Love Beyond the Grave

By: Santiago Duque Arias

Around 1930, news spread throughout the country that the sea was casting up gold doubloons on the beaches of Mar Bravo near Salinas, where today the Naval Base stands.

Back then the place was deserted and windswept, a sea breeze enveloped the air, and fishermen avoided its beaches, considering them gravely dangerous. Ships plying the coast from Guayaquil passed as far away as possible to avoid running aground on its treacherous rocks, and the few Guayaquil families who summered in the area were careful to stay away from the region; but with the news of the coins, in the blink of an eye the area came alive and tents were even pitched so people could sleep and be first down to the beaches to hunt for the famous colonial coins.

Pepe Viteri was one of the most enthusiastic, having seen some doubloons in the hands of don Primo Díaz at the ice factory "La Polar," the only one on the peninsula, and he too wanted to hold in his hands those much-desired pieces of metal, which according to the newspapers came from a great treasure being transported by the frigate "Leocadia," when winds and whitecaps had wrecked it near the shores of Mar Bravo.

So he too brought his tent and spent several days with other adventurers, searching and searching, until he found three coins from the era of Carlos IV, Rex Hispanorum, identical to the ones he'd handled in Salinas. Happy with his find, he set off for home, but halfway there he was assaulted and died from a well-aimed stab wound. His coins were never found; they vanished with the murderers. His adventure companions brought the body to the train station a few hours later, and the family came to receive it in what is now the Ferroviaria neighborhood, where his fiancée Carmela embraced him, as she always did whenever they said goodbye.

A year later Carmela felt moved to see the place where Pepe had died and asked her parents to take her to Salinas, as she wanted to lay some flowers at Mar Bravo. At first they tried to explain that it would be better to forget the matter, but seeing her insistence they gave in to her wishes. Truth be told, she was a determined girl—when she got something in her head, she didn't rest until she'd done it.

Once in Salinas they stayed at the Hotel Tívoli, and the next day began the walk to Mar Bravo. Carmela carried a bouquet of roses from the Sierra that she'd bought in Guayaquil, and almost from the start she began tossing them one by one along the edge of the little path that was carrying her toward her destiny—though of course no one knew that last part.

When they reached the rocks, she stopped and asked them to point out the exact spot where her beloved Pepe had searched for the coins, and then, before anyone could hold her back, she threw herself into the void and was smashed in the fall, dying instantly.

Since that day, the beach locals say it's not good to walk around the area, especially if you do so in the company of your beloved, because deathly arms pull hard toward the sea; and that not a few sweethearts have been dashed and killed, for the club begun by Pepe and Carmela will grow much larger until the end of time, in loving union of the souls of a murdered man and a suicide.

Other fishermen tell that from time to time you can see something like two shadows that glide rather than walk, joined together along the beaches, and then they move out into the leaden, angry sea, disappearing for moments only to reappear afterward; that these visions bring bad luck and that whoever sees them must cross themselves and flee.