Puerto Lopez whales

---

After leaving Montanita we took a bus an hour north up the coast to the port town of Puerto Lopez. Supposedly its is called the “Acapulco” of Ecuador but even though I have never been to Acapulco, I don’t think they are at all similar. The town was dirty and noisy and busy with traffic. We walked down toward the beach to find a hostel right across the street from the beach. The town was not very nice and the hostels were more expensive for not getting very much. The beach was pretty and big but very dirty and always smells like fish from all the fishing boats there. Also there was no night life but we were happy to take it easy for a couple days after a crazy weekend and not much sleep for a week. The first night we had dinner at a really nice hostel just outside town that unfortunately didn’t have any room for us. But the hostel had beautiful gardens and tons of interesting artwork displayed throughout the grounds. After dinner we took it easy and had dessert and played Chinese checkers. The next morning we work up early and went whale watching. We were on a boat with another American family and there was a Spanish speaking guide for the 8 of us. We took a boat out for about half an hour to a small island called Isla de Azul where we found the whales. The whales would come up to the surface every so often and mainly just show their back or fin or tail. Unfortunately they weren’t frisky and they didn’t jump out of the water for us but it was so neat to see them anyway. Some of the time our guide said that they were swimming underneath our boat. It was very surprised at how close we were able to get. After we watched the whales we went snorkeling along the shore of the Isla and then had lunch and sun bathed on the top of our boat. Then for the rest of the day we hung out on the beach. That night we went to Ballinas (whale) café and while we were having dinner the electricity for the whole city went out so we finished dinner and had dessert by the candle light. After we joined a bonfire on the beach until the electricity came back on.
The next morning we had to check out of our hostel in the morning and our bus didn’t leave until 7:00 pm so we hung out at the Ballina Café literally all day. We stuffed ourselves with banana pancakes for breakfast and then read and napped and then had dinner and then took the bus overnight 11 hours back to Quito. It was a long trip but well worth it after a great 2 weeks on the coast!

---