Pedernales is a Wild West beach resort where vaqueros [cowboys] ride horses down the main street [racing them during the rodeo festival in August], and all motor vehicles, most of which are pick-up trucks, sound like they have holes in their exhaust system, or none at all.

It’s a hot, dusty, gimcrack town with dirt roads and ugly concrete housing, which boomed in the 1990s from the expanding shrimping industry. Until a few years ago, Pedernales was only accessible by sea, and the town had a well-deserved reputation for its independent spirit. Within living memory, a police officer assigned to the district by Quito authorities was thrown out, and not replaced for several years. Recently a road has brought the town within a four hour’s drive of the capital. Most travelers employ it as a bus-change town, rather than a destination in itself, with the bus companies lining the main street, Lopez Castillo.

|Article contributed by Dominic Hamilton|||