MOUNTAINS vs COAST: How To Decide 🤔

The most important decision you have to make when you decide you want to move abroad is which country do you want to move to? And then the second most important decision is whether you want to live high or low. So in this month's Members' Choice video, we're going to help you decide between the mountains and the coast, starting with the mountains. The mountains are a big pro for us because the mountain towns, specifically Quito, Cuenca, and Loja, and Cotacachi, are more developed. The mountains also tend to have a bit more culture and history. A lot of these towns were founded 500 years ago and some of the buildings are that old, so you're going to have big old churches. You don't find those as much on the coast. No, and they also have a larger indigenous community, which adds to the richness of the community itself and to the culture. You also will find a lot more activities to do, like in Cuenca and Quito, they have orchestras and ballets. Loja is also famous for its symphonies and for its other cultural activities, museums, and things like that. You're also going to find a variety of activities for expats, like language exchanges, a lot of awesome restaurants where expats like to hang out. There are events for expats, like meditation groups, yoga classes, book clubs, cribbage clubs, you name it, you're going to find that, especially in Cuenca. There's also a lot of outdoor activities. You can go hiking, biking, go for nice long walks along the rivers. You could take Zumba classes or exercise at one of the many parks. There's a lot of green spaces in the mountain towns. And of course, you can go bird watching, which is super fun. You're also going to find better, more affordable health care in the mountain cities, although Guayaquil has really good hospitals too. It's not, it's in the coastal region, but it's not really on the coast where expats like to live. When we're talking about the coast, we're kind of referring to like the Salinas up through Manta and Crucita and Bahia de Caracas. That's more kind of what we mean when the coastal region. Cuenca is known for its high quality and low cost health care. And we had friends and neighbors that would go from the coastal area, particularly or alone, all the way to Cuenca to get their health care needs met. Another thing I really love about the mountains is the temperature. You don't need air conditioning. In fact, you're not going to find it anywhere. A fan on some hot days is all you need. They also don't have heating, although I kind of wish they would sometimes. Sometimes it gets really chilly at night, but you don't have that electric or gas bill associated with the heater. And now for some of the downsides of living in the mountains and a big one, at least for us, is the high elevation. Yeah, the air can get pretty thin and I struggle with the elevation at altitude sickness with, you know, the tingles, the headaches of not being able to sleep at night. A lot of people struggle with that. Most people adapt after three or four days, but some people like me don't. And with those high elevations or the high altitude comes high UVs. Unconventional. I did not know that the UV index went past 10. It is often almost always 11 in Ecuador in the mountains. And let me tell you, that means the sun is very intense and you can and will get sunburned if you are not careful. So remember your sunscreen and remember an umbrella because not only does that umbrella help block the sun, but it also comes in handy because another downside of living in the mountains is the volatile weather, meaning you can have full sun and then you can get rain done. You have three of the seasons in one afternoon. It can go from hot and sunny to cloudy and rainy and then cloudy and cold. But it feels like October, you know, all within the span of one or two hours. The mountain towns can also be isolated, especially when there are Paros. We experienced this when we experienced our first Paro in Cuenca and it was kind of weird because all the roads were blocked off and you couldn't leave. Fortunately, Cuenca does have an airport so they're able to bring supplies in, but that's not the case for the other mountain towns. And a Paro is a strike, a national strike, where they blockade the roads. Also, you're going to find landslides in some of the mountain towns and they can block off complete access to a town until they get that landslide cleared, especially between the airport in Loja and Loja City. That's only one mountain road. They have a lot of landslides on it. Same with Cotacachi. There's only one main road in and out of Cotacachi. So you're going to, if you have a landslide on that road, it could be blocked off until they clear it. Yeah, and that's been happening a lot with the road between Cuenca and Guayaquil. Now there is another way to get through there so you can drive all the way around, but it does tack an extra hour onto your time. And sometimes the Cuenca airport has flights to Guayaquil, but not always. So you cannot just plan on flying and not driving through. So it could definitely be a hassle. Now we're going to talk about the coast and what's great about living there. And the first thing is the beach. You're living on a beach. How can you beat that? That was my dream come true. I loved living in Olón. That beach was incredible. I got to learn how to surf, which was really exciting. There isn't as much to do on the coast, but if you're into ocean activities, then you're going to be in paradise. Yeah, we loved going for long walks on the beach and swimming in the ocean and playing in the waves. A lot of people love to go surfing. Not for me, but Amelia really enjoyed it. Kite surfing is another big thing here in Ecuador because we get a lot of winds coming off the Pacific that are great for kite surfing. And the sunsets. Wow, wow, wow. Man, we saw some sunsets. I swear I saw pictures. I did not think they were real until I saw them in person. It's also quite a bit warmer than the mountains where it can be pretty cool, especially at night. On the coast, you're looking at probably the low 80s almost year round. It rarely goes above 90 from the Salinas up to Bahia de Caracas region. So it's not even hot like in the Mexico where you have 95 and humid in Ecuador. It's like 85, low 80s most of the time. And I didn't think the humidity was too bad. It's humid in the Olón area, but Manta and Salinas are drier. That being said, you are still going to experience humidity, but nothing compared to what we've experienced in Mexico. And some of the areas like Salinas and Manta specifically are a lot sunnier. That's one of the downsides of Olón is that it's dark, cloudy seven months out of the year. But in Manta and Salinas, it's a desert microclimate. So we haven't seen that. A lot of times when we were in Olón, it would be cloudy for months. We would take a trip down to Salinas to do some shopping. And almost just when we reached Salinas, the clouds would part and there would be blue sky and full sun the whole time we were there. And then when we went back home, we