The Adventure that was Puerto Lopez

I went to Puerto Loopez this weekend on the west coast of Ecuador in the province of Manabí. The bus ride was supposed to take 11 hours each way. Our plan was to leave Quito at 7pm, get to Puerto Lopez early Saturday morning. I was going to SCUBA dive all day Saturday and part of Sunday. My friends were going to snorkel, take a tour of the national park Isla de La Plata, and enjoy the beach. We were going to leave Puerto Lopez late Sunday afternoon, get home early Monday morning in time to go to class, tired of course, but that was okay with us. The weekend did not go as planned.

First, Kelsey and I miscalculated the traffic in Quito on a Friday night and almost missed our bus. We had given ourselves a 40 minute cushion to find the bus terminal and whatnot; we ended up arriving 25 minutes after the bus was supposed to leave. Luckily, our friends were already there, and they stalled the bus for us.

Then, around 9pm, we heard, "No hay paso a Santo Domingo," which means that the bus couldn't get to Santo Domingo, the next destination on the route. About a half an hour later we got to a big line of trucks and buses. The driver then informed us that we would be spending the night on the bus...in the middle of the highway. When I woke up that morning, we found out that there had been a landslide.

We tried to convince our bus driver to go back to Quito, but he had to get the bus to Puerto Lopez eventually, and it was cheaper for him to wait out the repairs than to go back to Quito. After waiting a total of twenty hours, we finally crossed the landslide. It was definitely not safe to cross--probably one of the scariest moments of my life.

About 9 hours later (around 5am), we arrived in Puerto Lopez, checked into our hostal and got 2 hours of sleep.

Sunday during the day, Kelsey and I continued with our plans. The other two girls went home, and I don't blame them. It had been a lot to handle already. Anyway, at 8:00am, Kelsey and I went to the SCUBA shop. I found out that I couldn't do all four dives necessary for open water certification in one day, so I was going to have to settle for plain old scuba diver certification. That means I would do all my skills in two dives and have to do two "pleasure dives" with an instructor to get open water certified. That was fine with me, I was just glad I was going to be able to dive. Kelsey went on a guided hiking/snorkeling tour of Isla de la Plata while I went diving.

The day was amazing. On the boat ride over to Isla de la Plata, I saw two groups of dolphins. There had to have been at least a hundred of them. The captain slowed down the boat and we sat out on the bow and watched the dolphins swim along side the boat. It was breath taking. I was so close that I got splashed in the face when one of them came up for air.

The dives were also really sweet. We did one dive down to 10 meters and one to 6. I saw a whole bunch of fish: angelfish, blue angelfish, a fish that looked like a mud skipper, some kind of bright yellow fish, a puffer fish, a few eels, starfish, and a few manta rays. This was all among massive brain coral formations. It was amazing!

After the dives, I went back and got my logbook all filled out. Then, Kelsey and I got dinner, ran back to our hostal to grab our stuff, and ran to the bus station just in time. The bus ride was just fine, and I fell asleep. When I woke up around 7am, we were stopped and Kelsey informed me that there were four landslides on our route. We were explaining to some women on the bus what happened on our way there, and Kelsey wanted to show them pictures of the first landslide only to find that her camera was gone. Apparently, someone had stolen it while she was sleeping, even though it was in her backpack under her feet. We searched the entire bus and even got the bus driver to go through everyone's luggage, but it was gone. Someone must have taken it and left before we realized it was gone. She lost all her pictures of Isla de la Plata.

In the end, we waited 7 hours for them to clear the four landslides, none of which were as massive as the one we had to traverse on the way there. So, we got home around 3pm, when we had intended to get home around 5 or 6am.

So, that's 5 landslides, 54 hours on a bus, 2 hours of sleep in a bed, 1 robbery, and 2 SCUBA dives. What a weekend!