Entries about pelicans

Day trip to Isla de la Plata, but before we arrived there we did some humpback whale watching! It's a bit of a cliché, but they are so majestic. We loved the way they rise right out of the water before plunging down again. We saw lots of spray coming from their blowholes, too, and once when I and two others had moved to the front of the boat, two or three of them appeared right in front of us very close to the boat. It was exhilarating seeing creatures so large so near.

Once we arrived at Isla de la Plata we split up into two groups; one went on a long walk and the other one did a slightly shorter one. It was extremely hot and sunny and I'd forgotten my hat, so I went for the slightly shorter one.

I was really happy already, because of the amazing humpback whales, but then my day got even better because I saw lots of Magnificent Frigatebirds (or Great Frigatebirds - not sure which of the two they were, but both types have red pouches beneath their beaks that inflate like balloons) perched in bushes. I'd always wanted to see them and they were the one type of bird I didn't manage to see on the Galápagos Islands which I had really wanted to. We were able to get so close to them, I managed to get some good photos.

We also saw lots of blue-footed boobies and some pelicans. The boobies were just standing on the ground beneath bushes. They were extremely tame; not tame because they have got used to humans, but tame in that they haven't learned to fear us.

With one pair that we saw, the male demonstrated part their courtship display - he lifted his feet up and down and then picked up a stick to present to the female as a nest material. Isla de la Plata isn't nicknamed a 'Poor Man's Galápagos Island' for nothing! The other group also saw some red-footed boobies.

Once we got back to the landing point, we got back on the boat for some lunch - a cheese roll, a tuna roll and some pineapple and watermelon slices - before going round the coast of the island for a bit to do some snorkelling. While having lunch we saw three green sea turtles around the boat.

Unfortunately there weren't any in the snorkelling place, but we still got to see lots of fish. We got into the water straight off the end of the boat, not from a beach.

After changing clothes back in Puerto Lopez, we went back to the same restaurant where we'd had lunch the day before. This time, as I had promised myself, I had the fish with peanut sauce, which was just as delicious as I'd hoped. I'd raved about the lobster so much to everyone the day before that this evening one or two of the others tried some of their own. They also thought it was amazing.

We moved on to a beach bar on the sand after dinner and had a few drinks. I had a couple more of the Coco Loco cocktails.

Eventually, pretty late, we headed to bed. On the way, I noticed something I remembered seeing in Montañita at the staff Christmas party; hundreds of little birds perched all along the telephone wires along and across the street.

Update from October 2019: Another name for Abya Yala Museum is Museo Amazonico. Still open according to Google Maps. The wonderful jewellery workshop is also still there - also known as 'ARIU Art Jewelry Studio'

The first place we visited this morning was Abya Yala Museum, a small but very interesting museum with lots of artifacts from the Amazon as well as a few archaeological ones from other areas of Ecuador. Highlights included two examples of shrunken heads, various stuffed wildlife (a sloth, an armadillo, a condor and smaller birds), a massive dugout canoe, musical instruments, blowpipes, spears and some photos of Ingapirca, the only major Inca site in Ecuador. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures.

When we came out of there a guy was practising parkour in front of the museum. We caught a taxi from there to our next destination, La Capilla del Hombre, or 'The Chapel of Man'. This monument and art museum was a creation of Ecuador's most famous artist, Guayasamín, as a tribute to humankind, the suffering of Latin America's indigenous poor and the eternal hope for a more positive future.

It lies in the very suitably named residential district of Bellavista ('beautiful view').

On the way there we passed through Guápulo district, very hilly and historic. It was beautiful - I'll make sure to come back here for a look-around when I return to Quito next month.

First of all we walked round the outside of the monument, taking photos of it as well as the view and of a statue from the Honduran Mayan site of Copan which was donated to the Chapel of Man by the government of Honduras.

Then we went inside it to look at Guayasamín's art. We were given a free tour by a guide, just for the two of us; in the process of doing so our guide gave us such a fine example of Spanglish I wished I could have taken a recording of it to play to my students and see if they could spot where the mistakes were. The tour began with a drawing representing workers at the silver mines of Potosí (in Bolivia) in Spanish colonial times. Before the guide told us this I had guessed it might be about the Potosí mines in historical times, so I was pleased when it turned out I was correct. Then Dave noticed a large mural and said it reminded him of Picasso - a few minutes later we got to that painting and our guide told us that it was indeed about the Spanish Civil War and was influenced by Picasso´s Guernica. The art was interesting and very symbolic. Once our tour had finished, we each bought a fridge magnet of our favourite artwork.

