Montañita

The coast around Montañita holds some of the oldest settled cultures in the Americas. About 10 kilometres to the south is the site of Valdivia, where excavations in the 1950s revealed the Valdivia culture, which flourished on the Santa Elena peninsula between about 3500 and 1500 BC, and earlier still the Las Vegas culture lived along this shore. For most of its later history Montañita was a comuna of fishermen in the parish of Manglaralto, in a cove ringed by hills — its name means "small mountain".

By the middle of the 20th century the beach was known to surfers, though there were only a few fishermen's huts and, in season, one or two surfers' tents. From the 1960s young foreigners linked to surfing and the hippie movement began to settle here, drawn by the waves and finding some affinity with the community's own way of organising itself, and two foreigners who had been camping on the beach built the first cement beach house in the village. Over the following decades Montañita became an international surf resort, while keeping a rustic look of wood, cane and thatch.

Growth brought public lighting and sewerage and a larger role for local government. The 1997–98 El Niño hit Santa Elena province hard, with floods and landslides along the coast. The old Ruta del Sol coast road has since been renamed the Ruta del Spondylus, and since about 2021 the coast as a whole has been at the centre of Ecuador's security crisis.

Surfing is the village's identity. La Punta's right-hand wave can reach two metres or more, local people give surf lessons, and Montañita has produced surfers of national and international standing, among them Dominic "Mimi" Barona and Israel Barona. An international surf competition is held each February during Carnival, and brands sponsor surf championships every year. Bodyboarding, paragliding and diving have been added to the list over time.

The atmosphere is shaped by the 1960s settlers and the foreigners who have kept arriving — Argentinians, Americans, Europeans and many others — and by young Ecuadorians and families on holiday. Reggae plays on street corners, and banners with peace symbols or the faces of Che Guevara, John Lennon and Bob Marley hang in the bars. During the high season there are electronic and house music events on the beach, as well as salsa and merengue. The village has been the subject of a 2014 Ecuadorian film, Sexy Montañita, and of a song by the band One Drop.

Craft is part of the street life: artisans sell jewellery from the area's tagua nut, known as vegetable ivory, and traders from Otavalo bring highland textiles. Several schools teach Spanish to foreign visitors, and some combine lessons with surfing or volunteering.

Montañita lives almost entirely from tourism — food, surfing, accommodation and craft sales. The tourist season peaks in January and reaches its low point in June. Montañita is still a comuna, a community with its own organisation, and alongside its families live Ecuadorians from elsewhere and foreigners who came on holiday and settled.

The village is laid out on a grid of small streets running parallel and at right angles to the coast road, with the beach at the end of most of them. It is usually described in four parts: the beach, La Punta, the Tigrillo neighbourhood and the centre. Streets are paved with brick and cobbles and mostly closed to cars, and people get around on foot, by bicycle or by pedicab, while buses and taxis connect it with Olón, Manglaralto and the towns of the peninsula.

Daytime belongs to the beach and the surf; evenings move to the restaurants and bars, which grow louder as the night goes on. Like the rest of the coast, the village lives with Ecuador's security crisis, with states of emergency and curfews imposed at times in the coastal provinces.

Montañita eats like the coast it belongs to. Restaurants serve fish, crab, shrimp cocktails and conchas — clams — alongside the region's ceviche, made with shrimp or fish and served with popcorn and chifles, thin plantain chips. Many places offer a simple set lunch of vegetable soup followed by fish with rice, fried plantain and salad. Encebollado, the fish and cassava soup with pickled red onion, is eaten as a hangover cure across the coast, and breakfast is often a bolón de verde, a ball of mashed green plantain with cheese or pork crackling.

Because so many visitors come from abroad, the village also has pizzerias, grills, bakeries, vegetarian restaurants and international menus. Breakfast is a long affair of tropical fruit — pineapple, banana and papaya — with yoghurt and granola.

Drinking is part of the night: on busy evenings a row of carts on the northernmost street mixes daiquiris and cocktails from fresh fruit juices and spirits, stalls sell burgers and hot dogs, and fresh juices are sold by day.