthquake in 1998, Bahía (as it’s called for short) started afresh, proclaiming itself a ciudad ecológica, an eco-city, and set up a number of ambitious projects, including recycling, permaculture, composting, reforestation, conservation and environmental-education programmes. Even the tricicleros paint their “eco-taxis” green, adorning them with signs reading “Bienvenidos Bahía Eco-Ciudad”. The Día del Mangle fiesta on February 28 marks the declaration with music and events such as mangrove planting in the estuary.
Bahía lies near several wonderful natural attractions, including tropical dry forests, empty beaches and mangrove islands teeming with aquatic birds. The vast shrimp farms in the estuary displaced more than sixty square kilometres of mangrove forest during the 1980s and 1990s, with the obvious exception of the world’s first organic shrimp farm, a pollution-free enterprise that also helps in reforestation. Local tour agencies, some of which have played a major role in the local environmental movement, organize a number of good excursions in the area.
Bahía is a pleasant town for a stroll – or taking a cruise with a triciclero ($5 per hour) – following the Malecón around the peninsula and viewing the busy river estuary on the east side, or the rough rollers coming to shore on the west. Locals swim and surf here, but to find more generous expanses of sand, take a taxi to the beaches south of town like Punta Bellaca (7km away; arrange return journey in advance). A good complement to the seaside promenade is the short push up to Mirador La Cruz, on top of the hill at the foot of the peninsula, which affords grand views of the city and bay.
In town, the renovated Museo Bahía de Caráquez del Banco Central houses pre-Columbian artefacts, such as a Valdivian belt of highly prized spondylus shells from 3000 BC, plus a replica balsa raft, as well as temporary art exhibitions.
The coast west to Muisne
The expanses of pale sand streaking west of Esmeraldas sustain some of the country’s most popular seaside resorts. During the high season (mid-June to Sept & Dec–Jan), a deluge of vacationers descends from the highlands, but the real crush comes during Carnaval, Semana Santa, Christmas and New Year, when the price of a room – if you can find one – can double. Atacames is the most famous and raucous resort, while others such as Súa and Same offer a more tranquil atmosphere, but can be just as busy at peak times. The beaches break around the dry and rocky headland of the Punta Galera, whose cliffs and secluded coves provide the quietest and most isolated beaches in the region, giving way to mangrove forests around Muisne, one of the remoter seaside resorts of the province. Regular buses travel between Muisne and Esmeraldas.
Atacames
Relaxed by day and brash, noisy and fun at night, ATACAMES is one of Ecuador’s top beach resorts, always crowded during holidays and at Carnaval, when it’s literally standing room only on its dusky beach. The town is divided by the tidal waters of the Río Atacames, which parallel the shore for about 1km, resulting in a slender, sandy peninsula connected to the mainland by a footbridge and, further upstream, a road bridge.
Most of the bars, hotels and restaurants in Atacames are on the peninsula and the shops and services are on the other side of the river, along the main road from Esmeraldas and around the little parque central. By the beach, the Malecón is the place for night-time action: salsa, merengue, pop and techno pummel the air from rival speakers, while partiers dance – or stagger – to the beat and knock back fruity cocktails. On weekdays and during the low season the crowds evaporate, but you can always count on a smattering of bars being open.
Apart from the beach and the bars, there’s not much more to Atacames, though the Museo Acuario Marino, opposite the Tahiti hotel towards the northern end of the Malecón, presents starfish, turtles, caiman, seahorses and piranhas in fairly miserable conditions. Far more uplifting are the humpback whales visible off the coast between June and September (boats usually depart from Súa); Tahiti (t06/2731078) on the Malecón is among many hotels offering whale tours. Diving trips are offered by Fernando Valencia, the owner of Tahiti (number above).
The sea here has a strong undertow that has claimed a number of victims, despite the occasional presence of volunteer lifeguards. Crime is also an unfortunate element of the quieter beach areas, so stay near the crowds, avoid taking valuables onto the beach and stay off it completely at night. The beachside market, mostly stocked with trinkets and sarongs, sometimes has black-coral jewellery for sale – a species under threat and illegal to take out of the country.
Muisne
Located some 35km south of the big resorts, luxury seaside villas and condominiums, MUISNE lies just beyond the range of most serrano vacationers, giving the place a slightly abandoned feel. Nonetheless, the relaxed and friendly air draws a reasonable amount of travellers down to this unusual, rather exotic resort, sitting on a seven-kilometre palm-fringed sand bar amid the mangrove swamps just off the mainland, reached only by boat from the small town of El Relleno, across the Río Muisne.
As you dock, first impressions are not promising. The salty breeze, equatorial sun and high humidity bring buildings out in an unsightly rash of peeling paint and mouldy green concrete, giving the place a dilapidated appearance – upkeep and construction are expensive, as materials have to be laboriously hauled in from the dock.
The island itself splits into two distinct parts, connected by the double boulevard of Isidro Ayora, which runs 2km from the docks to the beach. The town’s main shops and services cluster around the dock, where the police, post office and hospital are located, a close distance to the modest parque central on Isidro Ayora. Muisne’s main attractions lie at the boulevard’s other end, where crashing breakers and a broad, flat beach are fronted by a handful of inexpensive hotels, restaurants and the odd bar, all shaded by a row of palms.
For security reasons, do not take valuables onto the beach, walk on it at night or venture into deserted areas. From time to time you may notice pinprick-like stings when swimming in the ocean; these are caused by tiny jellyfish (aguamala), whose sting doesn’t last much longer than ten minutes. Locals claim a splash of vinegar relieves the pain – ask at a beachside restaurant.
