This small beach town off the northern coast of Ecuador was the base for 80 premed students including myself on our Spring Break. With a population sitting around 11,000 and located within the Esmeraldas province, Atacames can be reached via bus from major cities and hubs. It’s hot, run down, we walked everywhere… and that was precisely the charm of it.

 

 

Activities include surfing, parasailing (for cheap!), cevicherias, nightlife, and good old beachfront hotel vacationing. An interesting historical note on Esmeraldas—discrimination is still very alive in Ecuador.

The local population has darker skin compared to city-folk in places like Quito. This is explained when you consider the dominance of the Afro-Ecuadorean ethnicity in Atacames. In the 16th century, a slave ship from Panama that was headed for Peru was stranded in Esmeraldas. Though only 25 in number, the slaves overcame their captors and managed to escape, creating a significant and lasting presence in this Latin American nation.

 

 

My top five Atacames experiences:

 

1.Volunteering with MEDLIFE

 

 

Ecuador has tons of volunteer opportunities from teaching English to patient care to Galapagos conservation. I had a wonderful time under  the guidance of this medical nonprofit and met some unforgettable people.

Note: I highly recommend volunteering with the nonprofit MEDLIFE, but it took a chunk out of my wallet. Their website has a 50/50 fundraising campaign and I did work a few football concessions with peers, but it’s all tedious and takes a tremendous amount of time if you want to reduce your costs by any significant amount. I’ve since found workaway and other sites that coordinate individual work exchanges, where hosts will often house and/or feed you in return for part-time labor. This is for the more adventurous and broke, being budget-friendly as it removes the services and fees that add up, it allows you to pick your own flights and itinerary, and truly connects you with a network of natives who will happily accompany you when you have time to explore the other parts of your destination.

 

2. Exploring

 

 

We walked on the beach and I had to try the seafood. Ecuadorean ceviche is different from the more popular Peruvian version. Here the seafood is served with tomato salsa and popcorn, while in Peru it comes with a side of mashed sweet potato. I picked the cooked shrimp ceviche, which was about 6USD.

R and I crossed dirty bridges both during the day and night to try and absorb more of the local scene. At one point, we took a MEDLIFE local guide with us and ended up in some wonman’s house within an impoverished residential neighborhood. It was small and humble, the kids were shy, and yet she still offered us some snacks.

Notice the stands selling freshly fried, and cheap yucca bread during the day, and look even closer for fruterias selling papayas, bananas and coconut.

At night, all over town there’s courts set up for modified soccer and volleyball. The guys play, the girls and younger boys watch. Don’t be afraid to join, which leads me to my third point…

 

3. Fútbol

R and I found a group of younger kids who scrimmaged regularly  afterschool, at a beaten up field a block down from our hotel. All of them were tan and skinny. They boys fell in love with R and her exotic looks, and told her they didn’t like Chinos. They did however question me about Bruce Lee, an interrogation I utterly failed, perhaps because it took me five minutes and a Spanish-speaking friend to figure out who they were so eager about in the first place.

The coach was a parent who was happy to let us join the fun. I’ll always remember his shrieking whistle. I love soccer to death but am no good. I distinctly remember being grouped with the taller kids for a drill where we had to pass the ball off our thighs, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

 

4. Cooking

 

 

With one fleeting week I wanted to try and do as much as possible. One evening I asked the hotel ladies if I could help them make dinner. The dinner menu was seafood paella, soup, and plantains. They had me grade this gorgonzola-type cheese common in Latin America for la sopa, slice plantains (each freshly ripped off of a huge ass stalk) in thirds before they fried them, and they let me help stir through these giant woks of shrimp, rice, veggies, and loads of oil.

Boys, pay attention here cause one of the girls who trained me was a total sweetheart. She appeared to be in her 20s. She was patient and friendly, not to mention beautiful, and asked for my Facebook to keep in touch. On the last day as our premed group was departing and we all scrambled to fill our waters from the kitchen, she gave me a goodbye kiss on the cheek like a true South American. I guess that means I didn’t mess up those plantains too bad!

 

5. Agro-Eco Touring

 

 

It made me feel like a total tourist, but farm-visiting makes the cut. On our final day we bussed around Atacames learning about cacao and sugar cane processing, and got to sample lemonade on a lemon tree farm. Here, a limón is a green color, and puny. Like we’re talking ping-pongs. We planted some trees, picked the fallen fruits from under the trees, washed them with a detergent, and watched some farmers bring out their favorite roosters accessorized with deadly cock-fighting spurs. They had some cucumbers on display, I asked if I could purchase one, and they just let me take it. I later peeled and ate it with dinner in Quito.

Other highlights include chewing on a raw berry/seeds of cacao plants. The membrane surrounding the seed is tender and tastes almost like lychee fruit. The chocolate we all love so much instead comes from the roasted seeds that are probably considered “beans” at that point. Also quite tasty in the form of spiced hot chocolate, we discovered.