Santino has a week off school so yesterday we went to Playa Varadero, a beach in the village of Data, about 1 hour 30 minutes from Guayaquil.
Data is a hole with nothing going on. However, the beach is quite nice. A couple of years ago the local council, which by a strange quirk of geography is actually Guayaquil, decided to do something for the place and came up with a plan to build an access road, parking area, dining area, toilets etc. There was also a plan to build a tower for observing UFO´s. Apparently there are regular sightings around there. Unfortunately we couldn´t see this Ovnidrómo – hopefully it is coming in the next phase.
We didn´t observe any UFO´s either although if you´re a big fan of cruise ships (trust me, the species exists) then this would be your ideal beach holiday destination:
The tourist complex was quite simple but attractive – clearly not done completely on the cheap. The toilets were clean and the food was really good, because the woman showed some imagination and fried the sea bass (corvina) in a mustard –based sauce. Usually you can guarantee it will just be fried and the biggest frill is a bit of red onion. The rice was white and completely bland though.
After lunch we went on the beach which was also clean and definitely benefitting from the fact that there is a wide soft zone that makes it impossible for any locals to drive their car up to their deckchairs. If they plant some more palm trees it will look even nicer.
One of the best things about this stretch of coastline is that the sun is almost always shining. At least it was shining until I had finished putting my tent up and covering it in a gazebo. All of that was to protect Naomi who was on her first trip to the beach. She´d opened her eyes for a bit when we got her out of the car but clearly the dazzle from the midday sun was not to her liking and she did her best to stay asleep for the rest of the afternoon.
The sun did come out again after a bit and the light at the end of the afternoon was spectacular. I´ll post some other photos.
If you want to visit this beach you can get there from Guayaquil on the Trans Posorja bus - tell them to let you off at the entrance on the main road in Data and walk 2 minutes. Here is some information on the route from Guayaquil.
