La Costa

In an attempt to organize, I'll write a bit about each of the major regions of Ecuador.  La Costa, or the coast, is the strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains.  As I understand it, this doesn't just mean the beach, it refers to the lowlands on the western side of the country.

Culturally, they say the costenos (i need a tilde for that n) are more laid back than the mountain folk.  They have a different accent, swallowing the ends of words.  If I remember correctly, there are less indigenous here than in the mountains or the eastern jungle, and there are more afro-ecuadorians.  There is some community which is said to have been founded by a group of Africans freed from a life of slavery when the ship they were on wrecked, so that's cool.

Out of 30 Natural Resource Conservation PCV posts marked on a map, only three are on beach (not counting Galapagos, they said no one from omnibus 101 would be there), all of which are North of Guayaquil.  Three more are in the El Oro province, which is coastal, but also mountainous.  . . I just got side tracked big time trying to map the NRC PCV posts on Google Earth and overlay the national parks and reserves.  I don't feel like blogging anymore tonight, but I got tons more bouncing around in my head. later