Canoa – Beach Bumming :)

After Puerto López it was time to continue up the coast. In my head I imagined a bus that just rolls up and down the coast stopping at all the coastal towns, unfortunately that’s not how things work. We first had to catch a bus inland to Jipijapa and from there we caught a “direct” bus to Canoa. I put that in quotation marks because in reality they threw us off at their office in Santa Elena and then paid for us to take the local bus the rest of the way. Altogether it cost about $8pp and took around 4 hours. If you had a car you could get there in about 2.

As soon as we hopped off the bus a friendly local flagged us down and showed us his beach front Hostal Atardecer for $15 a night we got a private room and bath and flat screen TV but no AC. The view from the balcony was enough to convince me but Victoria wanted to check out another place. The other place was even cheaper but without the awesome view so that was an easy choice. With the sea breezes going without AC wasn’t too bad, but we are from Savannah, GA and 90 degrees with 90% is the usual 😉 I’d highly recommend the place, the only problem we had was someone nibbled on our groceries the first night we were there.


Canoa was very close to the epicenter of the earthquake here in Ecuador last April and there is still plenty of signs of it, destroyed buildings, construction, and closed businesses. I think that may have scared off some of the tourists which for me was great. It’s a great laid back beach town with only dirt roads.

It’s also great place to practice/learn to surf as it has a consistent beach break that’s not too big or too small. So if course the one day we had to rent a board(10/day) and give it a go. Victoria had no trouble standing up in the surf but wore out her knees by going from knees to standing rather than straight up. After a few hours of trying I was finally able to catch waves before they broke. Unfortunately at that point I was completely exhausted so after catching a couple I had to call it a day.

Canoa was one of my favorite towns in Ecuador. I love the mountains but nothing beats a cheap shack on a nice beach in a laid back town as far as I’m concerned. I’d put it up there with the Corn Islands in Nicaragua, Los Zacatitos in Baja California, Koh Rong in Cambodia, or Railey Beach in Thailand, my personal list of favorite beach towns.

Well that’s the end of our trip in Ecuador 🙁 I’m planning on writing a little guide/summary of Ecuador next….. hopefully it’ll happen this time unlike my article about Koh Rong, Cambodia, lol.

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Tim

Graduate of the accounting school at the University of Georgia and now a real estate investor and agent. I have loved to travel since I was a kid and have dreamed of traveling full-time since then.

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