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.