Today the guys are climbing a volcano and Leslie and I are kayaking with the penguins. The volcano hike is about 18km!! It is so hot in town I am sure I would melt doing that. It is not my idea of fun 😉 I was glad that Leslie declined as well and we could at least get into the water to cool down. No beautiful ocean on the volcano.
The boys are picked up at 7am and Leslie and have a leisurely morning. We meet at 8:30 stroll into town and decide to try a different coffee shop today to get a different perspective. We order cappuccinos. They arrive very quickly, so we are suspicious. Yep, it is a push a button kind of machine that makes pre-sweetened cappuccino. Not the best, but not the worst.
We begin a conversation with a young woman who, as it turns out grew up in the next community from Greg and Leslie. She is having a breakfast that looks good, so we order the same to share. This comes with coffee, so we figure that it is a 2 coffee morning and order an extra as the breakfast comes with 1. Mistake! Not good coffee. I added milk and then added sugar and still couldn’t choke it down. Oh well, lesson learned. The food was very good however.
After breaky we head to the kayak shop to book the tour for low tide this afternoon. I am fortunate and able to launder most of my red money. 🙂 They accept it but wonder about the story behind it. We tell them that the ocean plucked me up and sucked me in. Hahaha pretty true!!
We saw a couple of interesting outdoor showers on our walk today.
We arrive to get geared up and head to the port beach to meet our guide and assistant. Our guide speaks very little English, but his assistant is from the US and translates what he is saying. There are only 5 participants. Two women from Chicago and one of the women’s son. He is studying in Cuenca.
We are paddling to Las Tintoreras Islet which is just outside Puerto Villamil. These are, as everything here, created by lava flows.
As we kayak past the harbour to the beginning of Las Tintoreras we get to some rocks with a number of penguins. The tour is called “Paddle to the Penguins” so we are expecting to see some 😉
This island, Santa Isabella is the only place in the world that has penguins north of the equator. Here we are still south of the equator, but it does cross Santa Isabella a bit farther north.
Next we see some Blue Footed Boobies performing some of their mating rituals. They caress each other with their beaks.
We paddle at a nice easy pace and some of the penguins jump into the water to swim, so we follow them. Shortly after they are swimming very close to our guide’s kayak. They are even pecking at it and an other kayak. Not at all afraid. None of the animals that we have encountered are afraid of us. They allow us to observe them for as long as we want. Not like this anywhere else that we have been.
We enter a small cove with only one entrance. In here we see quite a number of turtles. I was very fortunate to have a very close up encounter with one of them. It popped up for air and then went down to the bottom again.
We finish our paddle by surfing in on the incoming tide. Very fun and a very welcomed assist at the end.
That was our day today. I will post some info on the volcano walk next. 😉