Anyway, we walked down on the beach for the next hour or so and the sun came up behind us over the mountains. There was pretty good cloud coverage so we weren't able to see the sun come up very clearly but still it was really beautiful. Later, we made our way down to the port where the fishermen come in each morning. Ryan, Shawn, and I could feel a rush of energy by this spectacle – there were probably about 150 people (most of the people in the town) all around the boats coming in with fish – but we could also feel the awkwardness of being obvious foreigners in a small fishing town. We got a lot of good pictures here and I briefly talked to a guy about the surrounding area and what was going on.
We had to be up early though also because we had to hit the road early. Our next stop was Canoa but before we went to our hostel, we took a tour of the city of Bahía. Bahía is a fairly good-sized town (I am guessing a population of about 30,000) right on the coast and the Bay of Caráquez. Back in 1998 in the onset of El Niño (remember that?) and with the effects of a devastating earthquake, a lot of things changed drastically in terms of the infrastructure of the town. There were many adjustments made to the city's transportation and energy systems – now hardly anyone uses cars or machines with internal combustion engines and there are a lot of alternative energy sources being used/tested (wind and solar for example). In the afternoon, we toured a paper recycling facility (the first paper recycling plant in Ecuador) and we learned the process of how recycled paper is made.
Afterwards, we stopped by an elementary school to see another amazing site – Miguelito, the 100-year-old Galapogos Island tortoise (pictured above). Miguelito was born approximately in 1909 but no one quite knows how he arrived in Bahía. I am not sure if this picture does too much justice but this turtle is massive – about five hundred pounds in weight! When we first rounded the corner to see Miguelito it seemed to me that he was a dinosaur instead of a turtle. Something about the way he moved hit my perception from a very strange angle – I was truly enthralled by the sight of this magnificent animal. We all had a fun time hanging out with Miguelito for about a half hour, feeding him bananas, touching his hard shell, and petting his leathery skin.
Later, we went to our hostel and then into the town of Canoa for dinner. After dinner, we played a little bit of billiards and then we walked down the dark beach back to our hostel. It was really strange walking on the beach at night – absolutely horrifying actually. Typically scared by the ocean even in the daylight, the nighttime amplified my fears just by the mere sight of a huge, dark, and merciless sea.
