Puerto Lopez, Isla de la Plata, and the 10th of August
- DizzleD
- Aug 11, 2015
- 9 min read
Blog 4, Aug 10. Chone, Ecuador.
Chonero girl in traditional dress.
Wow. This was an absolutely AMAZING weekend. Although I am tired as heck from all this traveling and I picked up some sort of one-sided runny nose from our hostel. I also have 6 new, very large, very itchy, and very hard bug bites on my legs and arms. I’ll admit, traveling can be rough and super draining, and I almost have no motivation to write this entry.
But I want to blog because this weekend was AMAZING. This weekend marked two very special holidays: Chone’s Foundation Day and Ecuador’s 10 de Agosto (similar to America's Fourth of July).
Chone’s Foundation Day happened on Friday, August 7th. The city, founded by Friar Jose Antonion Cedeño, grew into an agricultural and transportation town. In order to celebrate the founding of the town, the Choneros (what Chone citizens colloquially call themselves, although supposedly the term is Choniños, or children of Chone) hold parades and decorate the city. Every year, parades go from 9 to 11 in the morning, and most of the festivities are concentrated in El Centro of Chone. Unfortunately we missed the parades (we decided to stay a bit later and enjoy our wonderful host mom’s guineo colada), but there was still lots to see around the city. We saw girls in traditional dresses, dashing caballeros on horses, and people walking the streets, eating sweets and snacks and watching others as they walked by.
Shopping at the streets in El Centro.
After our brief jaunt around El Centro, we traveled to Puerto Lopez for the weekend (about a 6-hour ordeal), as we heard that most locals were traveling there to celebrate Diez de Agosto as well. Once in Puerto Lopez, we settled down at the little hostel that we booked, Sol Inn ($12.00 a night), as recommended by Lonely Planet (pro-tip: Lonely Planet guides are an absolute INVALUABLE tool if you’re traveling in a difficult-to-navigate country; nay, in ANY country, for an extended period of time). The hostel was, well, what we paid for — the beds were a little bit itchy and the sheets slightly suspicious looking and there was no hot shower water, but the hostel itself was immensely charming and we met all sorts of fascinating people traveling across the world with absolutely amazing stories (more on that later). We spent a pleasant evening browsing shops around town, having dinner, and then playing pool at the hostel.
Puerto Lopez, Ecuador.
The next morning we went to Isla de la Plata. (We booked the 9 am - 5 pm tour with Machalilla Tours for $45.00, and they come highly recommended.) It was an absolutely amazing day. I will let the photos tell the story.
Child helping sell (read: eating) watermelon on the streets of Puerto Lopez.
Whale mating season
Blue-footed boobies on Isla de la Plata.
I would also recommend the tour because you meet such fascinating people. We met a man from Italy who was working in Quito on Ecuador’s import-export matrix and was a polyglot (he spoke Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and English stunningly well), two women traveling the world from Sao Paulo, Brazil, and another woman who was a Swiss citizen waiting for her American visa, who had just gotten married and had decided that rather than waiting, she wanted to do something worthwhile, so she came to Ecuador by herself to volunteer with underprivileged communities. Another reason why I thought this tour was absolutely amazing — it was astonishing to me that I got to meet all of these diverse, international citizens on a small boat in the Pacific Ocean. And after an amazing tour, we walked around town for dinner, and for $3.00 each, we got a bowl of soup, a plate of merienda, and a jug of fresh-squeezed maracuya (passionfruit) juice, and there was live music from traveling musicians from Argentina (who, incidentally, were living at our hostel!), which then turned into an impromptu jam session when a saxophonist from France joined the fray. They played Ecuadorian classics, which I know for a fact because then the diners started clapping and dancing and everybody was smiling and laughing and truly, immensely enjoying themselves, and people were stopping on the streets to watch. It was humanity living at its fullest, and everybody forgot about the cost of money in the moment.
The next day was just as amazing. We decided to take a day off from tours and have a day to relax, but even then, we were surprised; we saw a hidden part of town, walked down the beach and had an impromptu tour of a turtle wildlife rehabilitation center, and hit a few bars around town for some Pilsner (the local $1.00 beer) and mixed drinks.
Children in the neighborhood behind the tourist areas. The neighborhoods are generally run-down and quite filthy, and children run barefoot, as opposed to the well-dressed areas right next to the beach. However, the children we met were happy and friendly to strangers.
Later that evening, when we were hanging out at the hostel, we struck up a conversation with two other people living in our hostel: a woman who had been traveling around the world for over a year now, and a man who actually lives in Quito and is an English teacher there (his English was almost flawless, and I caught him reading a thick English novel the next day). The woman, who is from Chicago, America, had lived in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Peru before coming to Ecuador. She spoke English, Spanish, French, German, and some Italian and had worked on a World Bank project, as an English teacher, and now as a business teacher in different countries; her life was fascinating, but I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in a foreign country all by yourself with only your wits to rely on, and of course, her standard of living had to be a bit more difficult at times when she was traveling (take at that hostel, for example. She had to live in a tent for a while because the hostel rooms had all been booked, although she said the tent was relatively comfortable). A very street-smart woman indeed. When asked why she traveled, she said she was interested in learning as much as possible about different cultures in the world, and seeing sights around the world. She was hoping to go to Andora in September; I was in awe of her, because she wanted to do something, and so, without making any excuses, she simply did.
