April 2013   

It’s currently 9:30 am and I can still hear regaton. It’s the type of loud music with a deep base that sounds like the same song over and over. People here party all night and all day. Montanita is a small beach town on the coast of Ecuador with a infamous night life. For me, good luck trying to get me to stay up past 3:00 am. In my hostel the walls and windows were shaking with bass.

To get to Montanita from Baños:
Get ready for a long bus ride. It’s wasn’t too bad but I would recommend a night bus as many of the busses during the day make a 45 minute longer trip to Ricabamba. Make sure to ask if the bus is going to that city as it does make a difference in time and people will try and rip you off! They will even say its a direct bus when it really isn’t. If you don’t don’t stop in Rhiabamba its a direct bus.

The total time was 7.5-8 hours and $8.00 USD. It’s a standard Ecuador price as the rule is $1 dollar for every hour.

Once you get into Guayaquil, you must transfer at the station to get to Montanita. Warning for anyone traveling to Guayaquil bus terminal: Only go to Guyaquil via overnight bus or 6am departure time from surrounding cities. We took the 9 am bus from Baños, got into Guayaquil at 4:45 pm and missed the last bus transfer. Therefore we had a really hard time trying to find something legit to get us to Montanita. It seemed odd that at 4:30 pm there were no more busses. It almost seemed like a scam because the people working at the terminal directed us to a man who wanted to charge a whopping $10 a person!

All in all Montanita isn’t a city I would be dying to go back to anytime soon, but for the person that enjoys a good party…you would fall in love.