Cuenca and Puerto Lopez and its boobies

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Cuenca

Next stop was the colonial town of Cuenca - about 5 hours south of Baños. Yet another hair-raising bus ride... how I wish they wouldn´t speed round corners when there are huge drops on the side of the road!!!!

But we made it to Cuenca (only with a little delay due to a bike race...). Our hostel was in a great location.. made up for the wooden-plank style beds. There was a terrace and kitchen overlooking one of the main plazas and had a fantastic view of the rest of the city.

We spent most of the time wandering around Cuenca... going into the food and flower markets. Seeing all the old colonial churches, plazas and streets.

There wasn´t much going on in Cuenca so we next headed over to Guayaquil and on to Puerto Lopez. On this lovely bus journey a tyre burst so that was the delay for this bus. No delay ever seems to be the same and nobody ever bothers to explain what is going on 😊

Puerto Lopez

We went to Puerto Lopez to go to the Isla de la Plata - also known as the "poor mans Galapagos" and that suited us... the real Galapagos is really pricey!! On the Isla de la Plata you can see numerous birds and we are currently in whale watching season!

So we arrived and wandered into a hostal consisting of 3 rooms with an amusing Ecuadorian boss. He had an upstairs bar-cafe too... he was very keen for us to go up there and gave us a free beer! He rambled on in Spanish and was trying to get us on tours... all within about 20 minutes of arriving.

When we went to organise the tour we realised that we didn´t have enough money and being a small place the town had no ATM! Argh - this involved a 1 hour bus ride to Jipijapa (wonderful name - pronounced "hippy-happa".... and then a 1 hour ride back...

The next day we went on a tour to the Isla de la Plata. It was a fairly small boat and it takes 1hr 20 direct to the island. We stopped off the island because we saw humpback whales
. It was amazing. They were jumping and crashing back in the water. We saw about 20! Seriously! They are amazing. We had tried not to get our hopes too high and had gone not expecting to see any whales. To see about 20 was absolutely amazing!! It was next to impossible to get a photo of them. By the time my brain had noticed the whale and communicated with my finger... all I got was a big splash. A nice English man with his huge fancy digital camera sent me one of his whale pictures though.

On the island we went on a 3 hour walk. It´s crazy - along the footpath there are loads of boobies just sitting there. You could get really close to them -not too close - they tried to peck!! We saw albatrosses as well... frigate birds... and some others I forget the names of. It was pretty cool. Best of all we saw a sea turtle right near our boat as we were setting off on the journey back to mainland.

Ooooohhhh was that a "delightful" journey!!!! It was so rough!!! We were going really quite fast and the boat was smacking down into the water. One of the women was crying and one of the kids threw up on himself. Cam and I felt ok pretty much - a bit nervous... but ok. Then at one point I think the boat came out of the water and we hit the water with a huge bang... we stopped for a bit while the guys figured out that the fuel line had come out and we were leaking fuel - marvellous. Floating there was the thing that made you queasy! But we did see the closest whale sighting then and another sea turtle - so that was great!!

Due to our dodgey engine, we had to proceed really slowly! So it took twice as long as it should (2 hours 40) and it was rough!! It was also completely dark by the time we got home. A long but very rewarding day!

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Photos

Whales Whales Whales!!!!
This was sent to us by a lovely English man with one wonderful camera - he managed to actually take a picture of one of them! We saw loads of these chappies jumping!!

This is our best whale shot
I promise it´s a whale...