Hi again. Here’s that post about my little whale/boobie/sea lion watching trip to Machala.
The things the tour operator said would happen almost all happened. The only thing that didn’t happen was another boobie walk because it was low tide and the boat couldn’t get to the island. The poor operator had to improvise everything, though, and that is a long story almost worth telling. Suffice it to say, everything he arranged fell through and he had to arrange on the fly a different hotel, different places to eat, and a different boat.
I gotta show you the dopey boat we went two hours out to sea in.
The main reason I went was to whale watch. There were no great breachings, just a lot of backs and flukes. This is the only photo I got, such as it is.
The ride out to the islands where the whales and most of the sea lions and bobbies are was a couple of hours long. We were told that the littlest island, the one on the right above, is going to disappear in 10-15 years. The big island, below, will be there for quite a while.
No one lives on the island, but there is a shelter for researchers which doubles as habitat for multitudes of birds and sea lions.
Many of the sea lions came out to greet us.
So, it was a nice ride, anyway. On the way back, we stopped for lunch at a island right next to Machala for lunch. Nice, too, though the beach was not worth photographing.
The morning and early afternoon on the day we left, we went to an organic/sustainable finca (little farm) called Happy Fruit. This isn’t Southeast Asia, so it wasn’t a cannabis farm, despite the name. It was a very nice place, though, with the highest quality products.
And the lunch was scrumptious, in a nice setting.
Machala itself is an ordinary Ecuadorean city, even though it’s the fourth largest with 241,000 inhabitants. I saw nothing worth photographing. Here’s the central plaza and church.
With that, I’ll sign off for now. Hopefully, I won’t wait so many months before blogging again. Until then, be well, all of you.