... it's on the Equator!
All the American girls I met while waiting for my friend Emily to meet me in Puerto Lopez, Ecuador.
EcuadorSo if there was one thing I learned in my week in Ecuador, it is that Ecuador is actually on the Equator and despite applying SPF 55 like a billion times... I was a nice shade of strawberry red after my vacation to Puerto Lopez and the Isla de la Plata and Montanita. I live at precisely the 45.0 degree North latitude in St. Paul, Minnesota, and honestly didn't know quite where the Equator was other than it was far away from home and I crossed it at some point on my way to Lima, Peru.
Puerto Lopez I am living in Peru on a tourist visa and need to leave the country every 90 days and since Ecuador is close and pretty inexpensive (except for my scuba diving splurge) I decided to take a long weekend. My good friend, Emily Howland, who hiked the Inca Trail with Seth and I back in November, is living in Tena and took two 12-hour buses (mas o menos) to meet me. Despite her bus breaking down, we met at our hostal in the small fishing town on Wednesday afternoon. There were two other girls who checked into the hotel earlier that morning - one of which was from Minnesota and studied at St. Scholastica and the other from Wisconsin who happened to go to... MACALESTER (where Emily and I went) - small world, eh!?! We hired a mototaxi to take us to Los Frailes, a beautiful white sand beach in the Machalilla National Park.
We walked along the beach (Emily nearly died when we saw a 5 foot snake) and went for a quick dip before the park closed. The boys in the mototaxi were waiting and on our way back along the highway the mototaxi broke down. We flagged down a big truck carrying some furniture and hopped in the back. By the time we got back, the sun was setting so we ordered up a pitcher of strawberry daiquiris and some patacones (fried plantains) at the beach side cabana "Monky, monky" and swung from hammocks while we watched the sunset.
The next day we walked along the beach and talked to the dozens of fishermen, and businessmen from Quito (12 hours away) and locals who had come to buy and sell all the fish and rays and sharks that had just come in. Overfishing is a huge problem world wide and seeing all these baby hammerhead sharks made me very sad. Besides tourism and over-population, over-fishing is taking a toll on the environment, especially in areas like the Galapagos. Many fish are being fished to extinction and fishing causes other populations to be at risk - sea lions are killed by fisherman for eating their catch, turtles and sharks get caught in nets and die, and many birds get caught in long-line fishing nets. Sharks are also illegally fished for the popular "Shark fin soup" in China and their populations are in danger, too. It makes me very sad to see such a wonderfully natural place being destroyed. I hope to get to the real Galapagos soon.
We had organized a boat tour to the
Isla de la Plata , aka "Poor man's Galapagos." It was a nice hour-long boat ride and only one girl got sick. The water was a tropical turquoise and the beaches were beautiful.
We hiked around the island to see the blue-footed boobies and nazca birds nesting.
It was like 100 degrees and despite the sunscreen, everyone burned.
We got to go snorkeling after lunch but since the water wasn't very clear, we opted to do dives and flips from the second story of the boat instead. The locals were very impressed.
After another night having caprihnas in our hammocks along the beach, we decided we had seen enough of this fishing town and hopped a bus down to Montanita, the biggest surf town in all of Ecuador. Emily had spent a few weeks there when she studied abroad in Ecuador in college and as soon as we arrived, all these lifeguards (I guess surf boys gotta make a living too) recognized her. We had a great day laying on the beach, watching the surfers, buying cocunuts from beach vendors, boogie boarding, and hanging out with the surf boys at the beachside parties at night. We only stayed one night, which was plenty as there's not much to do other than buy hippie jewelry, eat overpriced food, lay on the beach, and go surfing (don't get me wrong there were plenty of people who had been doing this for months, but it's not my cup of tea).
I wrote Seth a love note in the sand (only a week before he flew to Lima to surprise me)
Scuba divingEmily Howland and I on our last night in Ecuador
Emily had to leave for Quito on Saturday night and so we had our goodbye dinner at the delicious Whale Cafe while we watched the sunset. Due to some communication errors (I swear my English is better than my Spanish) I almost missed the boat to go night scuba diving. Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye while running down the beach and waving goodbye. I'm so glad I made the boat because it was totally worth it!
It is nearly impossible to accurately describe what the ocean looks like at night - one really has to experience it. We assembled all of our gear under a million stars and there was no moon (which was better for night diving). I was a little nervous since I hadn't gone scuba diving since the Red Sea in Egypt in 2007. Jorge, our dive master from the Galapagos, was very chill and helped me.
Some of you might be thinking, "Why would you ever jump into the ocean at night - aren't there bad things out there?" Well, the attraction of the night diving is to see many living organisms and fish, which can be met only at night, watch sleeping fishes, and see the different colors at night. I wasn't worried about sharks since they prefer colder water and the captain assured me there weren't any, phew.
We all had flashlights but after submerging to 30 feet and getting our bearings and touching some of the sleeping fish that floated by us, we turned the lights off, let our eyes adjust to the "darkness" and then the ocean lit up! It was absolutely incredible!!
If you've seen Avatar, there is a scene when they are running through the rain forest and all the plants start to illuminate which is the only thing I can think of to compare to this. As soon as we moved anything or blew air or any moved, the bio luminescent organisms were activated and would light up. As my eyes adjust to the stars, just like when I lay on the edge of our dock at the cabin at night, the more "lights" I saw. Pretty quickly, I saw schools of fish swim by (well we only saw the trail of each fish and not the actual fish) that had been scared by our flashlights and swam off before we could even see them. We saw little sting rays on the floor scurry off as we swam over them. It was like I was hallucinating and temporarily transplanted to outer space. It was an incredible experience and unlike anything I had ever imagined!
The next day, I went back to the Isla de la Plata for a few current dives where we jump in and drift with the current and the boat picks us up after an hour wherever we ended up. We saw schools of fish in the thousands, turtles, rays, pufferfish, huge parrotfish, butterflyfish, angelfish, and so much more.
GuayaquilI flew home from
Guayaquil and on Monday so after checking my bag in the AM, I spent the afternoon exploring the city. Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador and it's tourism industry is growing. It felt like Puerto Alegre in Brazil meets New Orleans - a mix of historic neighborhoods with an industrial port.
I had the taxi drop me off along the Malecón 2000, a restoration project of the historic Simon Bolivar Pier. I walked around the Parque Seminario (aka Iguana park) where there were nearly 100 iguanas chillin in the tree, benches, and on the side walks.
It reminded of me of being in California in 1998 and playing with my cousin Justin's iguana.
I wandered to the Las Penas neighborhood to hike up to the light house. Like the Santa Teresa neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, it's built on a hill and has classic houses and spectacular views from the top. Along the many steps, I peaked in 400-year-old houses that had been converted into art galleries.
View of the Malecon 2000 from the light house at the top of Las Penas.
One one of the 444 stairs, I rested to take in the view and started talking to a nice old Ecuadorian man who invited me to sit down and chat and drink some cold (bottle) water. He told me about his 20 children and growing up in Italy and he showed me photos of his family and copies of his children's birth certificates (yes, that was kinda weird but it's because I didn't believe him). It made me really appreciate being able to communicate in Spanish and how much more fun and interesting it is to be able to talk to the locals when traveling.
He told me about three giant Galapagos turtles that live in the Polytech University and so after I made it to the top, I watched these GIANT turtles try to wobble very slowly around their home in the square for a half hour, caught a cab to the airport, and was back in cloudy and gray Lima with my very delightful Ecuadorian stomach bug that landed me in the Lima emergency room a week later but that's a story for another blog.
Thanks Emily for a great trip!