Esmeraldas
ESMERALDAS is the largest industrial port on the north coast and capital of Esmeraldas province, whose economy is mainly driven by an oil refinery at nearby Puerto Balao, which links up to the Trans-Andean oil pipeline, snaking 500km from the Oriente. Despite the city’s shaky infrastructure and the slums that fester on the hillsides fringing the centre, serranos are still drawn here by the lively atmosphere and beaches at Las Palmas, an upmarket suburb at the north end of town, where the city’s bars, discos and the more expensive hotels and restaurants are found.
The tree-filled parque central is the focal point of this city of 125,000, and bustles with street vendors, shoeshiners and fruit-juice sellers. The town’s only real attraction is the Museo del Banco Central, in a sprightly new building on the corner of Bolívar and Piedrahita, housing a good collection of regional pre-Columbian artefacts, particularly the wonderfully expressive ceramics of the La Tolita culture. The Centro Cultural Afro-Indio-Americano on Montalvo and Maldonado is where to find out more about Afro-Ecuadorian culture and history. The busy market, a block west of the Apart Hotel Esmeraldas, is an education in exotic fruits. The biggest city fiesta is the Independence of Esmeraldas on August 5, which includes dancing, processions and an agricultural fair, while around Carnaval there’s the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza Afro, held on Las Palmas beach, featuring marimba players, and traditional Afro-Hispano-American music and dance.
Land of emeralds
Esmeraldas town and province derive their name from the first visits of Spanish conquistadors, who entered coastal villages around here in 1531 and supposedly found emeralds the size of “pigeons’ eggs”; the moniker stuck, despite years of fruitless expeditions for phantom emerald mines.
Before the Conquest, the Esmeraldas coast was so heavily populated with indigenous tribes that Bartolomé Ruiz, who passed through the area on orders from Francisco Pizarro five years earlier, was afraid to land and anchored in the bay instead. The native population declined rapidly during the sixteenth century, probably due to the introduction of foreign diseases, Spanish military probes and the arrival of Africans as slaves and soldiers, which dramatically changed the region’s ethnic and cultural character.
The Afro-Ecuadorians here, possibly the descendants of escaped slaves from Guinea who survived a shipwreck off the Esmeraldas coast in 1553, had control of much of the region by the early seventeenth century, which hardly bothered the Spanish, who preferred to leave alone its impenetrable forests and hostile denizens. Pedro Vicente Maldonado, who became the provincial governor in 1729 at the age of 25, made the most successful exploration of the region in the colonial era, building the first road down from the highlands to the coast as far as Puerto Quito.
Little else is known about the region during this period, save for an account by Irish explorer William B. Stevenson, who in 1809 followed Maldonado’s footsteps and uncovered the settlement at Esmeraldas, which then comprised 93 houses on stilts. Even then, the legend of the emeralds lived on, as Stevenson wrote that the province derived its name “from a mine of emeralds which is found no great distance from Esmeraldas-town…I never visited it, owing to the superstitious dread of the natives who assured me that it was enchanted and guarded by an enormous dragon”.
Manta and around
About 50km south of Bahía de Caráquez, set in a broad bay dotted with freighters, cruise ships and fishing boats, MANTA is a city of some 183,000 people and Ecuador’s largest port after Guayaquil. Divided by the Río Manta between the throbbing commercial centre to the west and the poorer residential area Tarqui to the east, the city is a manufacturing centre – but it’s the seafood industry that really drives the economy. Fish and shrimp processors and packers line the roads entering Manta, and the business of netting swordfish, shark and dorado is lucrative enough to draw US and Japanese fishing fleets to these abundant waters. President Rafael Correra refused to renew the lease for a major US air base here used for drug surveillance – unless Ecuador could build a base in Miami, which unsurprisingly was rejected. Plans are now afoot to build a large oil refinery to take up the economic shortfall created by the closure of the base.
Manta is also known as a lively, holiday destination; its main beach is relatively clean, regularly patrolled, lined with restaurants and packed at weekends. As a bustling modern port more manageable in size and temperament than Guayaquil, Manta is a good place to refuel and make use of the banks, cinemas and services of a busy urban centre. A new road skirting the coast to the southwest also makes it a gateway to undeveloped villages and beaches, as well as the more established resorts of the southern coast beyond Puerto Cayo, where the road joins the Ruta del Sol.
Manta’s tourist focus is the Playa Murciélago, a broad beach 1.5km north of the town centre, where from December to April the surf is good enough for the town to host international bodyboarding and windsurfing competitions. Swimmers should take care year round, as there is a strong undertow; there’s usually plenty else going on here at weekends, from music to volleyball. The Malecón Escénico, a strip of restaurants and bars with a car park, fronts the beach. The police advise against wandering to quiet spots beyond the Oro Verde, where robberies have been reported. A string of fabulous beaches graces the coast west of town, starting with Playa Barbasquillo and Playa Piedra Larga.
Opposite the Malecón Escénico at Calle 19, the Museo Centro Cultural Manta has an interesting collection of artefacts from the Valdivian culture, which flourished here from 3500–1500 BC, and the later Manteño culture, including fish-shaped ocarinas and beautiful zoomorphic jugs and flasks. Heading east down the Malecón, you’ll soon pass the Capitanía, by the entrance to Manta’s main port, frequented by warships, the odd millionaire’s yacht and countless container ships. Cruise liners tend to call between November and February, when the artesanía market at the Plaza Cívica, Malecón and Calle 13, is at its busiest and thronging with indigenous traders from Otavalo, who offer a decent selection of woven goods, jumpers and hammocks alongside more familiar coastal wares such as tagua carvings and Panama hats.
A block east is Manta’s leafiest corner, the main square of Parque Eloy Alfaro and the Parque de la Madre. Away from the shore, the old heart of the port features narrow streets and wooden buildings rising up the hill.