Puerto Lopez

This weekend, a bunch of us World Teachers decided to meet up on the coast, in Puerto Lopez. We wanted to see Isla de Plata, which is known as the ¨poor man´s Galapagos island¨becuase there are some of the birds that you see in the Galapagos, and in general its really beautiful and great. I don´t have time now to put all my pictures up (it takes forever to load these up, but I will tonight hopefully).

So, right after the bbq, Alexis and I went into Quito to catch the bus to Puerto Lopez. The only unfortunate thing about Puerto Lopez is that it is a 11 hour ride from Quito (and Ibarra is a 2.5 hour ride from Quito!). However, since we were taking the nigh bus from Quito 8pm-7am, it wasn´t that bad as I slept a good portion of it.

In Quito, we met up with Billy Lyman (a friend of friends from Highland Park) who was doing a law internship in Quito and was going to come to the coast with us. So, we got on the bus. The bus was the opposite of all of Ecuador, as they were bus nazis. They wouldn´t let us bring our bags on, telling us we had to put them under becuase they were too big, and they wouln´t let us bring our food on becuase they said it smelled. In Ecuador, it´s always laissez-faire and when people aren´t you can whine your way out of it. (Everyone whines here to get everything).

We arrived in Puerto Lopez at 7am. Puerto Lopez is a two-faced town. One side is Puerto Lopez the eco-tourism village, and the other is Puerto Lopez the fishing village. First thing I did when I got there was go for a run along the beach. Besides being really beautiful, it was also very interesting becuase on one part of the beach is where the fish come in.

What happens is all the fishing boats are about 150m off shore with the catch. Therefore, you have to row your catch in on a row boat. The system is that the dads are on the boats, and the rowboats are operated by their 15 year old sons. On the beach everyone drives the trucks in, gets the fish and drives out. Also, there is like this big tent where the women have a fish fry and sell the cooked fish right there for breakfast. It really is quite an event that a good deal of the town comes to. It is really interesting how basically, everyone in the town is involved somehow with the catch or tourism.

In the morning Alexis, Billy, and I, since we were the first to arrive, arranged a tour for Saturday which includes a guided hike of Isla de Plata, whale watching, and snorkeling. After that, we went to Playa Frailes. This beach is part of the national park, and is amazing. First, there were like 10 other people there in this entire beach. And it was white sand, blue water, in this crescent with these two cliffs portruding out on each side, making the beach its own bay. It was my first tropical beach, and I loved it. The water was like a bathtub, and the waves were big enough to have fun, but not big enough to make this not very strong swimmer nervous.

From the beach, there was a trail that went to the top of one of the cliffs and down into a few other smaller but non swimmable beaches which we took.

After, we got back and met Rachel, Annie, Anna, and Julianna who had just gotten in from Bahia de Caraquez on the Puerto Lopez beach. We chilled with them for a while and went out for drinks and dinner.

Saturday

Today was a fun filled day. It started with the boat ride out to the Isla. On the way out, we did some whale watching. It was crazy. Like every 2 minutes there would be like 3 whales completely jumping out of the water and doing flips. Apparently they mate in Ecuador, so the males are very very busy showing off. We were literally like 40 meters from these whales (which probably isn´t the most ecologically sound thing) but made for amazing whale watching.

I´m going to stop here becuase I have class, but I´ll continue tonight with the rest of the weekend and pictures.