So with David here a-visiting I took my second week's holiday from JUCONI at the end of July to go a-traveling here in Ecuador.
First stop was Montañita where Maria Jose, Laura, Becky and I met up with Dave at the end of his week of surfing, for cocktails and ceviche on the beach. Becky and I learned about rip tides after a moment of panic when we'd been playing around in the sea and realised that we were much farther from the shora than we thought. David had spotted us struggling and we made it in ok on our own, but it felt like a warning to be more careful. A couple of days later in Manta David and I spotted this warning and explanation of what we'd experienced. Tip: if caught in a rip tide swim in diagonally across the tide to shore.
From Montañita we headed to Puerto Lopez and back to the Casa del Arbol tree-house hostel where Ty and I had stayed a couple of weekends before. We headed out on the Sunday on one of the whale watching tours that the area is famous for… you can see from the photos how close the huge creatures came to our little boat.
Left to right: Becky, me, David, Laura, Maria Jose (You can't tell from this picture but I was feeling ROUGH - got really seasick on the boat, just at the time when the whales made their appearance - there were a few of us retching over the sides, and as the guides said "feeding the whales"! This was not my lucky day cause I got stung later by some unidentified stinger while we were snorkelling)
My favourite part of the day was seeing these Blue footed boobies (their names causing plenty of school-room snickering as I'm sure you can imagine!) This was during their mating season and the birds are famous for their mating ritual where the male makes movements with his feet and wings that the female copies, giving the impression of a dance. The clue to how successful the male's flirting is going is how much the female is copying him or not. A few times we felt that our group's passing interrupted the birds, because many couples seemed to pause and look almost shy as we went past, but in one moment when we fell slightly behind the rest of the group Becky and I had the amazing experience of watching the ritual in full. We saw the male repeatedly raising his wings and the female looking seemingly indifferent, until with a final dramatic lift of his wings he impressed her enough (and us too) that she mirrored his movement, lifting her wings high in reply. We got a mild shock when they then headed determinedly in our direction, and quickly went on our way and left them to it.
These blue-footed boobies are usually seen only on the Galapagos Islands and here on the Isla de la Plata (the 'Silver Island' - so called for the metallic shine all the bird poo gives to the rock faces of the island from a distance). For this reason the island is also known as the "poor man's Galapagos". Actually though, Lily and Amelie's Moley and Bruno reckon they spotted a sing blue-footed boobie on the shore here at Puerto Lopez:
From Puerto Lopez the girls headed home and to work and David and I moved north along the coast for a night in Manta, where the pelicans and gulls fished around us as we swam in the sea and later we ate platters of seafood with our feet in the sand.
From Manta we flew to Quito (we ate the tastiest chocolate croissants ever in the airport at Manta) where we saw stunning views of the city from both from the plane windows coming into land and the next day from the 'teleferico' cable car in the centre of the city. (This offset my Scottish grumpiness at paying 7 times more for a flight than a bus - it was worth it for the views and also to have one less journey with violent films screaming into your ears and eyes while you try to sleep. It would seem that I have used up my bus-journey excitement in all the 200+ hours of bus travel I did last year, as this time, traveling with David, I seemed to be grump-central at the end of every bus journey [sorry Daivd!!] perhaps the moodiness also had something to do with continuing to feeling rough and exhauseted with blocked ears and a stinking cold…hmph!!)
In Quito we also headed to "La Mitad del Mundo" or 'halfway point of the earth' where we got our passports stamped at the slightly misplaced monument marking the equator line at 0 degrees latitude. Despite knowing that the monument is offset we failed to realise that there was a decent museum to visit 50m down the road where apparently you can balance eggs on their points and we weigh less due to shifts in gravity, and instead passed through the ethnographic museum's exhibits of tradition dress, tools and artwork from all over Ecuador.
…writing postcards at the "Mitad del Mundo" - here David's writing to Little Anne who is a really good friend from art college and then CSM's animation course where the 3 of us studied together. The toucan pic is for Lily, Amelie and Hannah :-)
Braving buses once again David and I headed to Baños de Agua Santa and I think of all the places I've been in Ecuador so far this is one of my favourites because of its being surrounded by lush green mountains and filled with bright colourful murals in every street… got to trust a town that allows art to freely fill its walls! :-) <3
The famous "Casa del Árbol" walk in Baños took our troop of 4 about three and half hours. David and I met French lass Audrey in the hostal the night before just as my lovely Ty came up from Gauayquil to join us. We were told there were two options to reach the famous swing 'over nothing', one a less inclined longer route and the second a steep path straight up the hill. Being indecisive we allowed a coin toss to decide for us and the result was that we got sent straight up the steep path. A few hours and lots of sweating, panting and pausing later, plus a mild moment of directional confusion, led us to the famous treehouse and its dodgy swing - you can see we enjoyed it though!
Baños gets its name from the natural hot springs that dot the town. The baths we chose to visit lie under this stunning waterfall where David and my first attempt to visit one afternoon failed. Failed in the sense that we paid our way in, donned our swim gear and bath-caps but then realised they were closing down the pools for celaning, meaning that David jumped in the freezing pool once and I wussed around on the edge! The next night, with Audrey, Tyrone and a couple of other folk from the hostel, we tried again at the later opening time and had an amazing time floating around under the night sky in the heat and minerals, with an ocasional dash in the freezing showers or pool.
Our second day with the team and we hired bikes to cycle downhill to the "Pailon del Diablo" waterfalls. Unfortunately Tyrone and I got separated from David and Audrey for most of the ride (we though they were ahead, they thought we were ahead, uff!) but luckily we met back up in the Lord-of-the-rings-esque waterfalls park, ate loads of trout together and got a truck ride back up to Baños.
For David's last weekend we headed back to the heat and humidity of Guayaquil where we visited this naval ship...
…and then visited the famous iguanas of the Iguana Park (otherwise and more formally known as Parque Seminario) and this huge mosaic-covered iguana of Plaza Aventura where the more intimidating creatures were vicious biting ants.
Thanks ever so much for coming to visit David, it was brilliant to have you here!
& remember... "it was worth it!!"
big love
:-)
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