Puerto Lopez: Isla de la Plata, snorkeling, stirfry, and smiles

So I just got back from my trip to Puerto Lopez, a small fishing town on the beach (Ecuador's coast is on the Pacific). I'll tell you about my trip, starting with the horrible bus ride. The "10-hour" bus ride went something like this:

Wednesday

6:10 PM: Kimberly leaves house to walk to Stacey's.
6:25: Arrives at Stacey's block, tries to call Stacey to open door on street, finds out phone is surprisingly out of minutes, freaks out at the idea of being stranded on a Quito street at night, presses every buzzer on Stacey's building, some male godsend answers "ahh si, un momento" to my stressed "STACEY ESTA ALLI??" and lets Kim.
6:40: Get cab with Stacey and Susie to the terminal.
7:10: Still in cab. Massive amounts of traffic. Pick up Jennifer on her block.
7:20: Arrive to bus terminal, cabbie tries to charge us $1 extra because Jen got in cab, even though we told him we would be picking up a friend. She feels bad, I tell her to get out of the cab. We wait for 8PM bus departure.
8:00: Load onto bus, put our bags below although have extreme desire not to.
8:25: Bus finally leaves. We are agitated.
8:50: Oh, bus is just going to another terminal, not going to start journey! Ha-ha! How funny! We pick up passengers for half an hour, although this is supposed to be a safe bus with a direct route which doesn't pick up passengers.
9:10: 8PM bus starts departure for "10-hour" bus ride to Puerto Lopez, Ec.
10:oo: Scary-sounding noise comes from bottom of bus. I of course start to panic that something has been planted on the highway to stall our bus so it can be hijacked and we can all be robbed at gunpoint. This is due to my paranoia, but actually happens in Ecuador.
...10:something: Bus drivers stand around talking and doing nothing, finally decide to call for another bus.
11:45: (Yes, over an hour and a half later) Second bus arrives. Tired but non-robbed, we all pile on.
1:00 AM: Second bus breaks down. Yes, not kidding, second bus breaks down. I should go into comedy.
1:30: Bus drivers MIRACULOUSLY FIX BUS!!! All passengers in love with said bus drivers!!! Except they fixed the bus in the rain, and come back on and start stripping and drying themselves off with towels. It feels like an odd Ecuadorian bus driver-Chipmunks moment. Stacey and I are sitting directly behind the bus drivers, separated only by a glass panel, and feel quite awkward.
8:45 AM: ARRIVE IN PUERTO LOPEZ!!!! Almost 13 hours later.... exhausted.

Stacey ran off to the scuba shop and got to scuba dive that day, which was awesome, and Susie, Jen and I checked into the hotel, slept and were lazy bums as we we waited for her to come back. We had planned for a beach-bum day after such a long drive, but there was sadly no sun the entire weekend. At all. So we lazed around, had lunch and then dinner with Stacey when she came back from an awesome scuba dive, and went to bed early because we were still tired from the lack of sleep and as this is kind of the off season, not much was going on.

Friday we had arranged a tour of Isla de la Plata, which is known as the poor man's Galapagos, and it was well worth it. We left at 9, took a 70min-sh boat ride out there where we saw whales in the distance (they are usually only there May-Sept., so we were lucky), and walked around on the island. I opted for a shorter walk, an hour and a half opposed to 3 hours, because I wanted to do more snorkeling and I didn't think we would see much more in 3 hours... it's weird, the island is like a desert, everything is dead but there are lots of blue-footed boobies everywhere and another black bird which I don't remember the name of. I also liked that my shorter walk only had 2 other girls on it, Germans, whom I spoke with in Spanish, and our guide was awesome.

I love snorkeling! It was amazing! I'd never done it before and it was hard at first because it is absolutely against human instinct to breathe with your face in the water, but once I got used to it I loved it. I saw a lot of different kinds of fish, and our guide swam down and pulled up a purple starfish for us to see. It's amazing how clearly you can see underwater! We saw tortoises from the boat, but not in the water, because they are very afraid of people. I got to go back a second time when we picked up the whole group, and Stacey took pictures with her waterproof camera. I love swimming so it was really fun.

The ride back... was indescribable. At first we were frustrated that the guides were spending so much time looking for whales because they are supposed to be gone by now... and then we saw two, flipping through the water, they are such huge and majestic animals. We followed them (this part is kind of bad, as the boats here don't really follow any regulations regarding wildlife and we got too close to them, although we didn't harass them in any way except being right next to them) and found ORCAS as well!!! It was amazing! And they were right next to the boat. Then it was sad because the orcas started to eat the baby whale, because its throat is a delicacy... but it was so cool to be right in the middle of all this action and these huge amazing animals. I was honestly afraid they were going to capsize our boat because it was relatively small, and they were swimming under and around it! Unfortunately I didn't get any great photos, but it was wonderful.

That night we just showered and went out to dinner, and woke up early to take a bus 20 minutes north to go hike to a smaller, more secluded and prettier beach. It was about an hour and a half hike, and the beach was really nice, and we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (still on a budget!) and went in the water although there was still no sun. After a few hours we walked back, found the bus, showered, had an AMAZING dinner at an Italian place (run by real Italians)- I had legit pesto, DELICIOUS- and took the night bus back.

While it was definitely an enjoyable weekend, and I'm glad I went, I was happy to leave- Puerto Lopez is not a nice beach or a nice town. The streets are falling apart- it looked like they were under construction, but everything was just torn up, and even on the weekdays I didn't see any work being done. There were stray dogs around whenever we were walking outside. We were walking back to our hostel around 9PM- a block and a half off what could be considered the boardwalk, I guess, the road on the water- and these two dogs started fighting with each other and looked like they could be rabid. In addition, three guys started walking behind us, not saying anything but obviously following us... it was uncomfortable, but we got back to the hostel without incident. That is the thing I hate about Ecuador. Always feeling uncomfortable, always feeling that I am being watched, that I am not safe, that I need to watch my back, even in the daytime, even in a smaller town where I know it is not likely anything will happen.

This night bus also left at 8PM, but we got back to Quito before 5AM- so our first bus ride was almost 13 hours, and the second not even 9! Oh Ecuador. We all shared a cab back and passed out because it was close to impossible to sleep on this bus ride as it went so fast.

This week will again be busy as I have real work to do, and birthday festivities to participate in (my birthday is Saturday!!) I am trying to not be upset that I have to go on a trip with a class I dislike and probably wake up around 6AM on my birthday... partying too hard Friday will be regrettable, but probably occur. Sorry mom and dad, you only turn 20 once. Just imagine what will happen next year! Ha ha.

I only have a few more weekends that I can plan trips for, and need to figure out if I actually can travel during finals week, and where to go... I want to do Macchu Picchu, but think it will be prohibitively expensive, as is the Galapagos- although after Isla de la Plata, I don't feel the need to go there. I would love to, but it's too much money right now.

I have to say I am already a little excited for Beloit next semester, except the weather... I miss you all!

Love,
(still a teenager) Kim