Weekend Trip and Crazy Wildlife

So last weekend was a ton of fun. Here goes it . . .

Weekend at Isla de la Plata--"The Poor Man's Galapagos"-- We left for a coastal town called Puerto Lopez on an 11 hour overnight bus Friday. In case you might be worried that I had nothing to do for those 11 hours, put those worries aside. Shortly after our departure, the bus driver put on two John Cen

a movies plus a documentary of John Cena's life. In case you don't know who John Cena is, google him and you should be redirecte

d to the WWE website. Suffice it to say that I succeeded in comprehending my first movie in Spanish because 90% of the dialogue consisted in explosions and John Cena showing his muscles. Anyway, we arrived in Puerto Lopez at around 5:30 in the morning, which was earlier than our hotel was expecting us. We were greeted with Ecuadorian hospitality. Because our rooms were not yet vacant, and we were all pretty exhausted, the cute little couple that runs the hotel offered us three cots which were in a courtyard in the middle of the hotel and proceeded to drag three mattresses into the courtyard for us to crash on. Imagine that you are an Ecuadorian on vacation with your family and you wake up to find roughly 12 gringos sleeping on mattresses in the middle of your hotel. It was great!

Puerto Lopez is a small fishing town but it has some amazing beaches. We took a guided tour of one of the beaches on Saturday and saw some views that I can only compare with the

time I was in Cinque Terre, Italy. We also visited in indigenous village and took a natural sulfur bath. At first you have to bite the bullet and accept that you are about to jump into a pool of water that smells like rotten eggs, but once you're in there it's pretty cool. You have to swim down to the bottom, scoop up some sulfur, and then cake it on yourself. It was really pretty fun and our skin was simply "glowing" afterwards. That night we enjoyed an amazing seafood feast and my friends Garrett and Eamon became instant celebrities at a local karaoke bar.

The next morning we took an hour and a half boat ride to Isla de la Plata where we were lead on a 2 hour hike and saw some of the most crazy wildlife I've ever experienced. I was literally five feet from a pair of blue footed boobies who were doing their mating ritual. We also got to see an albatross, a bird that only exists on this island and two other places in the world. The views from this island blew away the day before. The entire time I could not stop thinking about how blessed I was to be there. We left the island and went snorkeling! Then, on our ride home, we went whale watching, which

was by far the BEST part of the entire weekend. We were literally 20 feet from three gian

t whales who put on a show for us, jumping, etc. It was simply incredible. Once we returned we basically hustled to get on the boat and took the 11 hour bus ride home, though this time we were not graced with the same excellent movie selection.

Overall it was such a great first travel experience and I feel extremely lucky.