The next part of the road trip was the long trip down the Andes, through central Ecuador (corn, wheat, banana farms) to the coast. Our next stop was Puerto Lopez, a fishing town on the central/southern coast. Puerto Lopez has since become one of my favorite places in Ecuador, it has amazing seafood, a fun atmosphere, a couple nice hotels/lodges, and is the access point for Isla de la Plata. After we got settled at the hostel, we went walking through town looking for dinner. We were handed a flier for what would be a called a pop-up restaurant, because it wasn't there the next day. It was open-air, tables, chairs, and not much else-except absolutely delicious seafood, which was definitely fresh caught.
The next day we took the boat to Isla de la Plata, an uninhabited island about an hour off the Ecuadorian coast. As it has blue-footed boobies and frigate birds, and a somewhat similar landscape as some of the Galapagos islands, it's often called a poor-man's Galapagos. It was amazing. You hike around the island with a guide, checking out the birds, getting incredibly close to the blue-footed boobies, which really are too cute. Then you hop back in the boat, and pop over to another side of the island and snorkel. There are a lot of gorgeous tropical fish, and the water is delightfully warm. Not too mention all the soaring and diving birds that are constantly coming to and from the island.
A huge highlight awaited us on the way back, as we were there during whale-watching season. We were lucky enough to see a few humpback whales jump and flip, wave their fins, swim alongside the boat, and flap their tails. It was my first whale-watching experience and I was mesmerized. Truly marvelous. My only excuse for not having better video of the whales is that I did not and do not have an SLR camera, the boat was shaky, and there were lots of people competing for space to capture pics/videos of the whales.
After Puerto Lopez, we drove back to Guayaquil, visited some of the downtown sites, the four of them got caught up with emails/posting pics/etc at my house, and then it was off to the airport for them to head to Colombia for more vacation. It was back to work for me. I really enjoyed the road trip, hit up a few places that I had been wanting to see, and enjoyed getting to see lots of the country. Very few of my colleagues ever covered as much ground by car as I did just in that trip, and I think it helped me gain some appreciation for some of the regions around Quito, around Guayaquil, and in between.
(the action is at the end of this 24 second video)
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