Blogs from Puerto López, West, Ecuador, South America

We traveled from Puyo to Guayaquil on a nine-hour bus ride, spent a night in Guayaquil and then ventured onward via another 4-hour bus to Puerto López, Ecuador. Since we will be travelling through Guayaquil soon to get back to Houston and will spend another night there – I will blog those two days together at the end of the trip. About Puerto López - the guidebooks deem this town as a sleepy fishing village. After spending a morning with the fishermen, we realized there is nothing sleepy about this village at all. The scene at first seemed like utter chaos; but after analyzing the situation further, we recognized they have a very organized system in place. Early each day, hundreds of fishermen maneuver their boats through the bay in Puerto López to bring their prized ... read more

Ok so after returning to Quito hoping for a package to arrive from home I found myself facing a slightly different issue than I was thinking. I spent the weekend meeting up with the friends I had previously met in Quito and also booked my flight to the Galapagos for the Wednesday. When it got to Tuesday night I got all my stuff together in the hostel ready for the night bus to Guayaguil then the flight afterwards. What then happened next would make a massive dent in my travels....I had my large and small bag ready, packed and locked so I could take a taxi to the bus station, I then quickly went to the toilet leaving my bags by the toilet door in the lounge area of the hostel, after coming out the toilet ... read more

After our adventure leaving Peru, things returned to normal. As is our wont, we boarded a bus for the next leg of our travels. This particular bus was going to Guayaquil which happened to be where we wanted to go. Your correspondent was quite happy about this, but Ecuadorian buses are not to the same standard as Peruvian buses – a boneshaker would be an appropriate description. It trundled along through hundreds of miles of banana plantations and every time it slowed down, vendors would jump on selling water, fruit, cakes and even such much needed items as tape measures or nail clippers. The art of clipping ones toes on a bus has not yet caught on in the UK, but I see it as a potential way of raising funds to return to South America ... read more

Luckily we did manage to catch the bus to Baños that evening, and arrived at midnight. We were expecting to be dropped off in a bus station and instead it was the side of the street with groups of men lingering everywhere. We didn´t really want to be left there, but had no choice as the bus quickly sped off.. leaving us pretty scared. We marched to the hostel as quickly as possible avoiding eye contact, ignoring comments, and with our heads deep inside our guidebooks trying to see the map in the dark. Baños is Gorgeous! Lots of waterfalls everywhere, and famous for its thermal baths as well as its extreme sports. Unfortunately when we were there it rained non stop... it was pretty grim. Instead of cycling around all of the waterfalls we climbed ... read more

These were now my last days in Ecuador! I spent a week on the coast in a small fisherman´s town called Puerto Lopez. Now is the season for whale watching, so of course I did it! Whales are now in the bay to get their cubs and to eat enough to get the warming fat they need for their long and tiring journey to the cold cold north. The first day I arrived in Puerto Lopez I went on a boat and we saw a whole group of whales. I had a few glimpse of their enormous humps and I saw a tail. But unfortunately they were now too heavy to attempt any jumps from all the food they had eaten! The rest of the day I spent on la Isla de la Plata (island of ... read more

So we eventually left Mancora. It was hard but we did it (despite Eoghan trying to convince me to ditch our bus ticket and stay longer). I would have happily stayed there longer (a year maybe!) but time was running out before our flight out of Quito to start making our way home. And Eoghan was dying to see some turtles. So we booked a night bus for the Sunday night to Guayaquil, which we had heard bad things about so we intended to leave straight away to Puerto Lopez.That was simple enough once we navigated our way around the massive bus station in Guayaquil. We got a bus to Jipijapi and we were told we could get one to Puerto Lopez from there. It was all pretty simple. People kept getting on the buses to ... read more