Around the Town of Montañita, Ecuador 2020!

For this post, I wanted to organize the images by location on the map. However, about halfway through writing this, I realized that many things on the map had moved! We dropped down using Google drop and saw that many things are now either gone or had moved in just a few months. So I am not sure where some of these pictures are anymore. The map below was a screenshot in April of 2021. That means in the few months that we had left, they had moved. Who would've thought? We still recommend you stop by though if you can find them!

We have walked all up and down this beach but mostly stayed on the northside from Hostal Arrecife and on up. Since we didn't spend much time or take many pictures from the south side. If we did, it was more on the main road to head over to the next town.

Here on the beach, there is a walkway a couple of feet above the ground that people can walk on. One side has a railing and the other side is open, usually hanging over stalls selling their wares below. This covers a decent chunk of the beach separating the sand from the businesses.

Below is the inside street of that wall that separates the businesses from the beach. Though we have looked at Google maps recently (May of 2021) and have noticed many drastic changes already, So this is now more of a moment in time when Montañita was growing.

So because of that change... there are actually a few streets where I don't remember where that picture belongs. It had already changed so much! such as our favorite bakery we spoke of? It moved to the other end of Montañita!

Connecting to the beach is a club that also happens to be a brewery...neither are locations we are interested in investigating (usually tons of extroverted and loud people). We just stayed on the outskirts and observed as we walked past.

As seen above, the town is pretty clean and well maintained. There was construction debris and a lot of building updates being made to prepare for the upcoming (hopefully) high tourist season. So some mess but should be cleared once completed. In town, it is also very colorful with bright splashes here and there. You will also want to be on the lookout for the various art left by visitors and locals.

As seen below, there were two main areas having some major construction. The first two pictures are by the river that is to connect to the ocean and the other pictures are a few streets down into town. Both are to be shop stalls. The first ones were started first when we arrived in Montañita and were not worked on as often. By the build and connections it has in each stall, we think it will be more nonperishable products such as souvenirs to take home. The other four pictures went up quickly the last few weeks of our stay. These had an area to work on as well as water connections. Possibly to host food stalls. Our last week in Ecuador we were already seeing people setting their stalls up with advertisements and getting their equipment organized. We really hope someone will send us images of their visit to these locations! We would love to see what became of these and who are inhabiting them now!

Below is the bus stop close to the middle of town. We did not visit this area often as there were mostly more hostels and a gym. We sat here for, I believe three hours waiting for our bus. Our bus ride was about four hours to wait another couple of hours for our plane to arrive at the airport. This location has some exhausting memories as it was the beginning of our long waiting period until we could actually get onto the plane. We left at around 5pm and our flight wasn't until after midnight. Since we had Sherlock and extremely heavy baggages, we didn't want to wander around with them.

Remember how I mentioned that the stalls were by the river that is to connect to the ocean? This is the river! The bridge we always crossed over to get into town. There is a little path down the side that heads straight to the beach as can be seen in the second photo. Right behind that second photo (such as turn around), you'll get the following four images. This is where quite a few iguanas like to hang out. They are quite large and will pop out on warm days. We were wanting to try to catch and eat an iguana but these were usually tourist attractions or familiar faces for the locals. After a few weeks, we ended up seeing the same ones sitting out there (such as one with a chipped tail). I'm not sure if you can see but the third picture below has an iguana swimming in the middle of the river!

Now we are getting to the connector from the bridge over to where the bakery used to be. The first image is the bridge from where we came from. The second image is behind the first one, headed in towards the center of town and towards the bakery. If you followed the split to the right, the bakery would have just been a few yards that direction.

This is the bakery we loved! After our first month in Montañita, they had put up a banner! You can see in the first picture it wasn't up yet. They have consistently amazing snacks that we wish we tried more of. But you should try as many as you can. Some will surprise you by the filling or just how well it was made. We kept accidentally finding some amazing staples we ended up buying over and over again.

Last are some random other photos I took around town or on the edge of town. To think, that it already has been a few months and there has probably already been so much change! We hope to one day travel to Montañita once more and witness the changes.

Would you plan to visit Ecuador? OR specifically Montañita? If you do, we would love to see your photos and share your experience!