6 Months in Ecuador

Manglaralto, Ecuador

Being a “travel writer” sometimes feels forced, like somebody somewhere is expecting you to write or post something about your trip. The truth is, I don’t travel that way. And I don’t write that way either. It’s basically for myself.

I don’t want a selfie stick. And I don’t need to wax poetic about the sights and sounds of life all around me — not if it’s forced. I’m sure the new Harry Styles record can fill in the blanks for most people. Or the constant scrolling, the endless stories of everything, everywhere, all the time. But that’s not me.

My time in Ecuador has pushed me closer to being as off the grid as possible. It’s just that there might not be enough fresh water in this country to go around, not if the planet is melting — its atmosphere, its climates, its lakes, rivers, streams, etc.

I know what it’s like to live without a washer or a TV. And to be sure, most people outside of the U.S. don’t have dryers either. The sun is enough.

But on a cloudy day — or as has been the case along the coast here in Manglaralto — the clouds come in droves and never leave. The changing of the season has been drastic. Once April passed by and the clouds became incessant, I felt the world might be blocked out for good.

Even artificial intelligence seems to be replacing human minds. And that’s why it’s been so nice to be here, in certain moments. With the world so far away.

The off-season during the week is like a ghost town. For most people, that might be a terrible experience. For a writer — it means focusing on work.

And that’s fine by me.

Quito

Quito is the capital of Ecuador. (Allow me to relay some basic facts.) The city is just about 3,000 meters up into the sky — along the Andes Mountains, the longest mountain range in the world. The city is the second-highest capital on the planet, behind La Paz, Bolivia.

I arrived in Quito on December 2nd. I found the weather to be cool and cold at night and early in the morning, too. During the middle of the day when the sun came out, it got warm. Hmm. Lemme think. Yes, the sun splashed down upon the green palms blistering with warmth, filling my face with goose pimples. O, what a thing — to be alive.

I stayed in an eighth-floor apartment near Parque La Carolina (165.5 acres) in the central business district. The Airbnb host was a girl from South Florida who had an Ecuadorian boyfriend. She helped me get into the country with a fake COVID test. (I’d found out the day before, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, that the rules had changed — and I couldn’t get a real test in time.)

Then, after 10 days of working — teaching English online in the morning and then switching to my digital marketing gig working on a project for BetMGM on NFL sports betting — I moved to the other side of the park.

That first apartment had big windows overlooking Pichincha, a nearly 5,000-meter stratovolcano towering above Quito from the eastern slope. (I’d climb that sonofabitch on New Year’s Eve day. The sun would roast my head like a marshmallow. Scabs and all.)

For the next month, I lived in a fourth-floor apartment in a nice building with classical music playing in the elevator. The place was $1,200 for a month — two bathrooms, a big bedroom with a huge bed, a pull-out couch, and big windows. The backroom had large glass windows as well, mostly without any shades. The mornings were cold, and at night this mist crept along the streets, so thick at times that I couldn’t even see a giant, red Huawei sign across the street.

I worked, cooked, drank, and explored. There was a bar and club section downtown (not including the historic district) that I visited once or twice during the daytime. The fresh air was good, and I was surrounded by shopping malls and modernity.

The NFL regular season ended. And I told some of my editors to shove it.

Then I flew to the fucking coast.

Manta

I don’t remember how I heard about Manta. Maybe I looked it up on the internet or I heard it in passing along the street when a vampire was ripping the throat out of a stray dog.

I was really surprised when I landed and the airport didn’t have any modern things like Baskin Robbins, KFC, or French fries. What the hell? The airport didn’t even have coffee. There was nowhere to take a load off — I’d planned to get there early since I wouldn’t be able to check in to my room until later in the afternoon.

When I got to the place, the address was wrong. The taxi driver helped me with speaking Spanish to people on the street.

Then I finally got to the right place, dropped off my luggage, and went to the beach.

Manta essentially has one main beach, El Murcielago (Playa Murciélago). There are other beaches, but they are mostly filled with tuna boats, and rocks, and definitely without any McDonalds in sight.

In fact, other than the Mall del Pacifico right near El Murcielago — Manta is a bit of a ghost town. It was the middle of January. On some mornings, the clouds dominated, and that was how I could tell what the weather was going to be. It didn’t change rapidly there. So, when the sun shone in the early mornings, that signified it would be hot that day.

On some mornings, I got my classes done and finished with my digital marketing work before most normal people had even left for their jobs. I’d been constantly busy since September — it was strange to have so much free time.

When I did have a day to kill like that, I hadn’t been ready for it. I drank and read at the beach. By five o’clock that night, I was a bit toasted. I was talking to my ex and I let out a bit of verbal vomit she probably didn’t want to read — about the past.

The next day, I apologized. She said we shouldn’t talk for a while. It ended up being the last we spoke!

Americans don’t know how to relax.

Santa Marianita

The port city of Manta along Ecuador’s coast has a population of about 226,000. As you head southwest, there is nothing but little villages. They hardly have paved roads.

Santa Marianita is a town I found by doing my own research. Well, it’s not a town. It’s a tiny little village that’s well-known for kite-surfing.

I got a place right on the beach for one week (after staying in Manta for a week). My plan was to take a month to travel along the coast, working half-days. Eventually, I stopped teaching online, too. I needed a break.

At night, the waves sounded glorious. But the Russian landlord had two or three dogs that were always barking at anything. And then, in the middle of the night on my second night, a Russian couple moved in next door.

This dude never shut the fuck up. Constantly talking on his phone, bellowing and out of breath — for about 24 hours straight. Until one morning, I was eating my breakfast with headphones in my ears — and I could still hear him!

