Beautiful Blue Sky Day in La Libertad Ecuador (Malecón, Mercado and Mi Comisariato Tour)

Hola Unconventionals! I'm Amelia and I'm JP and we're sharing our unconventional life with you from Ecuador. And today we are in La Libertad and we're going to show you more of this area in today's video. We actually went to La Libertad a couple days ago to take care of some banking and while we were there we went for a walk along the Malecon, stopped by the Mercado and Mi Comisariato which kind of reminds me of a Walmart. Yep and before we dive into that and share our day with you we did want to let you know that we just published our week's blog post over on liveabroadnow.com called Is Ecuador Safe? In response to a lot of questions we've been getting about safety here. Yep so JP is going to add a link to that in the description below and now let's show you our beautiful scenic drive from Olón to La Libertad. There's a place where we can go tonight The rhythm will make it bright Where everyone is happy And the sun will shine all night We could have a good time Let everybody sing Why don't you let yourself slip out of control We could have a good time Let everybody sing Get your feet up on the floor So when the world feels dark And friends seem hard to find You know how to light a spark Just to let your worries unwind When you're down there's just one way to go Let us descend tonight Everyone could be so happy And the sun will shine all night We could have a good time Let everybody sing Why don't you let yourself slip out of control We could have a good time Let everybody sing Get your feet up on the floor Why don't you let yourself slip out of control We could have a good time Let everybody sing Get your feet up on the floor We have already finished our banking unfortunately we can't film inside the bank or any bank here in that's the rule but we will be sharing all of our banking experiences in an upcoming video so be sure to hit the subscribe button yep and ring the bell please so you don't miss that video or any of our other upcoming videos because we show what it's really like to live in ecuador we left jeff and came over to the molly cone to enjoy a nice stroll it's a beautiful day maybe i was blind on you forever while i tried to find someone that could be my great love right in front of me i didn't realize you were my dream so you took me by surprise yeah it's really windy here but i don't mind it is absolutely beautiful out it's so nice to see the sun and get a break from the dark days of winter here in the coast of ecuador it's actually labor day so happy labor day to everyone in the united states it is not a holiday here but it's things are slowly opening unconventionals we just bumped into our new friend jamie he was asking us if we speak english because he needs to speak more english since he's been in ecuador hi folks how are you my name is jamie jaramillo i'm a native ecuadorian at 18 i immigrated to the u.s jersey and i found my new paradise on earth it's called la libertad it's a beautiful beach town and as you can see fishing boats we got um oil refinery nearby and it's beautiful scenery beautiful beaches great it's beautiful here both in colorado a lot of snow over there i'm happy you guys are here so are we if you ever get a chance to come i live in a three-story house right in the middle of the malecon and i'll be happy to uh you know chat with you guys awesome it's beautiful here thank you you're welcome thank you likewise it was so nice meeting jamie it was thank you for stopping and talking to us jamie yes thank you he told us that he has a health problem and his doctors gave him a year to live and that was up two months ago so he is living every day to the fullest and he knows better than anyone that tomorrow is not a guarantee we say that all the time you gotta you gotta live life that's right tomorrow is not a guarantee and you can't wait forever to do what you want to do you got to make it a reality yeah he was definitely an inspiration and he was so passionate and loved living in la libertad which was also really cool to hear because we've only ever talked to people who go to la libertad from this area because that's where they go to go shopping or do their banking or the doctor or what have you yeah it was really cool to talk to him very thankful that he stopped us he said do you guys speak english i guess we look like we don't we speak english i wonder why because not very many people speak english there so he's like i never speak english and he really wanted to talk to us for a while in english yeah it was really fun yeah it was it was great to get to know him and then also stalim our personal driver who has been driving us around quite a bit lately he was following us along the malay cone and then came to get us at the end he was waiting kind of at the end for us and if you need contact info for a great driver he's very safe and he has a nice cab drop us a note through our contact form which i'll link in the description and we'll put you in touch with him yeah he's great you use whatsapp to communicate with him right yeah whatsapp he's on whatsapp yes he is and i say that because he doesn't i don't think he speaks any english he may understand some but he has not spoken any english with us yeah our awesome driver stalim is driving us today from olón and now we're leaving the malay cone heading over to el mercado nuevo which is uh gabby told us is a nice new mercado here yeah we're excited to go check it out we haven't been in a mali mali cone in a mercado in quite a while yeah this will be our first real mercado in jeez months yes this month we're at the mercado numero cuatro and it is very busy i can't believe how many people there are this is the most people yeah this is really a big area there's a kind of an older mercado area and then the new one is in the middle and all around these blocks all the way around it are just loaded