After leaving the monument we walked up some stairs to an on-site café, where we had a humita each and shared a quimbolito.

Then we caught a taxi back to our hostel for a rest before heading out on a very important mission... choosing my engagement ring!

To do so we went straight to an extremely well-recommended jewellery shop called Ari's Gallery in the Old Town, right on the edge of Plaza San Francisco.

Every piece of jewellery in it is hand made; the owner makes them with the help of five assistants. Most of the jewellery is silver but some are gold and some made from Spondylus shell. The ring I chose is made of silver and patterned with two pelicans and two hummingbirds - no precious stone. I asked if the silver came from Ecuador and it turns out that it comes from close to Chordeleg, a village near to Cuenca that is famous for its jewellery. I'd heard of Chordeleg before. Ari Gallery's owner gets his silver (and I assume his gold as well) from the same source local to Chordeleg as the Chordeleg jewellers do.

When we first arrived the owner's wife showed us round, but then the owner himself arrived. I originally thought that they didn't have any the right size for me, because there was only one of each type displayed (and apparently they don't have any in storage - they only ever have one of each type in existence in the shop) and every ring I was interested in was either too small or too big. They were also a bit too wide for my liking. However, then it turned out that they could tailor-make one for me, so I went for that option! He tried different dummy rings on me to find my size and then I picked the pattern and asked for it to be a bit narrower than the ones on display. They had a book of patterns and it said that the pelican means 'new life and long life' and the hummingbird is a general symbol of 'nature'. I love both hummingbirds and pelicans so I think I would have chosen them even without their given meanings, but I do think these meanings were very appropriate nonetheless.

The owner told us that he could deliver the ring to our hostel tomorrow afternoon for free, so we went for that option.

For dinner we went back to the Argentinian grillhouse we'd visited a couple of days before. This time Dave chose the mixed grill, which arrived piled up and still sizzling on a portable grill. He really liked most of it but unsurprisingly left the intestines! We shared some 'Italian potatoes' (fried potatoes with melted cheese, sour cream and mushrooms) as a starter and for the main I had a steak.

This day was our first full day on Isabela Island (formerly known as Abermarle). The night before, at dinner, we'd been told to get ready to go out on our first excursion at 8.50am, so we went down for breakfast at 8. Bud and Gale, the lovely American couple I mentioned yesterday, were already there. Breakfast was lovely - I had black coffee with sugar and hot chocolate powder mixed in, two flattish oblong rolls (one with scrambled egg in and the other with cheese) and a bowl of deliciously sweet and juicy fresh pineapple chunks.

At 8.40, a bit earlier than we expected, we were taken to the port and then put on a panga (water taxi), with some other people from different hotels.

I found a Galápagos sealion under a boat.

This took us to Islote Tintoreras, very close to Isabela. This is very small, uninhabited by humans and lacking any trees apart from a mangrove along one side. Before we were taken ashore, however, our guide took us round the coastline for a bit. We saw a big male Gálapagos sea lion that had been driven away from the group (herd?) by a younger male and could no longer return, a couple of penguins - the only type that can live in such relatively hot conditions so close to the equator - and a blue-footed booby.

We also came across a fisherman in his boat - pelicans and frigatebirds were flying above.

Our guide knew the fisherman and asked what fish he had caught. In reply the guy held up two massively long fish, fish that our guide said were called wahoo. He said that he would be able to get between $100 - $150 for one if he sold it to a restaurant.

Then we landed and walked round the island, keep very closely to the trail. It was an amazing volcanic landscape, black rocks with white lichen on the points that stuck upwards.

We saw lots of distinctively scarlet Sally Lightfoot crabs, black crabs, black marine iguanas and a couple more sea lions.

One of these sea lions appeared in a pool between the mangrove and the rocks where we stood. It swam up and down and bellowed in order to let other sea lions in the area know that it was there.

We also saw a 'nursery' for baby iguanas, where the adults were on the left side of the path and all the babies were on the right side, right next to the sea. The reason why the babies were there was because there were loads of cracks in the rocks on that side that acted as extra protection. Our guide stopped soon afterwards and showed us an empty, rubbery iguana eggshell.

