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After a pretty gruelling journey we arrived in Puerto Lopez around 7pm. We had very few hostel recommendations so ended up the first night in quite an expensive place. We wandered down to the seafront, grabbed some food and went early to bed.
First thing(ish) the next morning we had a look around trying to find somewhere cheaper for the next few days. We found a great place for only 12 dollars a night with an open air lounge area with cable tv! Settled in we decided to hit the beach. Puerto Lopez is a small fishing town and the main draw bringing us here was the national park nearby including a great beach and an island trip, (the poor man´s galapacos – that certainly covers us), so we weren´t expecting that much from the beach and it lived up to expectations. The water wasn´t particularly clean, the beach pretty dirty and the whole experience kind of fishy. Lovely. We needed a day of relaxation so we lay on the beach anyhow, braving the water rarely.
Second day of our stay we went out on a boat trip to Isla de la Plata, which means silver island due to the silver coloured bird poo and now literally due to the silver the tourists bring in to look at the bird poo (and the birds). We had only a Spanish speaking guide and a group of French people who had a french/Spanish speaking guide so the walk around the island actually became pretty tiresome listening to each explanation in two languages we don´t understand. Speak English! ;) So, we aren´t actually that well informed about the island but did see some blue boobies so called because of their blue feet (??). They do look kind of strange as the blue is so unnatural looking it looked as if they had been dipped in domestos. It was breeding season and as the birds don´t build nests they are always with their egg. We also saw other birds, lizards and a snake. After the hot walk we relished the chance to jump into the sea for some snorkelling. Having been pretty spoiled for snorkelling, this was not too bad. Quite a lot of fish with Angel fish, needlefish and Surgeon fish making an appearance. The water was a lot colder than we had been used to (I said we had been spoiled). All in all a pretty nice day.
Our next excursion (this is the active bit of the coast holiday) was to Playa Los Frayles, also in the park. This is supposed to be one of the nicest beaches on the south coast so worth the trip. It´s only 15 minutes north of Puerto Lopez and a bargain 25 cents on the bus which drops you by the main road a 45 minute or 2 hour walk to the beach. We had decided to follow the longer of the routes as we thought we may visit the beach again via the shorter one and the scenery was supposed to be nice. Needless to say we got lost trying to find the path to follow and ended up fighting our way through scratchy bushes before giving up returning to one of the beaches en route and finding the path where it quite obviously would have been had we looked. Ah well. We made it Los Frayles, which I am sure is a fantastic beach in the sun, but not so overwhelming in the rain. Ah well. We stopped for about 20 minutes then decided to go as the park was only open until 4pm. Not exactly our most successful trip especially given that we were also being hounded by bugs (the cloudy weather bringing them out) and our new flops were blistering both our feet after 3 hours wandering semi-aimlessly.
The next day we planned to go back to the beach but didn´t faby the bus as we waited 45 minutes for it the day before. However, as luck would have it (PL wasn´t so lucky really) the only cash machine in town wasn´t working so we were kind of stranded. Later we managed to get some cash and celebrated the weekend in a few bars before meeting up with the US coastguard (soon to be expelled from Ecuador) who have a bse at Manta further north, looking for drug smugglers. They were pretty bizarre bunch, Doug the career soldier, Dave from Ireland (kind of), Jose Miguel the pilot (who certainly took a shine to Betty and was her buddy for the night) and Brandon the redneck (self proclaimed – I am a redneck!). I managed to survive the night despite discussing the Iraq war in depth so a pretty successful night. I did want to leave several times before we finally got away at 7am but Betty was enjoying herself too much. She even had the offer of flying a plane in Manta but we missed it as we overslept.
Quiet times certainly followed that evening, but we rallied soon enough and moved on to the real deal – Montanita, surfing capital of Ecuador. Dude!!!
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