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Puerto Lopez
11th Sept – 17th Sept
We catch a flight at about 2pm and fly to Manta on the coast (stopping at the only decent airport in Ecuador, Guayakil) and land an hour later.
Immediately we notice the difference in temperature between Quito (at 2800m ASL) and Manta. Manta is hot, sticky and pretty uncomfortable even into the evening. We stay the night at a hotel adjacent to the bus station so that we can catch an early bus down to Puerto Lopez in the morning, well at least that was the plan.
We had a truly terrible meal in Manta (probably the worst of the entire trip), which supposedly, was a Chinese. Looking back on it now it’s difficult to believe that this meal was worse than those served up in Beijing.
Not only did the 14yr old cook-come-waiter get our order wrong, the food, when it turned up, was overcooked vegetables in a weak, runny curry sauce and to top it all off it was only luke warm!
Needless to say it was a very grumpy and disappointed Stu and Amy who went to bed that night.
In the morning our time in Manta didn’t get much better as our bank refuses to give us any cash from the ATM. After a call to India and then finally an English speaking person in the UK things are sorted and we are ready to catch the bus to Puerto Lopez.
Except that the bus is delayed for and hour because there are not enough passengers, aaargghhhh!!
We finally make it to a place called La Barquita just south of Puerto Lopez and it’s a lovely idyllic place right on the beach. We practically have the place to ourselves.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite perfect as the weather is overcast and quite murky. We have a nice salad for lunch although it becomes apparent that the chef has a very high salt tolerance level. In the afternoon we laze about in the hammocks, reading books and playing Yahtzee. This could be the most relaxing place in the world.
Over the following days we well and truly relax taking walks along the beach and we can hear the waves pounding from our little bungalow just a few meters away.
The food served from the restaurant, a grounded wooden boat, is excellent although the staff have an annoying habit of not serving drinks until the food is ready.
We take a trip into Puerto Lopez to catch up with the internet (which is understandably slow) and find out that Spurs have won their first game in Europe. Great.
When walking along the beach the sun comes out and we immediately change and start to fry when lying in the sun. The beach must be about 10km long and we are the only people on it. We try to arrange to watch the Humpback whales and at times it’s like having our teeth pulled as the locals are sooooo laid back.
Eventually, on the Saturday we are stood waiting for the bus to take us into Puerto Lopez. After waiting for nearly an hour we give up and are not too disappointed as we have seen the whales twice before already in New Zealand and Argentina. So we head back into our bungalow and shortly after there is a knock at the door, apparently our staff have actually earned their money for once and got in touch with the tour operators who have a motor bike coming round especially to take us to see the whales.
Notice that I said a motorbike, i.e. singular.
So we squeeze onto the bike with Amy sat at the back and Stu sat back even further on the parcel rack as we hurtle in true South East Asia style (i.e. at 70km/h without any helmets) to the harbour where our boat (full of grumpy looking passengers) is waiting for us.
We board hastily and the whale watching takes on a familiar sequence with us zooming out to see a group of 3 whales swimming along. Suddenly in the far distance we see several whales breaching (that is jumping out of the water for those who don’t know) and our captain heads off at a rate of knots so we can get a closer look.
Well, it has to be said that the next hour or so spent watching the humpback whales has to be one of the highlights of the whole trip with each of the 3 males trying to outdo the other in order to impress the female and her calf. The huge 16m long, 30T whales would dive down and then come shooting out of the water sometimes less than 20m away right in front of the boat, it was truly a sight to behold.
In the afternoon we head back to the bungalow for a relax and a last evening meal and several games of pool.
The following day (Sunday so nothing is going on) we catch the bus back to Quito. Our bus stops at virtually every corner to pick people up (and if no-one is there then we wait for people to arrive anyway) and so it’s a very tired, irritable and hungry Stu and Amy who arrive back in Quito, a full 12hrs later!. We are not exactly refreshed despite lying in a hammock for the best part of 4 days.
Still we had a great time and we are back in Quito to greet the arrival of James and Margaret. We can’t wait to see them.
Lots of Love
Stu & Amy.
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