I walked out to the deck, hopping over the railing, scaring the shit out of his wife and dog — and I made a mocking motion with my hand. YAP YAP YAP, DOES HE EVER SHUT UP?

During the days, I read on the beach and got very sunburned. There were cabanas too, about a 10-minute walk from my place. I read The Shining and drank big bottles of pilsner for about $2 while overlooking the Pacific Ocean, slowly forgetting I was American.

Puerto Lopez

My previous host in Manta recommended a few places to visit along the coast. The first one I chose was Puerto Lopez, another fishing village. I messaged a taxi on WhatsApp — he had to come from Manta. It was raining.

The day before I left, I witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen, going down all orange, pink, yellow, and red. The white sand beaches and pelicans of Santa Marianita fascinated me. Pelicans are like cartoon characters. They have huge elongated beaks and they slurp down their fish dinners in one big gulp.

My host in Puerto Lopez was a retired British woman. She seemed like a hippie, who liked to drink and smoke. She was very friendly.

I worked in the mornings, drinking coffee and listening to music. Then I went to the beach. There wasn’t much else to do.

I read from a hammock.

The beach there wasn’t exactly clean, and the vibes were remote at times. I think the previous host had said there were drugs in the area. I was fine with my pilsners.

By then, I was about two hours southwest of Manta.

After a very chill and satisfying week — with periods of rain — I took another taxi south, this time to Montanita (Montañita).

Montanita (Montañita)

Montanita is the most well-known beach in Ecuador. Pretty girls go there to get some kind of ass-eating bikini syndrome. It’s incurable, especially on sunny days.

I stayed at a place that was back from the main area, down a long road, and then to the right across unpaved bullshit that sloped down and up toward a cattle fence surrounding three or four one-floor apartments. I had the one all the way to the right.

It was filled with bugs. Each night and morning, I had to sweep their carcasses. When I stooped down to see them, I’d count about eight or nine different species of insects I’d never even seen before.

There were two bedrooms. I slept in one with the light on because the bugs terrorized me. What if a giant spider lept on my face in the middle of the night with 18 eyes and just to be spiteful it asked me what my favorite color was?

Along the Pacific coast, I started writing creative shit again. No more sports writing analysis about gambling. And my one writing client wasn’t giving me much work. Again, that might be a bad situation for most people — but for a writer, it means more time to write.

So the rejections kept coming, and I didn’t care. I drank beer and listened to classical music at night with the eerie silence leaving me feeling refreshed and vivified.

I extended my stay by a week, for 14 total days in Montanita. On the last night, I met a girl. She put my hand on her butt and said things in Spanish I didn’t understand. I highly recommend it.

I decided to go back to Manta. I felt carefree. But I wanted to stay in one spot for a month. Plus, my original 90 days were about up and I needed to extend my exemption stamp.

Back in Manta, I found a place in the Barbasquillo section, the western part of town with many new restaurants. The room only had AC in the bedroom. And the front windows didn’t have screens.

So I lit these little mosquito coils at night and wrote and drank. I took walks, went to the beach, and cooked meals. Sometimes I chatted with the girl I’d met.

Then I found a Darmouth contest, and in one week I wrote a full-length play (about 65 pages). Sometimes I felt like that Dutch painter, de Kooning. I remember reading one time how neighbors said they’d seen him pacing in his apartment during the day. To get past my own mind, I’d smoke a cigarette, drink, and then I’d get to work.

It came out well, or at least I’d like to think it did. It had to be on modern technology and how it impacts our way of life. HAH!

Then I figured since Carnival was coming — I might as well go back to Montanita for a week. So I did that.

One morning, in C’s bed — in a little cabin surrounded by trees, insects, and the sounds of the Pacific Ocean — I thought about how I had a place in Manglaralto (just south of Montanita) and one up in Manta, about three hours north — and there I was, naked next to her.

I went back to Manta and finished out my month’s rent. Then I came back to Montanita for the third time.

I got a place not too far from the beach, another Dutch landlord. There was a long bar table to work from, a couch, a big kitchen, two bathrooms, and a nice bed where C and I made a lot of noise, bothering the neighbors. It came and went like Earth’s freshwater. Yeah. The hard water along the coast was starting to make my hair turn gray.

Being a writer means working hard, too. So that’s what I eventually chose.

I recommend coming to Ecuador. If you go to Quito, make sure it’s between June and August. If you come to Montanita — bring condoms with you. They suck down here.

 — Manglaralto, Ecuador (5/23/2022)
10:10 PM

Addendum: After sleeping on it, I forgot to write that Ecuadorians love to laugh, smile, and dance. Although Guayaquil, a major city in the south, is going through a massive rise in drug-related gang violence — I experienced mostly peace elsewhere around the country. One weekend, I had a neighbor down here in Manglaralto, who was from Austin, Texas. I was receiving a pepperoni pizza at the time of his arrival and offered him some pizza and beer. We chatted, went out that night, and got hammered. Talking to random people around town, yeah. Lots of Whiskey. And I woke up at 9:30 AM on Sunday morning on my couch with my shoes still on, the first day off I decided to have in weeks. The best moments along the coast were waking up with C and instead of getting right to work (my normal routine), we went out to get breakfast somewhere while the rest of the world slept at their jobs. She also showed me the surf spots and hippie villages of Ayampe and Olon. The change in weather was just as abrupt as us not seeing each other anymore. Mostly cloudy days, with very little sunshine. I worked, wrote, and drank. Music brought me solace and joy. And I took walks along the beach in the pitch-black night with nobody else around. Just the stray dogs, the dead fish, and the rising tide.

My first poetry chapbook, EMPTY BEER CANS: QUARANTINE POEMS FROM DA NANG, VIETNAM, is now available from Alien Buddha Press, on Amazon.