Machalilla National Park-Puerto Lòpez, Ecuador

This is some pictures of our time on the coast of Ecuador.

George W. Bush???

So Ecuador´s currency is the US dollar. By January 2000 the former currency had depreciated from about 7,000 pesos per US dollar to about 25,000!!! So they decided the best choice was to switch currencies. Oddly enough they use US bills, US coins, and their own coins that are the same value as US coins. This is one coin, but it kind of looks like George W Bush, it freaked me out a little. The first day of experiencing the Machalilla Park we visited the wonderful beach of Los Frailes. It was really nice with only about 40 people!

Nick enjoying the beach.

There is a town in the park called Agua Blanca. They have a little museum and some ruins. This is some urns that were used to cremate people.

This is a huge termite nest in a tree, the termites were slowly killing the tree.

This town is surrounded by what they call a dry forest. This is a crazy catcus tree. It was huge.

A very tall bamboo type tree.

A cool bird.

An iguana. He´s very hard to see, but you can kind of see his outline.

The 2nd day we went to the Isla de la Plata, which is also known as the poor man´s Galapagos. This is us leaving Puerto Lopez.

The fishermen had caught a shark and left it on the beach.

The boat we took to Isla de la Plata. It was only about 40´-50´ long and we had 8´-10´ swells on the way back from the island. The boat was ROCK´IN, 2 girls had to throw up on the ride back to the main land.

This is how the island got its name. It means Island of silver, and they named it that because all the bird poop makes the island look silver. From a distance in the heat the island shimmers just like silver.

A blue footed boobie.

The boobie´s blue feet.

Me looking annoyed because our tour guide was boring.

The view on the island. Unfortunatly no whales!

A nassua boobie laying on her egg.

This is one of only 7 albatros that live on this island. This one decided to lay her egg on the path since the vegetation was too dense for her to get into. The albatros will live about 6 years at sea before returning to their birth place to reproduce. This bird has a wing span of about 6-8 feet.

A cool looking lizard.

Coming back to Puerto Lopez. The waves were incredibly strong on the way back! It was the wildest boat ride I have ever been on.

We didn´t get to see any whales on the tour. The whale season starts around June 20th. The guide said he had seen whales the day before but we were not lucky enough to see any on our tour. We did however get to see a pod of about 50 dolphins. The captian chased them for about 15 minutes. They were jumping and doing all kinds of tricks...but this was the best picture my camera could capture.

We rented horses in Agua Blanca the last day we had in Puerto Lopez. The horses were VERY small. My saddle was VERY small. The stirups were very short so my legs were bent but if they had been straight I would have almost been able to touch the ground.

This is a dry forest tree as we head into to the cloud forest. It was quite interesting watching the change from dry to wet forest.

This is the cloud forest from the top of a hill. The picture isn´t very good since we were in the clouds. It was foggy the whole time. There are all sorts of cool animals in the cloud forest such as jaguers and howler monkeys. We unfortunately were not lucky enough to see the monkeys, but we did get to hear them howling.

This is the horse Sara rode. She said it looks like a wimpy version of Tommy, one of their studs. Becky said Tommy is a much better looking horse...I´d have to agree this horse was dumpy.

Another view of the forest.

These cows look just like the cows in Africa. I guess these cows survive better in the dry climate of the dry forest.

Sara riding her horse ¨Tommy¨ in a creek in the forest.

These giant snails were everywhere in the forest. They were bigger than my palm.