Amistad

We are moored at Puerto Amistad Marina (Bahia de Caraquez) in Ecuador. The town of Amistad has all your basic needs covered, but to do a major provisioning, you will presently need to bus or taxi to Manta which is about an hour away. (A new mall is in the works here that will have a major grocery store but it is not yet built.) There is a simple fruit, veggie, and fish market which has great products and is CHEAP!

At the marina, we have access to hot showers, internet, same-day laundry service, and restaurant/bar.

On our passage, the dinghy was deflated but must have been leaning on something sharp. Upon arrival, Jordan found a few slow leaks and quickly fixed them.

Once our check-in was complete, we toured the town and found it to be appealing, but I think we are running out of things to do! We have visited the museum which was interesting. And one evening, we attended the circus which was in town for a few days. No animals, but they had the usual such as a contortionist, 3 trapeze artists, 2 clowns, and a guy performing in a circling gizmo thing. But for 5 bucks, it was a night out and something different to see.

Another day, we saw a great view of Amistad. At the top of a hill, there is a massive cross that you can walk up inside of and look across the town.

There is now a brand new bridge between the towns of Amistad and San Vicente which is across the Chone estuary. The bridge is lit up at night with green LED lights on the west side and blue LED lights on the east side. One day when Jordan and I were trying out a motorcycle we took a quick ride over the bridge.

Before the bridge, people transported to San Vicente aboard a small passenger ferry for 30 cents. People with cars were transported aboard a barge-type of ferry.



Many people get around via 3-wheeled bicycles that serve as taxis. (There are of course the regular yellow motorcar taxis.)

Slow easy taxi ride to enjoy the view

And many others get around via small motorcycles (200cc). In fact Jordan and I just purchased one of these 200cc motorcycles to do inland touring. The reason we purchased this motorcycle is because the paperwork is so expensive and complicated to import our KLR from Victoria. It's not expensive to ship the KLR here but the importation is impossibly convoluted and not worth the effort.

The weather here is about the same every day. Never hot, never cold. The skies are sometimes cloudy and sometimes sunny. It hardly ever rains and hasn't since we've been here.