Short post today as we were basically lazy (and not feeling too well) most of the day… 

We started off with another trip to the fishing boat section of the beach at the other end of town from our hotel.  Though there were several buyer’s trucks waiting to purchase fish, we only saw one boat come with a load to sell.  We stayed until almost 10:00AM, and saw some boats just going out at that time.  We never really found out if these later boats were going after a different type of fish, or just why some boats were just going out when we had expected them to all be coming in.

You could tell when a boat was coming in, just by looking where the birds were swarming.  Not circling, but swarming! As the fishermen carried crates of fish off the boat, a second man ran alongside swatting at the birds that attempted to swoop down and steal a free meal off the top.

After a nap, we decided to visit Las Frailes beach. The official Ecuadorian web site lists it as a place not-to-miss, and says this has the best beach in the area.  A $12 round-trip motoTaxi (similar to a Tuk-tuk in Asia) brought us to an almost deserted beach.  The panorama was no match for yesterday’s Isla de la Plata, and though the beach sand was nice, it was no better than right outside our hotel back in Puerto Lopez.

As we were walking along the beach, a man waved to us.  We returned the wave, and he walked over.  It turned out he was a park ranger, and was going through the park to assure it was cleared before the 4:00 closing time.  He spoke no English, but we had a broken conversation, whereupon he walked us a short distance over to an obviously make-shift fence of sticks poking into the sand.  He told us (in Spanish) that it was a tortoise nest, and that there were 75 eggs buried in the sand there, that would hatch and head to the sea in June or July of next year.  We were lucky enough to actually see the burying of eggs a few years ago in Costa Rica, but would have walked right by this and not known it was there, had the ranger not stopped to have a chat with gringos that don’t even speak the language.