Whales and Boobies - 8/2/09

How in the hell do these months keep flying by? Since leaving Salasaka I´ve been indulging in some touristy fun. I started my trip off by heading to Puerto Lopez. It was by far the worst bus ride yet. I took a night bus hoping to sleep through and literally did not get a minute of rest. It was so bumpy I was constantly being bumped off my seat and the night before I only got 4 hours of sleep. It was a rough one! FInally I made it to Puerto Lopez and got into my hostal. I fell asleep for a couple hours. When I woke up I kept having seriously painful stomach pains. These lasted a few hours and then I decided to pay a visit to the oh-so-convenient hostal doctor. Apparently I have amoebas and something else. Excellent. I got loaded up with some meds and crawled back into bed. First day in PL, kind of sucked. The next day I was feeling a lot better and went to the Los Frailes beach in the national park nearby. It has a beautiful white sand beach with turqouise blue water, and I spent the whole day relaxing there. The next day I fially went to go see the whales! During July and August you get to see the whales migrating from Antarctica to Puerto Lopez; they go there to mate ad have their babies in the warmer waters. TO get to where the whales hang out you have to take a really rough boat ride out into the ocean for about an hour and a half. I´ve never concentrated so hard on not vomitting. However, it was well worth it. They were jumping out of the water and crashing back down a couple of times. It was incredible! They are so huge, it´s super overwhelming. After seeing the hwales for wahile we headed to Isla de la Plata. This island is home to many birds but most importantly, the blue footed booby. So many people had said that this part of the tour wasn´t worht it, but I thought it was incredible. I mean, unless you have blue footed boobies running around your backyard, I don´t know how you couldn´t have been impressed. We hiked around the island for a few hours and then headed back tothe boat for lunch and snorkeling. Honestly the snorkeling wasn´t that great but there were a few really pretty fish; the coral was totally dead though. Then we made a long and nauseating voyage back to the port. The next day I headed out to Bahia de Caraquez to get everything settled for my next volunteering stint at the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm. It turne out that none of the volunteers were really goig to start until Monday so I decided I would follow suit and just hang out until then. Luckily there were two sisters from the US staying at my hostal who were great, Keera and Ana. They were there to volunteer at an organization called Planet drum. I was thinking about volunteering there for a bit but after seeing where the volunteers live I am pretty sure that I will not be volunteering there. It´s defining characteristics include a serious bug infestation with no flushing toilets or running water for that matter. Anyways, I spent the weekend with the girls going to the beach, taing the tour of some mangroves, and eating a lot of foods. They were so fun and really made the weekend. And now I´m just relaxing before I start my new volunteer gig.