Dining out in Cotacachi

Giselle and I love dining out, and today was no exception.  After blogging a bit online and Giselle doing IT support for work early this morning, we headed out after the garbage truck arrived for a walk about town.  We ended up at a favourite expat place for breakfast – Solid Rock Cafe.  The food is top notch, service is friendly, and the prices, well – $3.50 for breakfast!

After breakfast, we wandered over to the farmers market where we had arranged to pick up half of our order of organic coffee from a grower in the Intag Valley, Finca San Andres.  This is high end, organic, high altitude, Arabica coffee.  They roast, grind, and package all their coffee by hand using very particular attention to quality.  We can’t wait to try it!

After carrying the 15 lbs of coffee back to our apartment, Giselle and I went on our daily walk.  We are averaging 4-5 km every day!  Today we did a circle route around to the main entry to the community and back up Leather Street and back to our apartment, where we then went for a nap!

Later in the afternoon, we headed over to Jeanine’s bar for a couple of drinks before heading to our chosen restaurant for dinner.  We picked a place we haven’t been to before, but had heard they had good steaks – Restaurant El Lenador.  We were not disappointed!  Giselle had the “chateau brain” (that’s how it was spelled in the menu),and I had the peppercorn steak.  Total cost, including wine and tip – $41.00.

Dining out in Cotacachi is not too expensive.  The food and service are always great, and the prices extremely reasonable.  Almost every restaurant we have visited has access to free WiFi, if that is your thing.

For a small town in north central Ecuador, there is an amazing number of restaurants and coffee shops to choose from.  Many of them come and go or move from place to place and can be hard to find if you are away for any length of time.  Another one of the reasons why we love this small town as much as we do.