Just after we passed the pool with the sea lion in it we stopped by a crevice in the rocks which was filled with very clear, still water and had some white-tip sharks lying on the bottom.

Last of all on land, we stopped at the mangrove and our guide told us a little bit about them. One or two leaves on each branch were yellow, apparently due to the way that they 'sacrifice' themselves by absorbing all the salt in the seawater. This way the other leaves survive for longer and stay green.

After this we went snorkelling with giant turtles!! The panga took us to an even smaller island round the corner from Islote Tintoreras - actually on reflection it may just have been part of Isabela island - and we got out onto the rocks with only our swimming stuff and flipflops on, plus snorkels if we'd brought any. If you hadn't then it didn't matter because there was a big bag of snorkels, masks and fins for communal use. There were about 8-10 of us including our guide. After leaving our flipflops on the rocks we got in...

We saw lots of tropical fish, especially lots of black ones with a yellow tail and a white stripe down their body. We also saw lots of small, green, spiny sea anemones, a couple of very big, fat, brownish starfish and last but not least... the turtles! They were huge. They stayed lying on the sea floor, apart from a couple who swam along for a bit. The sight of them was amazing. I'd always wanted to snorkel with turtles! Dave really loved them as well. There wasn't much coral - apart from white sand, there were lots of flat rocks covered in green algae, which was where the tropical fish fed from. It was such a fantastic experience to float over these rocks and see all the fish close up, especially when the rocks were close to the surface, then see bigger, silvery fish swimming near the seabed once the rocks finished. As soon as I got out of the water I saw a large marine iguana swim past.

After this we went back to Puerto Villamil, the main town on Isabela, for lunch. We had it at a different hotel, one that overlooked a small reedy lake. Soup first, then lightly breadcrumbed fresh shrimps, rice, salad and creamy mashed potato for the main, with chopped banana & chocolate syrup for pudding.

After lunch we went on another excursion, this time with several stops at different places. Ricardo was with us, along with a naturalist guide called Miguel. Stop one was at the giant tortoise breeding centre; this was fascinating, as I expected, because I've always wanted to see these creatures in the flesh. We saw a mixture of adults, juveniles and babies, all in separate pens.

They had different types of giants; ones that come from different parts of Isabela, including some from the slope of Cerro Azul Volcano which are unique in the Galápagos for having flat, squashed-looking shells.

Stop two was a short walk through cacti and mangrove to a small, black rocky beach where we saw lots of blue-footed boobies.

Stop three was at a fantastic lookout point. On the way there we saw two giant tortoises in the wild, which I was pleased about - I had hoped I would see at least one in the wild as well as the ones at the breeding centre.

From the lookout point we could see a lot of the western side of the island as well as some of the eastern and the sea with some of the other islands in it. Miguel showed us lots of trees nearby that he said the locals burn as incense in churches and in their homes and export to the mainland.

Stop four was a sobering visit to the Wall of Tears (in Spanish, El Muro de las Lágrimas), a wall built by prisoners from a penal colony on the island between 1945 and 1959. Miguel told us that this entirely pointless task was set because the government wanted to kill the prisoners but couldn't because the families back on the mainland would complain, so they had to find a task for them to do instead. Many prisoners died during its construction and there was a lot of cruelty, hence the name since given to it since.

Our penultimate stop was at a lava tunnel, formed naturally from a volcanic eruption. There was a hole down into it and water at the bottom.

Our last stop was a walk along the beach at Puerto Villamil.

Miguel showed us a tiny white crab which he said people from the Galápagos cook in bulk and eat as a snack like popcorn when they sit down to watch films. At the end of the beach Miguel left us to go back to his family - Ricardo had left a bit earlier - and Bud, Gale, Dave and I went back along the beach a bit until we got to an outdoors bar, where we had a couple of drinks. I ordered Dave and I two daiquiris for $6 and a fruit milkshake.

We were joined by a group of Australians; almost straight after we'd all ordered, two of them and I played a game of volleyball against two local guys and a Chilean girl from the hostel to which the bar was attached. When it ended none of us had any idea of which team had actually won, but it was very good fun nonetheless.

As well as a volleyball net, the bar had a very long, stretchy piece of material set a metre from the ground between two posts; Ricardo reappeared and with other locals he walked along it like a stretchy, bouncy tightrope - he told us later that is a growing pastime in the Galápagos. Once the volleyball had finished I watched them take turns on it, but neither Dave or I were tempted to have a go ourselves! Bud then ordered two Cuba Libres but only wanted one of them (two for the price of one) so I bought one off him. By now the place was crowded and the sun had gone down. The atmosphere of the whole place was very convivial.

