We're Alive!!

Saturday, January 15 (Sue)  In more ways than one, we're alive.  Thank goodness.  The day after our fantastic horse ride, we both were down for 3 days with stomach trouble.  No details, but it was nasty.  Thanks to Coca Cola and Cipro, we seem to be on the mend and hope not to re-experience that part of traveling overseas.  Since then, we flew to Guayaquil and had a driver bring us to Salinas on the southern coast of Ecuador.  The first real estate guy that was showing us the area referred to it as the "Little Miami" - not.  It was a ghetto - it was filled with very nice people, but it was a ghetto none the less.  Pretty beach, nothing spectacular - very dirty streets and again just a lack of organization and cleanliness.  Different standards.  The next day, our guide, Mike Seger took us up the coast and we saw some beautiful spots.  Really liked a small development called Lobster Bay about mid-way between Salinas and Manta.  It was on a bluff overlooking an awesome bay and could walk down to the beach.  Also, room to moor your boat in the bay.  The beach was filled with little restaurants housed in numerous beach huts - really charming and lots of activity around.  Loved it. 

By the way, Mike is somewhat famous.  He was featured on a recent episode of HGTV International - Salinas, Ecuador!  Spent the night in a quaint little surfing town, Mantenita - went out to look for a place to have dinner and ran into a gringo couple reviewing the menu along with us.  Turned out they were the couple featured on that same episode, Kim and Hector (from Chicago).  So much fun, we shared dinner and had lots of laughs.  They love Ecuador and are doing real estate sales here. 
The next two days, we explored the coast north of Manta and can rule that out.  Even less developed and really, really quiet - too quiet for our likes anyway.

Friday we flew from Manta to Quito, spent the night and continued from Quito to Cotacachi today via bus - about two hours north of Quito in the mountains.  Bus ride was hysterical - saw my life flash before me several times as we careened around mountain curves - but God was gracious and delivered us safely.  Cotacachi is charming and clean - will spend several days.  Went to the famed Otavalo Market today - absolutely gorgeous textiles of every variety.  Beautiful alpaca blankets for $12!!  Pashminas for $2.  On and on - if I had more room, I'd have spent a bundle.