with stores but a lot of them are closed today because it's monday that's a lot of people take monday off here but there's still a lot of people out and about i guess they're all doing their shopping yeah god it's crazy and lots of taxis yeah now we're gonna head over to comisariato mi comisariato in bayanita which is a bigger grocery store like a super maxi we've never been there before so we need a few things we're gonna go check it out bayanita is about a five to ten minute drive from the mercado and it is on the way back to olón yeah it's mi comisariato is a big grocery store it's located in a strip mall and there's a banco guayaquil right next door to it which we like because our atm card always works there yeah and as you can see the video i'm locking my purse up in a locker you need to lock up your bags before you go into a lot of the major stores here in ecuador which i really like because then i can shop hands-free yeah it is nice because you know in the states you put your person or your bag or whatever in the grocery cart and then if you turn your back people have been known to steal that so it's kind of nice to be able to lock them up it sure is mi comisariato had a little bit of everything just like a super walmart so they had your regular groceries and tupperware and hardware clothes toys lots of toys yeah they had even plumbing supplies like toilets and they even had a bidet yeah or at least the uh bidet snap-on tool i'm not sure how to install that so we didn't buy it it was 13 dollars in case you're wondering they had a nice selection of produce and we were surprised to see that they have beyond burgers there yeah it's the first time we've seen those in ecuador yep and they also had mangos which we haven't had in quite a few months they're kind of not in season now so i'm not sure where they came from but we bought two and they were delicious yes they were and then they also had these really interesting shaped platanos that i guess are from hawaii yeah platano hawaiiano kilo i'm not sure what what they are let us know in the comments how you eat those i'm guessing you don't peel them like a banana probably not it's probably eating more like a regular plantain but how are they different from a plantain we didn't buy one because we didn't know what to do with it that's right they did not have flax seeds and that's common i don't think i've ever seen flax seeds in a grocery store here you usually have to get those in a specialty store the brown sugar was 94 cents for a kilo that's basically two pounds for brown sugar two pounds of brown sugar for a buck that's pretty good and they also have liby's canned fruit i thought you guys might like to see that they have a lot of the same brands here that you'll see in the states and someone was asking recently about getting brown rice and we usually buy our brown rice at the supermarket because the maricados usually only have white rice they also had black and red lentils which can sometimes be difficult to find and you generally won't find those at the maricado either they pretty much just have the regular what are those green or brown lentils so it's nice to have those available and then they have of course all the spices and i bought a big thing of oregano and red pepper flakes because we eat those a lot that we do and the oregano that we get at the maricado i call it stick oregano because it's just loaded with sticks it's like they basically took an oregano bush and ran it through a wood chipper and then you get all of the stuff in it so yeah so i prefer to buy our oregano in the grocery store because it doesn't have all the sticks in it and then of course they have amelia's favorite aisle my favorite aisle is actually the coffee and chocolate aisle but i do like the wine aisle as well sometimes a little too much i think yeah that's something that's different here from what it was in colorado and kansas is that you can buy wine and beer and liquor in the grocery store just like some states virginia you could do that in virginia you could do it in illinois and they had herbal essences we don't use that but it is an american brand that you will no doubt recognize yeah all those commercials they do carry like l'oreal and some of the other regular drugstore brands although they are quite a bit more expensive here because they're imported i don't know the price of the herbal essences but maybe somebody can tell us what that goes for in the u.s or in canada yeah and they had a really cool bike i told amelia i'd look hot riding that on the beach here the big fat tire bike we do see people riding those kind of bikes around i know i'd really like that except that i'm afraid i'd have to bend over too far it might hurt my back i really need more of a cruiser where i can sit upright and lean back maybe we need a tandem bicycle built for two and i'll just sit on the back yeah you can do all the work exactly whoever sits on the back doesn't have to do anything all right amelia is that all we have for this video i think this that's all we have for this video we had a really fun day checking things out yeah it was a beautiful sunny warm day it was great meeting jamie thank you again jamie yes thank you jamie oh and thanks to gabby gabriella you may have seen her in one of our previous rental videos she came along with us or actually she met us at jeff to do some interpreting for us because uh they do not speak english there yeah so you'll want to take a translator unless you're fluent in spanish which we are not yet definitely not fluent enough to do banking no i understood her though i was really pleased our spanish has really come a long way but we're not all the way no all right guys hopefully you enjoyed our video and if you did leave us a thumbs up as always and put your comments and questions down below and let us know how you eat those platanos yes and we will see you all in our next video ciao ciao