Boobies and Ballenas

Monday, September 22, 2008

Well, I’m back safe and sound from Isla de la Plata. It was quite the adventure getting there, let me tell you. My friend Melissa was going to meet me part way in a town called Chone, but it didn’t work out. So I headed out on my own for the 12 hour bus ride. After a few hours the bus broke down, we had to wait an hour or so for the mechanic we stopped at to fix it. No big deal, got to see a nice little Andean town. The bus kept rolling rolling rolling… until we got to a town called Jipijapa, a few hours from my final stop, Puerto Lopez. A woman from the bus company got on and informed me that the bus was not going to Puerto Lopez, there’d been a change of plans. And there wouldn’t be another bus that evening. Perfect… There was going to be a car going to Puerto Lopez, but it was an hour away. Over 2 and a half hours later the car shows up, it’s 11:00 pm at this point, and we set out. In the rain. On the twisty dark bumpy road. I wasn’t comfortable with traveling at night, but there was no other option as there was nowhere for me to stay in Jipijapa. For awhile the driver thought that a truck behind us was going to try to rob us or something, that was a little freaky, but it was a false alarm. Got to Puerto Lopez after midnight, and the hostal I’d reserved was all locked up. Luckily I rang the doorbell enough to wake up the manager and she let me in. So, the moral of the story is….traveling alone in Ecuador sucks. I have to seriously re-evaluate my post-program travel plans, cause that was just not fun.

Enough about that. It really sounds worse in writing than it actually was, so nobody worry, please. It was a good adventure. The hostal in Puerto Lopez was pretty cool. Lots of hammocks around and some gorgeous flowers. I shared a room with some nice guys from Germany- I was a little jealous because they spoke wonderful English as well as Spanish. The beds had mosquito netting on them, never seen that in person before. I had to start taking my malaria medicine, and there were definitely mosquitoes around.

Got up early Saturday morning for a tour of Isla de la Plata. It was a combined whale watching/island walking/snorkeling tour. There were 8 other tourists, mostly from Europe. It was kind of an interesting group, really nice people. About an hour and a half boar ride to the island, and we did actually see whales! So cool. There were 3 (maybe 4, it was hard to tell since they were always moving). At one point they were only 15-20 meters from the boat. It was really fun to see them just pop up out of the water. Once on the island we walked about 2 miles to see the birds. Mostly boobies. They were everywhere, and totally unafraid of us. We got within feet of them. I really liked the blue footed boobies, they were really cute. A lot of them were nesting, and were feeling a little territorial. We had to step around them on the paths, they looked pretty serious. Apparently they can live to be 15 years old, and most often die from the salmon they hunt whacking them in the head or the eye. Who would have guessed? And their feet are blue because of something in the salmon. There was another kind of boobie, didn’t catch their name, with lots of chicks already hatched. The chicks looked like little piles of pillow stuffing. The saddest thing was seeing vultures just waiting for the mothers to leave so they could pounce on the babies. That’s nature I guess. The island wasn’t what I expected, they said it was a dry forest. At the moment it is all dry, there are even cactuses, but apparently during the rainy season it looks quite different. Snorkeling was also very cool. There were so many fish! Wish I could have taken pictures of them. Afterwards the ride back was a little chilly, but we saw the whales again. On the beach when we got back there were dozens of little kids who wanted to wash our feet. For supper I had some awesome shrimp, then read in a hammock till bedtime. It was a really good day. And the bus ride on Sunday was much better, even got into Quito at a reasonable hour. All of my things were soaked and my backpack smelled something awful, though! Everything has been drying out all day.

Well, there’s the story of my weekend. I posted some pictures below, lots of ‘em! Catch you all later!

New Word of the Day: ballena (whale)