A Whole Lotta Nothin

Third day of rest and relaxation at Playa Escondida.  Like the name implies ("escondida" means "hidden"), this place is pretty much off the map.  I noticed as we were coming in that Google hasn't yet mapped our road.

Playa Escondida is a several hundred acre property up near the northwest corner of Ecuador.  We're about 10km up the road from the nearest village (Abdon Calderón), and probably another 5km from the nearest village that actually has anything in it (Tonchigue).  Since we don't have a car, it feels like we're completely cut off here, though Ruby and I did catch a round trip to Tonchigue the other day to stock up on some supplies including fresh fish, squid and shrimp.

Playa Escondida is basically a few homes, a restaurant and a small hostel built on some rocky cliffs overlooking an isolated bay.  The beach here is sand mixed in with broad flat, pockmarked sandstone, making it better suited for tide pooling than real swimming or body surfing.  So it's a bit of a change from the consistent heavy surf of the west-facing beaches where we've spent the past week.

I found this place online - according to the website, it's more of a "luxury camping experience than a typical beach house."  I'd say that's right, but in a good way.  It gets the balance exactly right - it feels like we're living outdoors in this great beach setting, but we've got a lot of creature comforts like beds, kitchen and showers.  We're in a big Mexican-style palapa, octagonal in plan and probably about 25' high and 35' across.  There's a small bedroom downstairs and the rest is all open plan kitchen, living/dining room.  And by open, I mean, no walls to the outside.  There's a sleeping loft taking up half of the space above.  The only part that locks up is the downstairs bedroom, otherwise, it's all open.  Composting toilet (i.e., outhouse) and shower in a separate building a few yards away.  In an ideal world, there'd be a flush toilet, but in my experience in Ecuador, that's often not all it's cracked up to be.

When we first pulled up in our taxi from Canoa, I was concerned that this place would be boring - now I'm sorry we have to leave in a couple more days.  Because there's nothing to do, we've really just been reading, cooking and hanging out with each other (a lot of beach walking and card games).  And following a few adjustments in our approach, we've made a lot of progress with the homeschooling, which has been great for all of us.

With nothing at all to do, I'm feeling for the first time, since leaving home five weeks ago, like I'm really getting a chance to clear my mind.  Now I just have to find some good stuff to fill it with.