We woke up this morning in Salinas, prepared for a lazy morning before catching the bus to Puerto Lopez. With my brain still a bit fuzzy, I stepped into the shower… and found only a single faucet. No hot water?? Looking up, I found the infamous self-electrocution device I had read about, but never seen outside Cuba before. Bare wiring in a shower does not give a lot of confidence, but turning the dial did result in a reasonably warm shower.
After surviving the shower, and having a nice included breakfast, we laid around the pool for a few hours.
We then took a taxi down to the bus terminal. The taxi driver was playing a news program on his radio, and I heard President Correo (the president of Ecuador) praising Cuenca for welcoming Americans to the city. He said that when Americans come, they open new bank accounts and help the economy. Of course all this was in Spanish, so I was only understanding snippets here and there.
We grabbed an economy bus to Puerto Lopez. Unlike the executive bus we took into Salinas, this bus made frequent stops. There was a pretty constant flow of vendors that would come on the bus, give a pitch, maybe sell a few items, then hop off, to catch the next bus coming down the road. Most sold snacks to eat along the way, but there was one guy who talked at length about the wonders of his miracle product, which he held in a small packet that looked an awful lot like a packet of Tang. He struck me as a true old-fashioned snake oil salesman…
After a 2 1/2 hour ride, we arrived in Puerto Lopez, with no idea where to go next. We asked around for a restaurant recommendation, and were directed down to the beach. After lunch we took a small motorcycle taxi that closely resembles the tuk-tuks in Thailand and Cambodia, and arrived at our hotel.
After settling in, we went out for a walk on the beach. This is a fishing village, and working boats were everywhere. We found one that was under construction, and many others on the beach. As the sun set, a construction tractor started dragging some of the boats back from the waterline further up the beach to overnight there.
In Salinas, we had seen plenty of examples of lovers writing in the sand. Here in Puerto Lopez, there were numerous tracks that look like they are from some worm making their own natural art… and an occasional footprint adding to the motif.
There were plenty of boys playing soccer along the beach, with at least four different games going on at once. The games were played without goal posts or boundaries, with the apparent goal simply being to keep the ball going and away from the other team. Several were quite good.
As the sun set, I was photographing several families and groups of kids playing in the surf. Suddenly one group of five kids ran out of the surf towards me and started vamping, wanting their pictures taken. They were all so cute and good at modeling that we couldn’t help spending the next half hour with them. Though they spoke no English, we managed to get their emails, and I have sent them 22 photos from that set.
