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Published: September 1st 2005
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After our trip to Banos we decided to head for the Ecuadorian coastal town of Puerto Lopez where off the coastline it is currently mating season for the humpacked whale.
So with a spring in our step we set off on our first overnight coach journey in Ecuador. Now, although Ecuador is in most respects more upscale than Peru, this doesnt apply to the buses and arriving at the terminal we boarded our bus “Carlos Aray” to find the seats to be hard as iron and stuck in a rather uncomfortable recline positon. This was going to be a long 8 hours.
The first couple of hours passed without incident as we wound our way up the Panamericana toward Quito. The trouble started as we turned of toward the coast and decended through the cloud forest on a road liberally littered with hair pin bends. For some reason our driver had a deathwish for all of us and literally raced every other coach on the road, overtaking on blind bends, pulling back in only at the last minute and generally leaving our nerves in tatters. To make matters worse he instisted on playing his plinky plonky music all night
long - aaaggghh!
Our stay in Puerto Lopez however, was to be far more restful. The town offers boat trips out to the Isla de la Plata known as the “¨Poor man’s Galapagos” and to see the whales. On our way out to the island we were treated to a few whales jumping in the distance and three whales not more than 30m from the boat flapping their fins and showing their flukes.
The Isla de la Plata is home to blue footed boobies which are really comical as their feet seem far too big for their legs - oh yes and they are blue! Also Nazca boobies and masked boobies (you can imagine the T shirt slogans). We also got to see a pair of Albatros sitting on an egg, did you know that they are monogomos and when their mate dies they will fly into a cliff rather than carry on living without them, bless?
Anyway, we enjoyed the trip so much we decided to go out for another whale watching session the day after. It was fantastic, and as you can see from the photos there were several whales really close to the boat.
Isla de la Plata
the poor mans galapagos Whales are truely amazing creatures and make all sorts of mating calls, slapping fins on the water, jumping right out so that you can see the barnacles clinging to their underbellies like a beard. They are huge, adult males can be 40m long. It was a great sight and made me think of all the save the whale stickers from my childhood, I hoped it helped protect them.
Predicatably, a Carlos Aray bus went off the road whilst we were on the coast, killing two passengers and injuring lots more. We searched the web and found that a similar accident on the same stretch of road occured in February and that the authorities were considering charging the driver with manslaughter. Needless to say we opted for flying to Quito instead!
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