After Daniel's heartfelt yet debbie downer of a post the other day, I wanted to get caught up with writing about some of the things we've been doing lately. We are a bit behind on our blogging, because we have been staying in one place and studying Spanish for the last two weeks. More about that will be coming in a future post. For now, I want to give a little blog love to Puerto Lopez, Ecuador.
Puerto Lopez is a small fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. We spent a few days relaxing, hanging out at the beach, and eating fantastic seafood. I got in some great beach runs, then subsequently got some nasty blood blisters on my feet. It was also our jumping off point for Isla de la Plata, where we saw blue footed boobies. It is a fairly slow paced little town, and the beach was nice and clean.
The main excitement was waking up early and going to the beach to watch the fishing boats bring in their catch. There were dozens of different types of fish, shrimp, squid, and sharks that were brought in by the tote full. The sharks and larger fish, they would butcher right on the sand and the smaller fish would be taken to tables a bit higher on the beach where they were cleaned and fileted. The people working the filet tables were ridiculously fast and there were piles of fish and guts everywhere.
A little higher on the beach, they had an area set up where women cooked for the fishermen and your freshly purchased fish could be eaten. There were also a few people who rode their bicycles along the beach selling fruit off the back. The bananas were five cents, so I ended up getting one each day we were there. Other than the fish market and awesome seafood, there was not too much going on while we were visiting. It was absolutely worth the few days we spent there, but it is not somewhere we would want to spend more than a few days.
The rest of our photos from Puerto Lopez can be viewed on Flickr.