The long bus rides, unpaved streets and cheap almuerzos, children running barefoot through the streets, juice stands, late nights, sunny days, street dogs, seafood, friendly locals and hippy foreigners. The list actually goes on but when I close my eyes and think of the journey we had when we did La Ruta del Sol, these are things that come to mind.
La Ruta del Sol (The Sun Route) or more recently known as La Ruta Spondylus, is a highway (sometimes small road) that travels parallel to the Pacific coast of Ecuador passing by miles and miles of virgin beaches, small towns, and slightly more metropolitan cities.
We technically started in Machala and then went to Salinas, Santa Elena and Ballenita, then to Montañita, Puerto Lopez and Los Frailes, and finally Canoa. We ate, we surfed, we partied, we got lost, we fought and almost broke up, we talked to locals, we laid naked on the beach. It's no wonder we found so many lost souls along the coast, Argentinians, Chileans, Peruvians, Colombians, Europeans and even Americans, all who looked as if they fell down a rabbit hole and didn’t really want to find their way out.
