Blogs from Puerto López, West, Ecuador, South America - page 9

Not sure why I spent more than half a year in Ecuador´s sierra (mountains). Sure, I love mountains and hiking happens mostly in mountains. However, when arriving in Puerto Lopez just for sunset by the beach I must admit I jumped in the air for joy, and wondered why it had never occurred to me to travel to the beach earlier. It is heaven here. Blue skies and sun, sun, sun. It is hot, but not too hot. And the place is a real laid-back fishing town and as it is off season now, there are maybe a maximum of 50 tourists around. As they get distributed over the kilometers of beaches and the various attractions around Puerto Lopez one does not see too many of them during the day. Only in the evenings they all ... read more

The day before we were to leave for the Coast for the extended Carnival weekend, I began to feel ill. But soon, queasiness became obliteration. I felt like an elephant was doing the two-step on my bowels and my legs ached as if I were a teenage boy again. I reluctantly went to the doctor and found out that I had E.Coli and salmonella poisoning. What a great day I was starting… So I stuck it out for my 5 power lectures (7.5 hours of class). The one nice thing about having that kind of illness is that the toilet seat never has time to get cold. It’s still nice and warm from your previous 37 trips. Evening came and I was supposed to take a 10 hour bus to the coast. Hmmmmm… I guess my ... read more

Hello all you eager readers, I'm sure you're all DYING to read what I have to write...speaking of dying, there's probably a murder in Manabí just about every weekend. I get to see them in the paper I read every Sunday. What makes them so...noticeable...is the photos. Blood, blood, and more blood. No censoring in any papers here. Let me see, the last guy I read about was sitting in a chair by the side of the road in the evening when a car pulled up and men jumped out and shot him ten times, some sort of love affair/revenge/angry ex type thing that's common here. You've got to watch out which girlfriends you pick...could be the ex of a drug dealer. But don't worry, I'm only a really tall, white, American...never attract any attention. ... read more

Seeing as we´d decided not to go to the Galapagos Islands (a combination of money, effort and boat travel putting us off) we´d thought we´d take a quick jaunt out to the coast instead. 6 bus journeys, 2 boat trips and 3 broken engines later we had seen the delights that Machalilla National Park and the Isla de la Plata has to offer. We´d read that the humpback whales are migrating past this point in Ecuador from June to October so we hoped that we could see them on their way. As usual we started off trying to find a "reputable" company to take us on a whale-watching tour and for some reason we thought that the guy who approached us on the street going by the name of Winston Churchill represented this. Typically we didn´t ... read more

Puerto Lopez und Machalilla-Nationalpark In Puerto Lopez angekommen wurden bei einem kleinen Frühstück mit einem leckeren Kaffee oder Saft die Möglichkeiten der Wochenendaktivitäten abgewogen. 12:30 war es dann endlich soweit. Mit einigen anderen Touris ging es auf zum Strand. Nach einer kurzen Belehrung, wie wir uns an Bord zu verhalten haetten, hiess es Schuhe ausziehen und rein ins Boot. Die Fahrt verlief, bis auf die Schaukelei, ganz ruhig und ca. nach einer Dreiviertelstunde sahen wir die ersten Wale. Auch die waren sehr ruhig, liessen sich nur alle paar Minuten blicken um ihre Flosse zu zeigen, aber nicht mehr. Das konnte doch nicht alles sein! Der Skipper fing schon an zu erzaehlen wie schoen es vor ein paar Tagen war, als er eine “Mutti mir ihrem Kleinen” gesehen hat und das heute Morgen auch nichts los war. ... read more