drove into the clouds and didn't see the sun again for months. Yeah, that was pretty brutal. I know one of you asked what the best time of year is to visit the coast and the best time of year to visit the mountains. And it's actually the same time in our opinion. The high season on the coast is December through May. So that's when you're going to have the nicest weather and most sun. It is going to be more humid, but again, you get a lot of sun. But that's also the nicest time to be in the mountains in our opinion. The summer months, meaning July, August, September can be pretty cloudy. And now for the downsides of living on the coast. In addition to what we've already talked about with it being cloudy a lot is that there's more crime, including drug trafficking and robberies. Yeah, this is a really unfortunate situation that has developed over the last year and a half, especially around the Manta and Salinas areas. And of course, Guayaquil, the port cities are more active, but it's happening all up and down the coast. So you definitely need to take extra precautions. You're also going to find a lot more bugs on the coast than you do in the mountains. Really, the bugs in the mountains are not an issue. You're going to have flies and a few gnats, but especially fruit flies that you bring home from the Maricotos. But on the coast, you've got a lot of mosquitoes, big flying bugs, tarantula hawks. I mean, there's a lot of bugs, but I mean, you're on the coast. You're right by the ocean. Remember Cuchita? What is it? Oh, yeah. We had like a cockroach like this big and we just nicknamed her Cuchita. Is that what we called her? Yeah, because she was really colorful markings. It was the coolest cockroach I've ever seen. Like things you would see in a National Geographic when they visit the Amazon. Yeah, we had really big moths and all sorts of stuff, but they never really bothered us. But yeah, cockroaches. I mean, a lot more bugs. Yeah, the cockroaches were Cuchita was outside. So was the moth. The moth was as big as my hand. That's how big it was. When that thing flew in, it sounded like a Chinook helicopter. Man, it scared the heck out of us when we saw it hit the window one night and then it just hung out outside our kitchen window outside. But it was as big as my hand. Yes. The other thing that is kind of a downside is that you need to have air conditioning because especially at night, it's humid. There's not a lot of breeze blowing where we live. So we didn't keep the windows open at night. Plus, you've got bugs to deal with. So we closed up at night and ran the air conditioner. Most of the time, we did not run it during the day, though. The humidity ruined some of our clothes. We had to throw stuff away because they were moldy. I did not know stuff like that could get moldy and you can't get that mold out. We also had stuff just get rusted. And you could tell your appliances are going to get rusted. That was true in everywhere we went to on the coast, including Salinas and Manta. Yeah, even the coffee pot rusted, like where the coffee, the burner is completely covered in rust after really like a year or so. In fact, they say that you probably have to replace your electronics every couple of years if you live on the coast. So that's an additional budgetary item that you need to account for if you want to live on the coast is things just do not last as long. Yeah, we had issues with the batteries, particularly, specifically, I should say with Minnie. Remember, Minnie was having issues and she was getting all foggy sometimes. So it happens. Yeah, ruined the batteries for my drone because they just swelled up and the leads kind of rusted that they got that white filming stuff on them. And it's just because there's just so much salt and humidity in the air. The off season or the low season is a long six months. So June through November, and it can be very cloudy and you may not see the sun for a long time. Tourists during the high season can fill up those towns and you can't get around. The restaurants are full. It's noisy. A lot of parties going on and the tour buses will park along the streets and they come in from Waikil and they'll just be people everywhere during the high season. And then during the low season, the place is dead. A lot of the restaurants closed for the low season, so it can get boring during that time. Yeah. And also it can get boring because there are not as many activities. There are still a lot of expats there. So there are a lot of expat meetups and activities to do like going out to eat and volunteering and things like that. But there are not as many as you're going to get in the mountains and you don't have the cultural diversity or, you know, there's no symphony or museums or a few museums, things like that. If you love the beach, it's great. But if you like parks and hiking, it's not as great. Although in Olón, we did have some mountain hiking or basically we hiked along the roads in on the east side of the highway in Olón, which was pretty. And then there's Dos Mangas. There's some neat trail hikes there where you can go up to hike up to some waterfalls. But they don't have like Manta and Salinas don't have a lot of big green parks or linear parks like we find in the mountains. We thought living in Manta would be easier as far as getting around the country because of the airport. But Manta still only flies to Quito right now. Yeah, they were supposed to open up maybe some international flights. They talked about opening a flight from Cuenca to Manta and back. But so far, none of those. And also the flight times aren't great. You end up planning a really long travel day when you leave from Manta because the flights just don't always line up. So when you get to Quito, you might have to wait for hours before your next flight. We lived in Cuenca for over two years and we lived on the coast for over two years. And now we're back in the highlands. We really missed living in the mountains, the greenery, all of the beautiful parks. I also really missed the cooler weather and the lower humidity. Sometimes the humidity on the coast was just too much for me to handle. And I got sick of dealing with rust on everything. I got tired of all the cloudy, oppressively cloudy days. I do not miss living on the coast, but I do miss visiting there. And the coast is not for everybody. The mountains are not for everybody, which is why we encourage you guys to take an exploratory trip and try these places out for yourself because everybody is different. We have friends that have lived on the coast for over 10 years and they absolutely love it and they would not consider moving to the mountains and vice versa. We've also met several expats that do both. They split up their time between the mountains and the coast so you can have the best of both worlds. Yeah, I like that plan. That's a really good idea if you can swing it with the rentals. Alright guys, let us know in the comments below what matters most to you about living in the mountains or the coast and if we missed anything and we'll see you all next month. Ciao.