After another half an hour or so the bar staff lit a small bonfire, but before it could get going properly Bud, Gale, Dave and I had to go back to our hotel for dinner. Soup, chicken, rice, salad and a delicious chocolate brownie-like pudding with nuts in and a meringue topping drizzled with chocolate sauce.

After dinner we were too tired to do anything apart from load our photos from today onto my laptop and Dave's USB pen and then go to sleep.

For breakfast we boiled the rest of the special sausages we'd had some of the night before (we didn't have any oil or a grill, so couldn't fry or grill them) and we had half of them - I made sausage sandwiches with the other half for us to have later for lunch.

Then we hung around in the reception area of our hostel while Dave checked his email to find out when we were getting picked up by the G Adventures representative. He didn't have any emails, though, so he and the hostel owner (who was incredibly nice and helpful all round) went down the road to the tour office to speak to them face to face. They came back having found out the required information (we had to meet at the port, it turned out) and so we hung around for a while longer before getting a taxi to the port with all our stuff.

Before we set off for the port, we did a little bit of shopping in town. On the way in we passed a fish stall next to the waterfront with lots of pelicans and a sealion crowded round it. We stopped to watch for a bit before moving on.

We both bought a t-shirt for ourselves and I also got myself a carved wooden tortoise ornament and a woven 'Galapagos' friendship bracelet to go with the ones I bought in Peru five years ago. I also did a little bit of secret shopping.

At the port we had to have our bags checked for fruit, vegetables, seeds and other plant material, because quite understandably the Ecuadorians are very keen for there to be no cross-contamination between different islands. Then the tour company representative met us and we also met up with the other couple who we were going to be with on all our activities on Isabela Island for the following three days. This was a recently retired American couple, Bud and Gale, who until recently had been living in the US Virgin Islands for 20 years. They were both really nice and friendly.

The tour representative put us on a water taxi which took us to the speedboat that took us to Isabela Island. The crossing took between two and three hours and the word 'rough' to describe the sea would have to be the understatement of the year... both Dave and I had never experienced anything like it! Even the Cork - Swansea ferry journey I took with the rugby club at uni pales in comparison. Some of the others were sick, but neither Dave or I were. Dave was fine actually because he'd taken a tablet against motion sickness an hour before the journey, which worked a treat, and I didn't feel sick, only a little dizzy due to the horizon going up and down through the window so much. The jolting of the boat pitching so much meant I didn't get any sleep, though I did try.

As soon as we arrived and I felt the fresh air on my face I stopped feeling dizzy and I felt really excited instead... days of adventure and new experiences were ahead! We were met by the tour guide, Ricardo, and got into the open-sided truck which would be taking us from place to place during the next few days.

We were taken to our hotel, Hotel San Vicente, where we dumped our stuff and got changed before going out with Bud, Gale and two German girls on our first excursion... a flamingo lagoon! Ricardo told us lots of interesting information about the flamingoes and the lagoon. We both love flamingoes so it was wonderful to see them.

The water in the lagoon is brackish, both salt and fresh mixed together, which is why the flamingoes are there.The lagoon was manmade a few decades ago (before the Galápagos became a National Park) when locals quarried for basalt to use as a building material. Once they dug deep enough for water to come through, they had to stop quarrying and they just left the crater as it was. Then the flamingoes moved in. We saw the flamingoes doing their funny 'dance', not a dance at all but a process to stir up the mud to make the tiny crustaceans they feed on to come to the surface. Ricardo also showed us a lava gull that appeared. We were there for a while but then it became dusky and few drops of rain appeared, so we went back to the hotel. We rested until dinner, which was at 7.

Dinner was lovely - yuca, potato and vegetable soup as a starter, a great big slab of fresh fish with white sauce, rice and vegetables for the main and a very thick fruity mixture (like yoghurt with holes in it, but a bit more gooey) for pudding. We had a glass of juice each as well. Ricardo appeared after a while and briefed us about the next day; we had to be ready to leave the hotel at 8.50 the next morning.

We played some cards after dinner - five rounds of 10-card rummy (Dave won overall) - before going back to our room, having showers and downloading photos from our cameras onto my laptop and Dave's USB pen.

