After leaving Cuenca, we traveled by bus for 4 hours to Guayaquil where we changed buses and then traveled another 4 hours to Puerto Lopez, a coastal town. In Puerto Lopez we enjoyed the beach, met some new friends, and explored the Isla de la Plata (Poor Man's Galápagos). After Puerto Lopez we traveled back to Guayaquil where we stayed for just a day and a half, during which time we visited the Iguana Park and LDS temple. We had our 2nd airport campout in the Guayaquil airport where we waited all night for 8:30 am flight to Lima Perú. We had a few hours in Lima until our bus was scheduled to depart for Cusco so we visited the LDS temple in Lima. Then we took an overnight 21.5 hour bus ride to Cusco. The following pictures will take you from Puerto Lopez to the bus to Cusco.
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Puerto Lopez is a functioning fishing community that also caters to tourists. About a third of the beach is occupied by fishing boats and hundreds of birds.
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| The birds will wait next to the fishing boats as they clean out their boats after a morning of fishing hoping for free fish that were not up to par to be sold. |
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| If you haven't seen the new Disney short film at the beginning of Finding Dory I highly recommend it. These are the same birds that are in that film, it is called "Piper". They are on the beach searching for clams or snails that are come up for food when the wave comes in. |
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| Along the beach you will also find these crabs, they are a couple of inches long and they scurry across the sand looking for food and then they will dash down in to their holes when a predator comes near. |
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| We found a friend on the beach and she liked to dig... |
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| Later we found out that her name is Lola and she was part of the 3-dog posse we had on our last night... |
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| Lola's digging resulted in her finding and catching a crab. |
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| Ah it's a SHARK!!! We came across this friendly looking shark as we walked along the beach one morning. Just remember, fish are friends not food. |
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| Puerto Lopez is more of calm tourist beach with palm trees and recliner chairs where the tourists can relax. |
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| Being a fishing community, they have lots of dishes with fish and other types of seafood. |
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| One of the highlights of our time in Puerto Lopez is that we had Thanksgiving dinner there. Turkey was not something that was easy to come by so we decided to go with breaded shrimp and it was delicious! |
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| From Puerto Lopez we took an hour boat ride to the island Isla de la Plata (Poor man's Galápagos). This was Mary's first time be on a boat out on the open ocean. |
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| This is island of Isla de la Plata. It reminded me of the island from the Count of Monte Cristo where Edmond Dantes was imprisoned. |
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| Can you find the hidden animal? |
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| The Isla de la Plata is barren island with beautiful coastlines! |
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| One of the most famous animals on the Isla de la Plata is the blue-footed booby. The mother and father have the blue feet and the baby is only a couple of months old and will receive blue feet after a couple of years. This baby is hungry and asking its parents for food. |
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| Here are two more baby blue-footed boobies. We were there a couple of months after the breeding season so there were baby blue-footed boobies all over the place. |
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| This is a baby hummingbird of the smallest hummingbird in the world. The adult is about 3 centimeters tall and this baby is about 2 centimeters tall. |
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| Another beautiful picture of the island coastline. |
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| The water crashing against the rocks was spectacular. |
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| This mother blue-footed booby has two babies that she is protecting. |
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| An adult blue-footed booby next to the baby. |
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| Us and the boobies. |
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| This mother is sitting on the unhatched egg. |
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| Back on the boat we had a group of turtles join us for lunch. |
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After lunch we went snorkeling... Mary was not super excited about that.
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| A school a beautiful fish passed by our boat as the snorkeling began. |
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The fish underwater.
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| For her first time snorkeling Mary did very well, considering her great fear of water. |
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| Snorkeling together. |
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| Anchored off the coast of Isla de la Plata was this ship, it looks like a dilapidated pirate ship :) |
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| After snorkeling we had some time just relax in the sun on the boat. |
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| You can't go to the beach and not build a sand castle! |
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| On our last day in Puerto Lopez we took another adventure to Machalilla National Park, just north of Puerto Lopez, to see the amazing virgin beaches (all natural beaches). This beach has black sand. |
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| The black sand. |
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| We found this snail above the sand in the process of burrowing under. |
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| The black sand beach was covered in hundreds of crabs searching for food. |
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| The beach is made up of sand in the middle and is surrounded by rocks with tide pools on the sides. |
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| The tide pools are alive and well. |
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| It is amazing how the sea creatures have natural camouflage for their surroundings. |
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| The beach around the rocks was not the fine sand where the crabs were but was made up of tiny shells, broken shells, and tiny rocks. |
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| This is one of the shells that Mary found on the beach. |
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| Walking back to trail we came across this dead mystery sea creature. We are not sure if it is a lobster or what, but it was huge! |
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| The next beach we came to in the national park was Tortuguita Beach (Little Turtle), because the island with the rocks coming off of it looks like a turtle. |
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| The rock shelf came right up to the waters edge and the waves crashed against it. |
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| The beach was incredibly steep, which also meant that the waves built up a lot of power before crashing against the sand and then they had a strong back current. |
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| Another view of the steep beach and the waves breaking against the sand and rock. |
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| The back current is so strong at this beach that the sign reads "This beach has very strong currents, which could drag you far away from the shore and drown you. Do no be tempted to swim in this site." |
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| Along the trails between the beaches there were tons of lizards darting to and fro to get away from the giant humans. |
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| The main beach in Machalilla National Park is Los Frailes, it is 1.1 miles wide and is pristine. |
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| Mary enjoying the cool refreshing water at Los Frailes. |
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| I found a perfect bamboo walking stick. |
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| Back in Puerto Lopez we had a dog posse of these dogs following us around town for about an hour. On left is Lola from earlier, in the middle is Daisy, and Lucas is on the right. |
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| After Puerto Lopez we traveled back to Guayaquil. In the heart of the city there is a park that has about a hundred iguanas that live there. |
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| Iguanas everywhere! |
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| Along with the Iguanas, they have a couple of ponds with fish and turtles in them. |
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| Before leaving Ecuador we stopped by the only LDS temple in the country, located in Guayaquil. For more information about the LDS church or the temple click here. |
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| Our flight from Guayaquil to Lima Perú was at 8:30 am, so instead of paying for another night at a hotel or hostel we decided to rough it in the airport. Mary took this picture at 2:14 am. |
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| Once in Lima we had about 7 hours until our bus left for Cusco so we visited the LDS temple there. This was the third temple built in South America and was dedicated in 1986. |
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| This was our bus to Cusco Perú, the jumping off point for Machu Picchu. It is a double-decker bus. |
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| The bus is considered a luxury bus as the seats recline to about 140 degrees and they served us dinner and breakfast on our 21.5 hour journey. This was highly recommended by Kelsey and Matt, Tyler's sister and brother-in-law as they had traveled around South America a few years ago. |
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| This was amazing sunrise view at 6:10 am as we were seated in the very front on the second level. |
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