Aquatoc Antidote

  I’ve been near some sort of water all of my life. Whether it has been a lake or a creek behind my house, or summer vacations at on the coast, I’ve loved smelling it just in the air around me. Here hasn’t been any different. Sometimes I just feel dried up and the only cure is water- water relief.

             It could be a quick snorkel for curiosity’s sake, a long swim for exercise, a big dive for raging chuchaqui (hangover), or a mud bath just for fun. Here I sometimes feel antsy and unhappy if I miss a day of swimming. Sometimes just a touch will do and sometimes you just gotta romp around doing midnight intertidal survives while holding a cold Pilsener can in one hand and a flashlight in the other-chitons, sea slugs, and brittle stars, Oh My! But nothing can beat SCUBA. We had our first SCUBA here. We swam along the rocky subtidal reefs and then made it to the shipwreck in the bay. You just can’t beat swimming with balloon fish around the same size as you, and nothing can follow it up except a wetsuit dance party as we make our way back to shore.
                 We’re closing in on November and therefore have passed the halfway mark. The time has flown and currently it feels like it’s flowing even quicker.  






“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea”. Isak Dinesen

The whole group volcanic

So we've been here in the enchanted isles for almost a month now and I am nowhere near getting bored. There are explosive surprises around every new and old corner here. Since the seeing the sharp, desolate, basaltic islands jutting from the Pacific as we began our approach each moment has been filled with a brand new impressive vista our experience. Our second module started and ended within 3ish weeks. It was called "Marine Life" and it involved a lot ocean exploration via snorkeling with and Ecuadorian woman named Soledad Luna. Yes, she was as cool as her name sounds. At the end we could name just about every creature over and under all the rocks within these rocky shores whether the were tentacle wavin' actinarians or tranquil eagle rays flying above coral-algae forests and through planktonic clouds.


Our group is dynamic and we have acclimated pretty fast to the smaller, more tropical environment of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno from the bustling life in Quito. Days are filled with swammin', football (soccer), and sunsets which never leave you unsatisfied. The environment is quite unexpected here. The coast is dry and desolate, full of santo palo, cacti and basaltic bouldersThe coast is dry and desolate, full of santo palo, cacti and basaltic boulders. It's been action packed so far we've been snorkeling at Leon Dormido, Isla de los Lobos, and many other places, we've had salsa classes and can now tear up the Ecuadance floor. The topper was the end of our Marine Life Module which coincided with Scott's  (another classmate from UNC) birthday which was attend by Sole and our first professor, Luis, who was here leading a group of high schoolers. 

We are now in our third module which has combined the marine ecology students with the evolution and ecology students. It's interesting because with both of our large amount of time spent with our own classes and not the others we are a tad bit cliquey. So that has increased when put together in a large class in a small room. It's a tiny bit more tense but I don't think an eruption will occur. 
The time of diving and island hopping is soon to come marking Halloween and Thanksgiving. We're all excited but Thanksgiving is hard to think of without autumnal sweaters. But I did smell some decomposing leaves the other day so maybe I can deal with it.

Oh yeh and we had a quiz outside with the sunset on the beach while drinking beer with our profe, Ecuador, tienes mi corazón.

Puerto Lopez

Ohhh Puerto Lopez. It’s a cool little town. As soon as we arrived we were met with a bay filled with an idyllic number and size of fishing boats, a beach dotted with cabañas ready to serve you cocktails in hammocks and a boat that took us to snorkel with, catch, and tag sea turtles. This was my kinda town

The next day was Saturday. Saturday and Wednesday of every week is when the fishermen return to port from their 3 day fishing expeditions on 20 ft. long boats with outboard motors. The beach is crazy with activity and fish being sold and bought both on shore and off. We go there to measure and count the shark bycatch. After a couple hours of following Ecuadorians carrying hammerheads and getting shark blood all over us (maybe just me) we went to go do GIS surveys over on the nearby beaches. There are 3, La Playita, La Tortuguita, and Los Frailes which have beautiful sand and views off the cliffs of desert forest behind them. We measured the paths and shorelines of each until we got to Los Frailes where we had a grand ol’ time swimmin’. On the way we had the pleasure of seeing a humpback whale dance from the high lookout.

