Missing warm weather and heading towards Isla de la Plata, I made my way to Montanita. This was my first stop from Guayaquil. Montanita is known for its huge part scene. It is also pretty lax on drugs and one can buy weed muffins at any street corner really. There are loads of clubs, all pumping the music, mainly techno or reggaeton. I didnât go out on my first night, but decided that I couldnât leave the part town without going out to party.
On night two I went out with a whole load of girls from the hostel. Apparently girls are a rarity in the hostelâŚso who knows how six of us ended up together?  We first went out for delicious espresso martinis- which I had discovered earlier on in the day. We then carried on down to Cocktail Alley- where it is 3 USD per cocktail. It was around midnight that we went to one club, which we didnât settle in and so went to another. I canât say I really got into the groove much⌠the music was very mixed up. When one of the girls decided that she was going back, I decided to join her- this was around 3am.
When we returned to the hostel; the owner; who was still awake; asked if we felt the earthquake that just occurred a few minutes ago- we had not. It was the earthquake that shook the Peruvian jungle.
This morning I left to go to Las Tunas- a very quiet beach village north of Montanita. I walked around the little town much more than I would have wanted as the GPS location was incorrect on booking.com! It was very-very quiet especially since it was Sunday. I took the quiet time to catch up on blogging and to do some planning before heading north to Puerto Lopez early the next morning.
I got into my hostel early-at 8:30- had breakfast and headed out to find water. I had to meet up with my tour operator at 09:20. I was missing Galapagos and snorkelling a lot!! So I decided to head to another
âpoor manâs Galapagosâ. This is in the form of Isla de la Plata, about 1.5 hours by speed boat from Puerto Lopez. The seas were rough on the way in and back probably worse. This is allegedly not normal and has occurred since the earthquake. I was pretty sure that I had shrunk by a centimetre due to the force of the landing of the boat back on the water- but was better off than the people at the back of the boat who were drenched in sea water to boot. It was like a washing machine back there! We saw a pod of bottlenose dolphins on the way to the island, but unfortunately nothing on the return trip.
Upon arriving we are in the bay where the walking trails start- and we have a family of three sea turtles and some damsel fish say hello. We have a wet landing and head off for about 2 hour walk. At the look out the group spilt into two, depending on which walk you chose- I went down the coast. Isla de la Plata is named this for two reasons- all the white bird shit made it shine like silver (Plata) and a grounded ship once lost silver that was littered across itâs beaches. I think I like the second reason!
The forest on the island âwhich is continental and not volcanic like the Galapagos Islands- is what is called dry tropical forest. As the rainy season is coming to an end it will get drier. The trees are not dead, just dormant. It was great to see loads of blue footed boobies again âand they are looking for mates at the moment so we had many mating dances. We also saw frigate birds and a few tropic birds.
The coastline of the island is pretty dramatic, and unfortunately littered with large plastic containers.
We headed back to the boat, had lunch âjust sandwiches- and went off to snorkel in a quiet bay. The fish life is pretty good here; even saw a couple of species that I had not seen in the Galapagos. One was dark, nearly black with white polka dots and another pod of what looked like baby sword fish. After we were all on board though, it turned out that one of the girls was stung by something like a jelly fish- or maybe something else and had blisters down her arm. She said it felt nearly like electricity. Ouch!
We hunkered down to another hard core return journey!
I had fallen asleep pretty early after that exciting day, and did my last Ecuadorian bus trip- to Manta- the next morning after breakfast. I arrived about three hours later and pretty much chilled in the hotel. I wanted to finalise a few things before my flight to Quito early the next day and later on in the day, to Bogota, Colombia.
