Unfortunately, AFAIK right now Bahia is pretty much the farthest beach area to reach in Ecuador from Cuenca. It **should** be soon remedied when neighboring Manta gets improved airport connections…. but untill then, it takes two flights from Cuenca to Manta and the peak travel time (aka weekend flights) cannot really be considered “connecting” flights in that you have to stay overnight in Guayaquil or Quito. A drive to Bahia by private car is about 7-10 hours depending on roads and traffic, add a few hours if going by bus. For fellow North Carolinians, its analogous to driving to The Outer Banks from Asheville along HWY 64 in 1960.
That being said, Bahia ROCKS! Its clean, calm and picture perfect. Its the first coastal city that is more or less “environmentally aware” with hosts of sustainable horticulture, agriculture, and other ecolodge / projects going on in that region. Across the bay in neighboring and burgeoning Canoa, the surf and sun is right for a tranquil getaway that’s hip with the backpackers and surfer crowd. Its much more low key than Montañita to the south.
I truly hope the purported growth of nearby Manta and the new bridge being built across the bay are not too detrimental to the pristine environment in the Bahia de Caraquez, but continual pollution as Ecuador grows is almost inevitable.
We met up with my buddy Jim in town and he set us up with a room in the Hotel where he worked as a cook. This pueblo has a definite Bohemian feel to it, lots of truly earthy people, artisans, musicians, etc. This town is at the foot of where the mountainous country begins and the scenery was great. The hotel had a guitar and I got a good dose of jamming in while I was there. I met an eccentric Rastafarian named David, an artisan from Colombia who was very friendly and explained a lot to be about the Rasta. The town is a surf town but the surf wasn’t up very much while we were there so I didn’t rent a board. Maybe further up the coast we can find more waves. The first night there I didn’t sleep well because of cocks crowing, dogs howling, pigeons landing on the roof, donkeys ´hee-hawing´, hammers and saws pounding away. By the third night we got used to it and it became a refreshing change from the trains planes and automobile horns that i heard constantly at my place in Raleigh.