Excursion weekend! We left on Saturday the 15th and came back the next evening. I and the other teachers from the language school where I work had been invited to a party held at Punta Blanca by the British Consulate in celebration of the Queen's birthday, and after that finished we carried on up the coast to the surfers' town of Montañita for the night and next day.

The dress code was pretty simple - we had to wear white or cream as much as possible, and a hat. I hadn't managed to get a hat before we left, but the situation got resolved when we were nearly out of Guayaquil. We stopped at a rare traffic light and were surprised by the amount of traders who descended upon us and the other cars; it's normal for a couple to wander round cars at traffic lights further into the city, but not for so many to do so at once. All of a sudden someone asked me "Don't you need a hat?" I looked to my right and saw a trader with a couple of piles of hats walk past, so he was stopped and a couple of hats were passed back to me to choose from hurriedly. Just then the lights changed so we pulled over to continue the transaction. I paid $5 for a wide-brimmed, tightly woven but semi-floppy white hat. I'm glad I bought it,because it will come in very handy in the future, especially with the sun as hot as it is.

The scenery wasn't spectacular like it is further up the coast and in the Andes, but it was still different to the UK. It was quite hilly (though not mountainous) a lot of the time and the sides of them were covered in bushes and shrubbery, some green and some brown with the occasional touch of pink. We did pass a banana plantation at one point though, and a field of what some of the others said was plantain at an early stage. Quite often billboards appeared at the side of the road - a series of Coca-Cola ones and a series of Banco Pichincha ones are two lots I remember. In Ecuador (and in Bolivia and Peru from what I remember when Dave and I were there), out in the middle of the countryside you quite often come across political slogans and murals painted onto shack and shop walls, even abandoned ones. The name of Rafael Correa appeared a lot - the current president of Ecuador.

On entry we had to sign the visitor's book that I noticed had been printed specially for this occasion, and were given a glass of wine each by a waiter. Then we found a table and sat down. Soon a waiter began bringing us each a plate of small empanadas and Ecuadorian ceviche. It was all delicious – some of my students have told me about ceviche and how it's different to the Peruvian sort, so I was glad I could finally try it. In Peru ceviche is raw fish with lime and chilli - Dave and I had some when we were there but I didn’t like it because of the chilli – but in Ecuador you can have other kinds of seafood as well, and the fish at least is cooked, albeit still cold; the sauce has tomato in it, and there isn’t any chilli. In our mini glasses of ceviche at the party, however, there were only prawns, no fish. It was delicious, as were the empanadas. As well as wine they had free beer and soft drinks as well, so we found no reason to resist...

After a while of eating, drinking and chatting, there were a couple of speeches. They were both in Spanish, and neither was repeated in English, so I didn’t understand a lot of what was said. I did surprise myself though by recognising more words than I could have expected, and more of the general meaning. At the end of the speeches the Ecuadorian and British national anthems were played; a recording of people’s voices sang the Ecuadorian one, but the recording of the British one was only music.

When the speeches had finished I went for a quick look at the beach. I noticed a little fishing boat nearby, and further along there were three men pulling on a long line that went into the sea. I assumed that if I waited around for a bit the net would come out, but it must have been a very long line because I waited for quite a while and the men pulled the line further and further back up the beach, but nothing appeared.

Not too long after that we all had some more food. This time we had to queue up for a served buffet of chicken, special sausages, beef, potatoes in foil, vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, green beans), a white very cheesy sauce and chimichurri sauce, which is an Argentinian green sauce made of garlic, parsley and other things. Of the two sauces I just chose the white one because I didn't realise what the green sauce was until after I'd eaten my plateful and was too full to have anything else. I really wish I'd had some of the chimichurri now because it sounds pretty nice!

A while after eating, I noticed that there were some rather prehistoric-looking black birds flying overhead and even more flying around over the beach. Something clicked in my head as I realised the fishermen must have pulled in their nets by now. I went back out to the beach but didn't get too close because I didn't want to intrude. I think they'd already brought in the catch and packed it up in the truck nearby, because I didn't see any fish, only men wading in the sea doing something with one of the nets, while lots of empty nets lay on the sand. There was a crowd of pelicans in the sea next to them, a couple of birds standing at the edge of the sand that Iooked from the distance like white storks, and the strange big black birds flying above. The pelicans and other birds weren't fighting over anything, which makes me think even more that the catch had already been brought in.

