The Pacific Coast

I’m sorry that this blog past is over a month late. But better late than never I guess. Here are some pictures from our time on the Pacific Coast of Ecuador and Peru. We spent about a week hanging out in beach towns in Ecuador before busing down the West coast of Peru to Lima.

 Ecuador

We stayed a couple nights at the fishing village of Puerto Lopez. The ceviche was amazing and it was interesting to see the fishermen coming in with their catch in the mornings.

Our first night we got to stay in a tree fort room.

Dylan building a river on the beach at Puerto Lopez

Puerto Lopez was full of cool birds that were trying to steal fish from the fishermen. The captain of this boat is a pelican and his crew are frigates.

We went for a 2 1/2 hour boat trip out to an island to go snorkeling and bird watching. Just looking at the picture of this boat makes me feel sea sick.

On the boat tour we got to see blue footed boobies. These ones were hanging out in the harbor of Puerto Lopez.

On the boat ride back from the island we got to tube on the ocean. 

One day we spent at the nearby National Park Machalilla. It has a series of  beautiful beaches that are each very different from each other. It also has lots of neat sea animals like crabs and sea stars.

At this beach there was smoothed down rock instead of sand.

A sandcastle I built on one of the sandy beaches

We spent a few days relaxing at the beach town of Ayampe. Basically all there was to do there was relax on the beach or surf.

This is the hostel/house we stayed at in Ayampe. It backed onto the beach and we basically had the whole place (plus kitchen) to ourselves.

We all tried surfing

And we even got good enough to stand on our boards every once and a while (this is a picture of Matt).

Peru 

Our journey down the Peruvian Pacific Coast was mostly spent in night buses. But we did stop for a couple days in the dessert city of Chiclayo. This picture is herbs and natural medications at a stall at the Witch's Market there.

We visited the museum of the Lord of Sipan. The discovery of his tomb has been compared to that of Tutankhamun.

There were many archaeological sites to visit around Chiclayo, such as these pre-Incan pyramids.

One of the night buses we took ended up being so classy that Matt got his own coffee maker

We spent one day in Lima in between night buses. While we were there we visited the museum of the Spanish Inquisition. It had really impressive ceilings.

It had really gruesome displays of people being tortured

"No one suspects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Now Dylan and I are on our way back to Lima in a couple of days. We are looking forward to getting a chance to try some of the amazing sea food that Lima is famous for.