It has been hot and lazy days in Mirador San Jose, beach walking, swimming, talking lots of photos of birds, flowers, lizards and collecting shells for the front garden of our house Casa Isabella (check it out on the sarocoenterprises.com website). Have been itching to have some really good fish – too far to walk down the road, $35 for a car and driver too much and hitch hiking in our best interest, talked to the corner store owner and he has the best fresh shrimp and tuna steaks ever, a pound of each $7.00.
Finally nailed down two excursions to go on, this week Juan a highly recommended driver and tour guide will be taking us to Montecristi and Jipijapa. Montecristi is where the original Panama hats are made, not sure if we can afford the original but we will check it out. The following week we are staying at the Oceanic Gardens for 3 nights and doing four Machalilla tours:
- Los Frailes Beach
- Agua Blanca
- Rainforest tour
- Isle de la Plata (Poor Man’s Galapagos)
Not too bad all for $488.00 this includes breakfasts, and lunches and a few other things. Since they don’t deal with credit cards, paypal and only wanted money to be transferred to a bank account, we opt not to deal with Western Union and requested to pay in cash which has to be paid the day before the tours, Leo is to meet someone at the Mirador San Jose gate with the cash and they will give us a receipt. Pretty strange……
People here have talked about walking down the beach to a fishing village quote unquote ‘they have the best hamburgers and pizza?????’, and it only takes a few hours to walk. We left at about 3:30 pm when it was not as hot and started walking at 5:30 no sign of anything, walked about another 15 minutes and came across a manmade huge rock pile going into the ocean. Decided it was not in our best interest to go through the ocean to get around, walked up the hill saw a huge lake with sewer pipes going into it and a very large what we assume a fish plant.
Walked to the top of the hill and did not see any fishing boats or village, now it is almost 6 pm, Leo made the wise decision to head back before it got dark. We headed back walking faster than we had going down for fear of getting caught in the dark, we had brought a flashlight with us. Of course everything looked different because the tide had changed to a low tide, saw which I thought was astonishing huge cement sewer system going into the Pacific (see pictures). Leo said not unusual for countries to be dumping their raw sewage into the Pacific????????
Three dogs followed us for a while and all that was going through mind was “they told us we did not need rabies shots”, YIKES.
We got back at about 7:15 very dark and went to the pub to have supper; delicious not sure what she called it, chicken in a sauce, rice and salad, 2 large beers for $19.00. Today my ankle and large toe is really sore, I guess from walking in the sand, icing and aleve is helping. My fitbit registered 15,528 steps not too bad for 2 old dudes.
Can hardly wait for Tuesday, taking the dreaded bus to Manta, need to get cash out of the bank, need wine, see if I can find After Bite or something similar and tape for my foot. Mosquitos have not been bad here but we are going into the rainforest, yes we will be wearing long pants, socks and long sleeves…….