There was dancing after it got dark:

We teachers didn't leave until past 7pm when things were winding up. We arrived in Montañita between 8 and 9pm. Unfortunately it was drizzling a bit when we arrived and it didn't stop for nearly all the time we were there, but that didn't stop us having fun.

Our accommodation was great! All our drinks were free, and on the patio we were given a free barbecue of sausages, red peppers, ribs, medium-rare steaks, salad and pitta bread. The steaks were so lovely I had four, but I didn't have any ribs or sausages because I was full up by then! They kept bringing out more and more meat, and I couldn't resist. We sat around for a while after that, variously in armchairs, a swinging seat, a hammock, a sofa and ground cushions. Some of us had beers, but I had a rum and coke.

At 11.30pm nearly all of us walked down the road into town. I could hear cicadas by the roadside. We went to 'Cocktail Alley' and had a couple of cocktails - Mojitos first. You can see in the photos what Cocktail Alley is like - quite a narrow pedestrianised street filled from one end to the other with roadside cocktail stalls under gazebos. Each one had a row of tropical fruit in front of the row of bottles and the cocktail list. Nearly every cocktail cost either $2.50 or $3, and they were pretty large and strong cocktails!

We sat there for quite a long time. After the Mojitos some of us bumped into people they knew, whilst the rest (including me) went next door into a small club where we danced for a bit. Then I had another Mojito, looked around the beach for a bit with a couple of the others, and got myself a lovely White Russian from another stall. When I stood up after that, to go to a bigger nightclub with those of the others who hadn't already made their way home, I could tell I was a bit three sheets to the wind...

The club was a bit different to any I've been to in the UK. For a start, although they played some Western songs you hear in the UK all the time, they also played Latin American music (as you'd expect in South America, of course). Also, the rafters,columns and some of the walls were made of giant bamboo, and one end of the club was open to the air, one giant open window without any glass pane or iron bars or anything. I thought it was a good idea because it meant a breeze came through quite often and the air didn't get stuffy.I really liked the atmosphere there. We danced for a while before going home at 3.30am.

On Sunday morning we had brunch on the big wooden patio at 11.30. As well as a piece of leftover steak from the night before, I got an English breakfast with a twist – the fried egg was quite runny and on a split-open roll, the sausage was one of the short fat Ecuadorian ones from the night before, and it all came with a glass of papaya juice. (There was also bacon, mushrooms and a tomato, but no baked beans thankfully!)

After I'd had brunch a group of us went into town for a look-around in daylight. We walked along the beach for a bit and then some of the main streets.

Montanita is Hippy/Rasta/Backpacker Central in Ecuador, with loads of dreadlocked characters on the streets running roadside jewellery and craft stalls or just sitting around not doing much.

We went into a lovely café where some of us had drinks – I had a ‘Frappacino Bombon’, delicious iced coffee with ice cream and drizzles of condensed milk on top. We split up for a bit then. I popped into a cyber cafe for 20 minutes because I wanted to send a Father's Day email. As soon as I'd sent it the man himself happened to come online, so although I wasn’t able to install the plugin for Gmail Video chat on the computer I was using and he couldn't see me as a result, I could see him which was great!

We went for another wander after that and got some lunch at a roadside ceviche stall. The man had tupperware containers of fish chunks, octopus chunks, prawns and one or two other things on the counter, and in a cupboard inside the stall he had various kinds of shellfish in their shells - oysters, conches and some others I didn't recognise. I chose just to have the fish and prawns in mine. It came with chopped up raw onion and tomato, squeezed lime and chopped up fresh coriander in the same bowl, and there was a communal pot of large dried toasted maize kernels and bottles of tomato sauce and oriental chilli sauce to which we could help ourselves as well. We each got a packet of green banana crisps as a side too. Apparently you're supposed to break up the crisps and mix them and the toasted maize into the main dish, but I had the crisps separately. I did mix some maize in, though, and the taste and texture of it went well with the juiciness of the seafood.

The journey back to Guayaquil later on was pretty uneventful apart from a stop we made at an isolated petrol station where I discovered some packets of yuca crisps. I secretly found it quite funny that they had a couple of loaves of bread, one or two toilet rolls and cleaning products, a drinks fridge and a few sweets, and the rest of the goods were almost entirely made up of various kinds of crisps...