JJ's Travelogue

Leaving the party town of Montañita, I headed up the “Route of the Sun” a couple of hours to Puerto Lopez. This town is a big disappointment coming from the mellow pueblo of Montañita. Puerto Lopez is spread out, a bit trashy, just not terribly attractive. But a lot of fishing boats are based out of here, and it’s fun to go down to the beach in the morning and witness them all coming in with their catch and haggling with the townspeople to sell it all. But I didn’t come here for the town – I came because it’s the jumping-off point for trips to Isla de la Plata, known as the “Poor Man’s Galapagos“. I was lucky to get on a boat – there are twenty-some companies each with several boats, and I got the very last seat!

For some reason I was expecting a lush tropical island. Far from it – this is the dry season, and the island is brown and barren. But living up to it’s nickname, there are many unusual birds, all so tame that you can walk right up to them. The blue-footed boobies are the most prevalent. They were hanging around all over the place, some mating, some just chilling out with their fluffy young. They make a very strange sound when talking to each other. Just like in the Galapagos, the animals are so tame (no innate fear of humans, since they haven’t known us long enough to be afraid) that you can walk right up to them. Disconcerting.

Frigates (also known as Man O’Wars), are also in abundance out here. The males are striking to look at with their stretchy red throats that they fill with air to impress the females. Apparently Frigates can stay aloft for up to a week at a time! (One wonders how they sleep.) One reason they stay aloft so long is that they can’t take off from water.. imagine, spending your life flying over water, but you can’t even take a break to rest on it. Although they dive for fish, they are also kleptoparasitic. Love that word.

Albatrosses apparently also live out here, but I’m not sure whether I saw any. I’d love to see one up close – I’ve been telling that long-winded riddle about albatross soup for so long.

The companies all charge the same price, $40 for the boat plus a $15 national park fee. The tour was well organized, safe, modern, and efficient. We actually wore life jackets if you can believe it. After touring the island they took us a bit off-shore for some snorkeling. It was ok, the people who had never been snorkeling before were pretty impressed, but for someone who has been to the Bay Islands or Great Barrier Reef, this was no comparison.

The high point of the day for me were the whales. Both to and from the island, we spotted dozens of humpback whales frolicking about, sometimes in pairs (mating?), at times only 30′ from our boat! I’ve never been whale watching before, so this was pretty neat for me. These creatures are amazingly huge (80,000 lbs and 50 ft. long) and powerful, thrusting themselves high up in the air before crashing and diving down below the surface. I feel lucky to have arrived here at the perfect time of year, when they’re in transit from the poles in order to breed.

Back on the mainland, I had dinner at a local place far from all the tourists (you know me). The restaurant was having a birthday party for one of the family’s daughters so there were a lot of kids and teens hanging around, and while I ate they good-naturedly ribbed me about my bad Spanish. One of the guys kept asking me to check the change in my pocket to see if I had a Hawaiian quarter. Then he starts quoting random facts about the U.S. and asking me trivia about my own country that I had no clue about. Come to find out that he knows all this random trivia simply from collecting the quarters (and reading the inscriptions) from every U.S. state (except Hawaii, he’s one shy of completing the collection). A local gay guy who owns the beach bar across the street stopped by playing his drum and invited me over after supper. After he left all the guys started teasing each other that they were gay. Finally one admitted he was “only gay when drunk.” He said this pretty seriously, and I was impressed – if only American frat boys could admit as much.

Finished dinner, and went across to Remy’s little shack. Puerto Lopez really comes into it’s own at night – dozens of these little beach bars are spread out along the malecón, but unlike in Montañita where they’re packed one right next to each other and aren’t actually on the beach itself, here each one has it’s own scene going since they’re spaced far enough apart. Each bar has a handful of lounge chairs around a roaring bonfire – what an idyllic scene to come upon. Around the fire I met Ecuadorians, a Spaniard, a girl from Santa Marta Colombia (where I spent three weeks), a crazy wonderful indigenous hippy who seems to live on the kindness of strangers, and a Frenchman from Lille who has just begun a one-year around-the-world trip. It sounds wonderful but exhausting – with only four weeks allotted to each country, that’s way too fast for me. Anyway, the scene here is great – I feel right at home, safe, embraced.

Wish I could stay a bit longer, but Eloisa (from Bogotá) recently informed me that she’s coming to Quito tomorrow for a business trip, and would I like to meet up? Of course! So I’m jumping on a night bus for the 10-hour trip back to Quito to spend the weekend together, should be lovely.

Regarding the videos: if they play automatically (and that’s annoying to you), go into your System Preferences (Mac) / Control Panel (Windows) for QuickTime, and uncheck the box that says, “Play videos automatically”.

Here is a video of a happy whale’s tail:

And here is a video of all those crazy birds swooping around: