Oct.23 to Oct.30- Final Week in Salinas- Maybe?

Our final week here turned out to be the least active as far as travels go and -woohoo- the sunniest. As well, much like Italy, we started getting into a routine- reading emails & news with coffee, doing our exercises and taking our Spanish lessons. Every 4 to 5 days we'd go to the Mercado to get our fruit & veggies for approximately $5 for enough strawberries, apples, oranges, bananas, peppers, carrots, onions, garlic etc to last till the next trip. And most days we'd walk to the local grocery store to get milk, yogurt, water, coffee, wine, beer and whatever meat/fish we'd decided to cook that evening for a fraction of what we paid in Canada. If we went out for lunch we'd cook for dinner and visa versa.

Sunday of course we went to the Sports Bar, but Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday were sunny so we finally hit the beach.
The first day we sat at the main beach with Edit and Gary. And of course beer gets delivered to your chair.

Plus there are always lots of activities to watch.

Barbara taking a seadoo ride.

                               The next day we went to Chipipe beach- our favourite.
                                      What! me with another beer.

And swimming in amazingly clear water

And we got to watch a bit of an air show with the navy practicing.

Now of course when the helicopters started approaching the beach, Uwe was waiting for the Apocalypse Now music before we would have made a run for it-LOL

This beach is so wide and clean with way less people

It's like having your own private paradise! We had several beer delivered cold for $1.25 each, some great vendor food- fish & plantains wrapped in banana leaf, and a pastry full of cheese and meat- $1 each- enough to do both of us for lunch.

And this is how they get their fishing boats in & out of the water.

And finally into the water

And some singers/guitarists entertaining the people next to us

One night during this week we went out to dinner with Edit & Gary to a barbecue place they had discovered. You had to pick your choice of meat- chicken/pork/beef/ shrimps. They came with beans and rice. You could also pick mashed potatoes done on the barbecue- amazing- and a corn paddy grilled much like a potatoe pancake and a grilled banana & cheese. We had a dish each plus the potatoe, banana and corn paddy plus 2 beer for a total cost for 4 of us of $18.

The griller

The happy customers

On Friday the four of us went for Happy Hour at one of the local bars- Cranberries- and had 2 margaritas each for Gary, Edit & I and Uwe had 2 gin & tonics- total cost for all $11. You gotta love the prices.

Edit and I with our margaritas- not bad once Gary helped the bartender with the ratio of ingredients.

 

Afterwards we went for yet another excellent meal at another restaurant.

 Pescado Apanado- breaded fish 

 

Carne Apanado- breaded beef- both $4 a plate- no wonder we eat out every day- cheaper than cooking.

Fishing is a big part of both the local economy plus tourist activity. This was a huge one freshly caught  that we saw walking while along the Malecon.

Next week off to Cuenca and the mountains of Ecuador.