The man we met was a Quiteño and an English teacher for teenagers in Quito. He said that 11 months out of the year, he was very serious, and the 1 month that he was off, he went out and partied very hard (translate: got drunk thoroughly and frequently). He was fascinating as well, and very funny, and had almost stunningly perfect English, even down to his “like”s and cussing (I was very impressed by how well he swore), although he lamented that even though he was taught by a British teacher, he had a Californian accent. He said that he used to be a kid with no direction, and he had worked in business administration because it was the easiest way to make money without working too hard, his counselor had said. But pretty soon after college, he found out he hated it, and quit the job when he realized it was giving him insomnia and he started seeing shadows on the walls. Eventually it got so bad that he started opening his window at night and staring at the city of Quito, which was laid out below him, instead. But a static figure kept peering down at him from the corner of the window, and he demonstrated, holding both hands out in front of him like he was gripping the side of a window and twisting his neck to peer crazily out under his arms. It was eleven at night, and the smoke from the Palosantar incense, meant to chase away mosquitos, kept rafting out from under the table, and in the dark I got shivers as he talked. That’s when he quit his job, and for months he had no work, until he was literally walking around the city of Quito and saw a sign that asked for English speakers. And that’s how he got his job, he said, and he loves it, because he knows now how to deal with difficult kids, as he was one himself. Although, he mentioned as an afterthought, he now only has dreams of him walking around the city of Quito — the same dream, every night.
And after chatting a bit more about the swells that were going to happen this week in Puerto Lopez, and the phosphlorescent phytoplankton that were manifesting in the ocean right now, and lamenting that the many manta rays lurking in the water would make it a bit more dangerous than it was worth to try to swim out to see the plankton, it was time to turn in to bed and sleep. And after a couple of hours of traveling today, the 10th de Agosto, we are now back in Chone, Ecuador.
(10 de Agosto for Ecuador is like America’s 4th of July — it was the first time the call for independence from Spain was heard in the city of Quito, and set off a series of clashes against Spain that eventually resonated around all of Latin America and allowed Ecuador to achieve independence years later. Today, 10 de Agosto, is the first time independence is mentioned in Ecuador’s history.)
xoxo,
a Very Tired Diana
An aside about attitude towards money:
We met a lot of different people with absolutely astonishing attitudes toward money this trip — aka, far removed from the American obsession with earning more money. (see: woman at hostel) We also met a man selling his artisanal crafts at the market (these men and women selling their handmade artistry are called rastas here and have a sprawling rasta community) who, after trying to sell us some of his wares, started asking us where we were from (the US) and what we were doing (shadowing and learning about different health systems in Ecuador). He then sat down on the patch of ground next to his wares and then enthusiastically talked to us about travel for an hour and showed us some of his other crafts that he made; when we asked why he didn’t bring those, he laughed and said, “Well, I’m here on vacation, not to make money!”
An aside on Puerto Lopez and tourists in general:
We seemed to meet a lot of French and British and Italian and German tourists and backpackers in Puerto Lopez, and what was more astonishing was that a lot of the tourists, especially those who seemed to be from France, spoke really really good Spanish. No wonder Americans tend to be so ill-received in other countries; we often seem to fall behind on having the common courtesy to learn the language of the country and we cannot speak on matters of geography for the life of us (the internationals seemed very shocked when we admitted that we couldn’t really place their countries, nor their famous cities, on a map, and they placed our country and cities with ease).
A brief aside on traveling across Ecuador:
Cheap public transportation is the way to go, but pay attention — ask directions and watch your bags. We took a taxi ($1.50) to the bus station, took a bus towards the city of Guayaquil ($5.00) but stopped at JipiJapa (pronounced Hippy Hapa, I know, I couldn’t say it with a straight face the first time either) to transfer to another bus ($2.00) that took us to Puerto Viejo, where we then took a taxi to our hostel Sol Inn ($1.25).
There are always these admittedly rough-looking men at the station, yelling out city names and then insisting to know where you’re going. Believe it or not, these men are there to help and, so far, have been 100% trustworthy and always correct, and will always get you to the right bus. Just make sure to ask whether it’s a direct bus ride there or whether you have to transfer buses in the middle.
Also pay attention to your bags — when I got on the bus, I found out that my backpack had been rifled through by somebody attempting to pickpocket me. They were unsuccessful because my backpack, which I kept on my back, held only my clothes, which the pickpocketer didn’t want. Instead, I keep my valuables (cellphone, wallet, money, copy of passport and important information — NEVER take your passport with you on public transportation if you can help it; passports are very popular items to steal here, as well as iPhones, which retail at about $1,000 - 2,000 USD here) in a small backpack I carry on the front of my body. I was advised to do this by well-seasoned travelers; it’s more difficult to get your things stolen if you’re always watching it. Otherwise, buses generally are very comfortable and reliably get you to the right place!
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