Vinces, Ecuador is known as “Little Paris”…I’m not sure if I see much of a resemblance (it is, after all, pretty hard to compare to the real thing) but if all you need to give yourself the Little Paris moniker is an Eiffel Tower and a river, than I guess this is a deserving spot:
(It’s not the clearest shot but behind the lookout post is a white Eiffel Tower…can you see it?)
Vinces is also called the “Little Paris” because during the go-go days of the cacao boom, the area filled up with Europeans seeking to capitalize on the commodity, which could be taken straight to the port of Guayaquil by the Ecuadorian railroad.
(Rail transportation in Ecuador never really took off– rivers worked just fine!)
The locals used their newly-acquired wealth to educate their kids abroad. Their destination of choice? Paris. They also used their money to build some pretty beautiful plantation houses, too. You have to use your imagination a little bit, because decades of neglect have left the houses in a state of decay. If only they could be salvaged– I love the shutters.
This town also has the most amazing jail I have ever seen. How many small towns can say that they put their criminals in a CASTLE?
“But if all you need to give yourself the Little Paris moniker is an Eiffel Tower and a river, than I guess this is a deserving spot.”
Heh heh. = )
I have family roots in Vinces: The Echeverria family was one of those cacao plantation owners. Vinces had French ex-pats, one of whom married a cousin of my grandmother.