Narco Sea ATACAMES

Narco

sea Atacames

Máxima Umiña did not look like an Ecuadorian woman, she was tall, muscular, with black hair and dark eyes, but with very white skin, like the god Diana the hunter in Greek Mythology.

At the Esmeraldas bus station she had to make a column behind numerous Argentine boys, who also bought tickets for the bus in which she was traveling. They all had huge backpacks, some their boards

surfing, her soccer ball, or a guitar.

The destination of those boys was the beach of Mompiche, an inlet that has a mountain on the south side and a huge beach several kilometers to the north, populated with palm trees, with the gentle mouth of a river, which it is possible to cross on foot when the tide it's low.

On the bus there was the bustle of Argentines, who felt like masters and masters, sang, commented, laughed and their physical appearance was of gringos or Europeans, but much prettier than they changed their appearance from the skinny women under 30 years of age 70, to the fat people over 30 years of age, of the 90s and 2000s. They were like that wave of hippies from Europe and Canada that arrived since the 60s, moved by free sex thanks to contraceptives, and mini bikinis or threads dental, drugs, thanks to the Vietnam War, and peace, thanks to social movements and the fight for civil rights in the United States, which reached the then palm-fringed beaches of Atacames.

Then Máxima looked out the window at Tonsupa beach, which was the beach of the Quiteños, which had luxury houses and now buildings, the tallest in the province, with apartments, then Atacames appeared, which had ceased to be the hippie paradise It was a city on the Ecuadorian coast, which grew with invasions and disorder, in which the palm groves of the beach disappeared, replaced by noisy bars, where caipirinhas, alcohol, drugs are sold, or you can dance the night away. They proliferate in the sand, the sun loungers, chairs and armchairs for tourists under parasols and tents.

Máxima got off in Atacames to have breakfast, as she was not sure that in Puerto Nuevo she would find a place to eat.

She got off in the Triangle, walked to the beach and when she reached the metal arch bridge over the river, she saw the arrival of the fishermen's boats and was amazed at how the mangroves had grown since she was a child and lived her childhood in that place.

At dawn that beach stunk because drunks, mostly people from the Sierra, who came with their families on vacation, urinated on the beach. The handicraft vendors returned to put their products for sale on the tables that were in an exhibition center and in places between the beach, bars, the street and the hotels or restaurants that abound between the river and the sea.

She visited the hotel that her parents built, near the river, with very fine wood brought from the Tandapi cloud forest, and that they sold it to her, when they saw the danger that she and her sister were running, of ending up as pregnant teenagers, which was common. , or in drugs, because the hippies who left in the 80s, after a plague of malaria, typhoid, and rapes, taught the inhabitants of Atacames to make crafts, to consume and sell drugs or sex.

Most of those hippies came from Germany and Switzerland, where racism and discipline became pathological, from the beginning of the 20th century, until World War II. obsessed with having sex with black or mulatto people, which was the worst thing they could do in their countries.

Precisely a German, who got himself a black woman, bought that hotel, which allowed Máxima to stay close to the sea all day.

The backpackers, who came after the hippies, but preferred quieter beaches such as Mompiche and made it an attraction, together with the great investment of Decámeron, the hotel transnational, which built there a complex of hundreds of rooms, with everything included, so that tourists do not eat or have fun in the town, or even visit or compare the neighbors, those who eat and have fun or are backpackers from developed countries, or are Argentines.

He had an encebollado for breakfast, which is a very special black fish soup cooked with cassava, plus abundant onions, which immediately replaced all the energy he had lost on the trip from Quito, this dish that can only be eaten before lunch. At 11 in the morning it disappears from the restaurants, it is the breakfast of the fishermen who arrive at dawn, after fishing all night, along with a coffee in well-loaded water.

She returned to the Triangle on the road, where she bought bread, while she looked at the pharmacy on the corner, in the house where her father had a doctor's office, when she was only 5 years old.

She arrived on the bus, she placed her backpack in the lower part where there were other backpacks and she had to travel standing because there were no seats