Saturday, February 12, 2011

Salinas: where all the Ecuadorians come for the weekend

This morning, we said goodbye to the quiet deserted beach and rode the bus to Salinas – where a lot of Ecuadorians are here for the weekend. During our 90OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA         minute, local route bus ride, vendors came aboard the bus to sell food. I bought a cookie-looking, cornbread-tasting item filled with cheese. I’ve got to find the recipe on the Internet when I get home. It was delicious. Phillip bought a sack of cookies, sweet, shortbread tasting cookies. That vendor was smart, he first went thru the bus with a jar of very small cookies to give the passengers a taste, then he sold the packages of cookies for 50 cents apiece.

The bus actually took us only as far as La Libertad, where we caught a taxi to Salinas, about 5 km (3 miles) farther out on a OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA         peninsula. I’ll have pictures of the crowds after we walk around tomorrow. I’m sure they will still be here, as this is one of the major weekend vacation spots for Ecuadorians. Today, we got to our hostel, which is across the street from the beach. We don’t have a beach view, nor do we have flowers outside the window or a sea breeze and hammocks. What we do have is an air conditioner in our room and a television with English-speaking HBO! You can see the window unit in the wall above the far bed. The TV is on top of that curvy white part on the left side. That’s a small refrigerator on the floor, in that storage area under where the TV is.

We did actually venture out for lunch, not just bask in the air conditioning all afternoon. I read about a restaurant area in Salinas called Cervichelandia. It’s just 4 blocks or so from our hostal. We ate there.

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It’s actually a covered, open air collection of different vendors, all sharing the same menu, all serving cerviche and other entrees. Of course, I had the cerviche.

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This was the mixto, a combination of shrimp, octopus, fish, and squid. The squid makes the juice of this one look darker than that of other ceviches. This is a soup bowl full of cerviche, with a bag of plaintain chips, kinda like we serve potato chips with lunch. The lime juice and cilantro were deliciously prominent flavors, yet I could still taste the different seafood in each bite. Phillip had the $3 fried fish lunch plate.

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In addition to the fish, which is closest to him on the plate, it had fried plantain, rice, an avocado slice as big as a watermelon slice, and a salad topped with marinated red onions.  After lunch we walked around, got a bebida con fruta y leche (I’m not translating it anymore for you!) and came back to the air conditioning. This hostel has wifi, and I have 3 signal bars in the room, but the password that the reception desk gave me isn’t working. I guess we’ll just have to go to the reception area to send it… and since the reception area has a bar, it looks like it’s cerveza time!

2 comments:

  1. Well,Mrs Blogster,I must say you two certainly are living up to your title of Adventurer and Adventuress. I definitely would have selected the Phillip lunch choice of fried fish ,salad and rice over chewy squid any day.This new hostel looks to be as nice as we've seen so far and you sure can't beat air conditioning and HBO.Go figure,all the extras inside the room and no view? Oh, by the way alittle news from the home front that should bring a smile.Front page news, hopefully for the last time,( Mayor Mike Moncrief announced Thursday that he will not seek a fifth two-year term. He will step down after 8 years at the helm.)OK,you two just bask in that new knowledge and enjoy a even better day on me, and the Star Telegram.

    Keep the Post coming,
    See Ya, Your Cuz.

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  2. Very cute and colorful room and yay for air conditioning!! Not so much yay for squid. :-/

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