Montinita

Day 1 – Stop-Over

Getting up early again we went to book a taxi to the bus terminal to be met with a pretty decent breakfast of fresh fruit juice and scrambled eggs.

A quick 10 minute taxi ride to the bus station and we were pleased that we had done a reckie the day before and could go straight to the ticket office and get a bus ticket to Montinita which was leaving in around ½ hour.

We went to the bus stop which was on the 3^rd floor and waited in the heat for our bus to turn up, fortunately it turned up on time and we were pretty pleased to be boarding an air-conditioned coach.  Also, we were pleased that this was only due to be a 2-hour bus ride.

 

Pulling out of the terminal it took some time to drive through town until we reached the countryside.  Along the way, we read and checked out the views, passing through small villages until we pulled up in Montinita.

Our first impressions were that it was a very dusty/rustic town but was quite a travellers town with plenty of hostels, restaurants and bars.  After a quick conversation with a local for directions we found our hostel for the night which was just off the main drag.

The hostel was quite quaint and had been built out of bamboo and we were given a choice of rooms.  Once again, I think we may have been the only people staying there.  The room was quite spacious with a small balcony and a very hard bed.

Once unpacked we headed downstairs where we had a quick “welcome to Montininta” beer before heading into town to try and sort some stuff out, money and a Sim card.

We found a small shop that did Sim cards, but whilst we managed to get it understood that we wanted a Sim card, we had other problems.  Despite roping in various people that allegedly could understand English we could not get them understand that we wanted the card set up with internet data.  After a frustrating hour we were getting nowhere so we had to give up and try somewhere else.

Leaving the Sim card to later, we wandered down to the beach which was lovely and you could see why it attracted travellers and surfers alike.  We then had a wander around the streets trying to find another Sim shop (without luck) and a cashpoint to get some currency out as we knew the next place we were going to did not have ATM’s.

 

Cash on hip we wandered for a bit more before finding a restaurant/bar where we could get a cold beer to combat the heat (I’m finding excuses now!!).  We sat there for a bit fending off the odd hawker with jewellery and straw hats, before considering getting something to eat.

We left in search of food, but instead of taking the easy option of one of the nearby tourist restaurants we found a small road where the locals seemed to be eating.  Sitting down in one of them we found they had a set menu, where Shell had a Ceviche dish where I opted for some curried mixed fish and rice. After some nice little starter’s the main courses turned up and they were both pretty good.

As it was boiling hot and we had no specific plans we then headed back to the hostel for the afternoon to relax and cool down in front of our fan, it must have been over 90 degrees.

In the evening as it was a bit of a party town so we headed out to check out the action, we had a quick drink outside our hostel before hitting the streets.  We walked around for a bit then found a quite noisy street with lots of little stalls serving cocktails.

 

We didn’t think it was wise to hit the cocktails, even though it seemed the thing to do (most probably cheap?), instead we found a bar nearby.  We sat outside the bar and had a few beers whilst we people watched, although it did seem that it was still out of season as it was not too busy and a lot of the bars were still shut.

A few more beers later and feeling a bit tired we headed back to the hostel as we were quite excited about moving on to our Air BnB the following day.  We did think that Montinita was nice though and we may consider coming back here for New year’s Eve as we thought it would be lively.