Hola Steemit Community!! 👋

Te extrañado! 😘

I haven't posted in almost a month! 😶

My writing 📝 lately has been much more introspective and also more of a personal journaling style 📓

I know that I said some time ago that I was going to open up a bit more to the steemit community and post more raw and vulnerable material but I haven't had the balls to follow through with it.

I have had a lack of motivation and drive 😒since I have been in the Olon/Montanita/Manglaralto area but recently there have been some pretty big shifts taking place in my life 😲(that I will talk about in a future post) but for now I'd like to share some of my perception of Ecuador. To give you a taste of what it's like and share a little about my experience.

Ruta del sol seems to be a "simple life" vortex.
With a very carefree energy. There is very little money 💰here and most ecuadorians live very minimally with very little money. Most of the locals houses 🏡 are extremely cheaply built with unfinished bare concrete walls and floors. Living day to day making an average of $450 a month. Hot water 💦 is a luxury and washing clothes 👚, ringing them out by hand 🤚 and hanging them to dry in the norm.

Most Ecuadorian households have multiple generations living together, the girls tend to have babies 👶🏻 at a very young age and are stay at home mothers while the men go out and work for the income. Some of the women work at the tiendas, or make food 🥘 to sell. (This isn't an absolute, it's only what I have found to be common)

The fresh produce 🍉 is all grown locally, mostly organically, absolutely no gmo and is sold extremely cheap. On the other hand anything that is imported is really expensive even more expensive than what the same products would cost in the US 🇺🇸 and the price of electronics 💻 is outrageous!

We have made jokes about how it's impossible to have nice things here in Ecuador. Nice things are either hard to find, extremely expensive, don't last long, or get lost, stolen, or broken.

Something that has been extremely devastating 😩 to me since we have been in the Olon/Montanita/Manglaralto area are the effects of deforestation here in Ecuador. The deforestation has caused climate change and a serious drought in the Sant Elena prospect.

In 2015 they declared a water emergency for the area and since then have pumped the main rivers dry 😰to provide water for the near by towns. Olon, Montanita and Manglaralto only have running water for about two hours a day.

In the recent months it's gotten so bad that sometimes these towns will go days without water. To make it through the day or days without water you must have a tank. When the city turns the water on for a couple of hours everyone fills up their tank, sometimes there isn't enough water to even fill the tanks. If you run out of water you either wait until the water gets turned on again by the city or you pay a ridiculous amount of money to have a big truck come out and bring you water. 💦

Luckily it has been raining 🌧and I have a feeling it's going to continue. I love it when it rains. 🌦It's so easy to grown food with such an ideal climate for life to thrive.

The Ecuadorian people are all very friendly 👋 and humble, it's a very small tight knit community. Everybody knows everybody and everything about everybody. (Specifically in the Olon/Montanita/Manglaralto area)

There are quite a few gringos 👱🏻around these parts, most of them came here with a fair amount of money 💵and end up living off their savings 💳because money 💰is more difficult to acquire here in Ecuador than in the states. Luckily it lasts because the cost of living is so low.

One of my favorite aspects of Ecuador 🇪🇨 is the freedom aspect. They have very good property 🏠rights and for the most part if you aren't harming someone the police 👮🏼don't bother you. If you are a gringo👱🏻 and the police ever try to harass you for anything it's very easy to bribe them with 5-20 dollars.

The police 👮🏼‍♀️are not feared here. Most police here don't even carry guns . Nobody carries weapons 🗡 here and when somebody does have a weapon the Ecuadorians are totally freaked out by it. 😮It's almost the opposite of Texas.

There are like 12 and 13 year old boys riding around on motorcycles, also entire families. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦The motorcycles 🏍 ride down the beach 🏝directly in the middle of all the children and young men playing soccer. ⚽️ I haven't seen any real enforcement of anything here. In the states everywhere you go there are rules and enforcers. 👨🏽‍✈️Definitely would not be able to ride your motorcycle down the beach, take your whole family, or let you 12 year old son ride alone in the US 🇺🇸

You don't need a license for anything except to drive. You can sell food 🥘 , art 🎨, jewelry 📿, clothes 👚 whatever, right along side the road 🛣 or in the middle of the park with no issues at all.

There are trucks 🚛 that drive through town selling just about anything you could imagine. Produce 🥒, meat 🍗, dairy products 🥚, live chickens 🐔 , toys 🏸, clothes 👚, water 💦 , bread 🍞 and treats 🍭.

Everything you would need in a day is within walking 🚶 distance and if you need to travel to a another town or city 🌃 you can take a bus for almost nothing. There is a bus 🚌 the goes through all the small towns along the coast that only cost .50 cents to ride. There are also direct busses that go to the bigger cities more inland. I really like the transportation here, it's very simple and cheap.

If you want to go anywhere directly or quickly you can take a taxi. 🚕Taxis are much more expensive than busses but still cheap compared to what you would pay in the states. Oil prices here are extremely low here.

I had no plan for the content of this post. It had a very organic flow and is a totally different style than any post I've made before. Hope you all enjoy it!

✌🏼❤️😃

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