Puerto Lopez

I continued along the coast to another small town called Puerto Lopez. It doesn't have much going for it except for its proximity to Ecuador's only coastal national park. That park encompasses a dry forest, Ecuador's best beach, and Isla de la Plata, or "poor man's Galapagos." First I went on a combined whale watching/Isla de la Plata tour. I had my camera, but left my memory card at the hostal, but again my friend Andy was kind enough to share his amazing pictures. If you want to visit his website it's andyradin.com.

The boobies prefer to nest on bare soil, so the paths that traverse the island are PERFECT... except the the pesky humans that keep disturbing them. The female boobie is slightly larger than the male, and has larger irises. Normally an imbalanced sex ratio is an indicator for intraspecies competition for mates, but it is the males who do the courting in boobie culture, so I don't know why the boobie bucks the trend for larger males.

Fluffy masked boobie chick

A masked boobie

Red tropic bird

The only red footed boobie we saw

Frigate bird and chick

On the way back from the island, we were lucky enough to see a humpback breaching repeatedly very close to the boat. It was amazing to see them so close and so active.

The next day I hiked a small portion of the mainland portion of the park. There were small lizards sunning themselves all along the path, so that every three steps that I took I could hear them scurrying off into the fallen leaves. It is the dry season now, so the forest was dormant and brown, but there was one vine with large, bright pink flowers climbing the bare trees. Seeing that bold spot of color in an otherwise barren landscape was quite striking. The path lead to two beaches, where for the first time on the coast I saw the sun. I went in the only slightly cool water, ate the ceviche I had packed, and sat in the sun for a while before heading back to town.

Crab tracks. Why do they roll the sand into little balls?