Montanita

Our third week was Montanita, the surfing village that has become a party town. This week we did not stay with host families. Instead we all stayed at a hotel called La Barranca. This hotel was about a ten-minute walk from downtown, which was good, because the party apparently doesn't stop, and doesn't get quiet, in downtown Montanita. Tegre and Sagan enjoyed a great beach for playing in the waves and building sand castles. We enjoyed eating downtown at some cool restaurants. We especially liked the vegetarian restaurant, where after they took our order, they ran to the market and bought the ingredients. There was also a waffle restaurant that was pretty awesome.

Birds liked the nightlife at Montanita

One day we went to a nearby village called Dos Mangas. They have a community-based tourism project there, where the whole community profits from allowing tours on their gigantic property. We had a tour guide named Ana, who works for a nonprofit called Avesconservacion. She is not normally a guide, but a conservation biologist. In fact, she wrote the book we were using, a list of birds found at several coastal locations. She was able to identify birds instantly just by calls. Dos Mangas is a tropical rain forest in an area that is mostly tropical dry forest. We saw monkeys and ate jungle bananas. The monkeys peed on Kirby, which delighted the boys. We saw the ivory palm, from which tagua nuts are harvested and sold as jewelry. The guides made jungle hats for the boys from toquilla straw palms, which are the same plants used to make Panama hats. 

Lord of the Flies

Capuchin monkey

We enjoyed Ana so much that we asked for another tour with her. The following day she took us to a totally different place, salt ponds created to gather sea salt. Though artificial, these ponds have become a hot spot for shore birds. We saw lots of cool birds, including black-necked stilts, Peruvian pelicans, and Chilean flamingos. Ana told us that Ecuador has the world's greatest diversity of shore birds.

Chilean flamingos

Peruvian pelicans

Flamingos in the distance

We went from Montanita to Manta, north along the coast. Along the way we stopped at Agua Blanca, a little village in a national park. The villagers have found archeological evidence of a pretty significant civilization that existed pre-Inca.

Motmot at Agua Blanca

Unknown bird at Agua Blanca