On Sunday, we went whale watching with Paco and Abel and saw a mother and calf. The mother apparently had been caught in a lost fishing line and had to be saved some time ago. We eventually made it to Salango island where we got to snorkel. After all that we got to go to another nearby protected beach where the only Hawksbill Sea Turtle nesting site was located, so cool. I recommend Puerto Lopez, and all the places around, you should definitely go there if you ever find yourself in Ecuador.

Or you could just go to Isla de la Plata which is about an hour boat ride to see Blue footed, red footed, and Nazca boobies in all their awkward glory. They are mostly all paired up since they mate for life. They just waddle, wandering around whistling and cooing while doing strange dances and picking up sticks like they’re attempting to impart some forgotten wisdom or just telling you, “HEY!!! I found a stick!! A frikin’ stick!” They’re at once the most interesting and dumbest looking birds I’ve ever seen. They have no fear of humans so they will walk up to you and stare at you with perhaps more gall than your gawky face is displaying at that moment. But in the air and water they’re torpedoes. They don’t even stop in the water when hunting for fish. They go in at an angle, dip under, and fly out with their prize as easy as sticking your hand in and out of the car window. But enough booby contemplation, we assisted Peter in doing a census of the bird population on this dry little island described as the poor man’s Galápagos. From Tropical birds to boobies to vultures we counted them all. Once done we went to a pretty cool snorkel spot. We got ready and I took my sweet time preparing to jump in as others pointed out turtles and various fish. With mask, snorkel, and fins on and camera in hand I plunged in, looked down and screamed. There was a manta ray about a meter away and closing but he (she?) turned away and carried on. It was at least 3 times me and embodied so the most terror and grace in one organism that I’ve ever seen. As a class we followed it (barely, those things move fast with absolutely no effort) and watched it fly in and out and do a dance with another. After returning to the boat I think our pure astonishment had tired us out as a good portion of us napped as we bounced towards shore.

Vamos a la Playa

After Congal we headed down the coast leaving the province of Esmeraldas and entering the province of Manabí. It was like traveling to another planet. The lush jungles turned to a drier, desert coastline filled with ceibas, Santos Palos, and cacti. Juan Carlos drove our ragtag group to the port city of Manta, which according to its many statues and fountains of Tuna and cans of tuna; it’s the tuna capital of the world. We didn’t spend much time there, just stayed in a hotel for a night to break up the long drive to Puerto Lopez. Other than seeing a psycadelic caterpillar train car at night and talking to fisherman at the fish market, there wasn’t much that we did. The fish market was huge and efficient. The unbelievable part of it was the amount and size of sharks that were landed. Their fins were immediately cut off and sold off to be shipped to Asia for sharp fin soup, a delicacy. It’s illegal to fish for sharks but it’s okay if they’re bycatch. Well, there was a lot of bycatch, and the fishers were super awkward when we asked to take pictures of them. In contrast in the fish market section they were proud to show us their Humboldtian treasures. It ranged from the biggest prawns I’ve ever seen to fillets of marlin bigger than my head. While wandering in and out of the various fish stalls, incoming tide and shipyard, the call of the sea was very apparent here. I could see the lure of fishing and just going out on sea in general, and this all gave me a perspective. We have always talked in environmental classes about bycatch and shark landings and how bad they are, but these weren’t the big, faceless industries that I imagined raping the seas; these were just guys with families. By now Andres, an administrator of GAIAS switched placed with our professor, Luis, who had to go back to Quito, and we added Peter to our group. Peter is an Ecuadorian who works for EquilibrioAzul which is NGO that directs marine research and conservation efforts. Our one night in Manta, some of us went to a bar with Peter and just discussed politics, environmentalism and the like. It was very interesting, both hearing other Americans’ views on the US political situation and his view on Ecuador’s current political leaders. It seems like he comparatively likes Correa, and I agree I think, it seems like Correa really cares about his people. He does seem a little loco though, hey, but sometimes you need a little loco-motion to get things done. After we had our visual fill of beached hammerheads and sandbar sharks we piled back on the bus and continued south to Puerto Lopez.

                Puerto Lopez was……amazing! If I could only give one recommendation about mainland Ecuador it would be go to Puerto Lopez. It’s a small coastal town in Manabí where fishing has been center of life for quite awhile. It has gotten a tad bit touristy but certainly not as much as any beach town in the US, but more about that later.