Farewell to Freddy and Bahia sights

This morning was our final opportunity to buy fresh shrimp from our buddy, the bicycling fish vendor. I saw him at the market yesterday and told him we would want two pounds of shrimp this morning. About 9 am, we heard his familiar “pescado! camarones!” Phillip and I went downstairs, with our camera, to buy our shrimp and tell Freddy that we would be leaving on Monday. I was able to tell him, in Spanish, that we enjoyed buying our fish from him. He gave us his phone number to call him when we return to Bahia. Such a nice guy!

After we put our fresh shrimp in the refrigerator, we decided to do some walking. Two sights in Bahia remained for us to visit before we leave on Monday, the museum and the Mirador La Cruz. My Lonely Planet book noted that Bahia has a good museum. When we arrived, the security guards told us the guide was in a meeting, but we were free to see the exhibits and take pictures. Sure enough, the museum was quite good, with an extensive collection of artifacts that even kept Phillip interested! They had a reconstructed ship that the Bahians used about 2000 years ago and many relics from nearby Chirije, an archeological site. One floor was an art gallery and another was dedicated to pictures of the mangroves. The security guard even took us up to the roof patio to get pictures of the city and the bay. We got a great picture of the ferry dock with the crowds waiting for the boat.

After the museum, we started walking for the Mirador La Cruz, the lookout on the hill. The lookout is actually in the cross we can see from our balcony. The security guard at the museum had suggested we take a taxi, but no… we wanted an adventure. What we got was a walk up a very steep road! The road wound around the back side of the hill and ended at the lookout. Then, we had numerous flights of stairs to climb to the horizontal part of the cross where the viewing platform was. We were rewarded by a great view of the entire peninsula.

From this view, our condo is on the right, just after the green tree area.

Phillip zoomed in to get our condo, the taller building you can see in this picture. Only the penthouse is above us (the penthouse has more windows on this side than the other apartments do). Phillip took a picture of me up in the lookout to show y’all that I really did climb those see thru steps! 

Phillip enjoyed taking pictures of the cityscape while I slowly walked around, soaking in the view. A few final views, one showing the shallowness of the bay. You can see the sandbars on the other side. The other, a nicely framed view of the bay from the top of the hill.

Adventures on Isla Corazon

Monday morning, we set sail for Isla Corazon. OK, that’s not accurate… no sailboats involved. We took a taxi with our guide from downtown Bahia to the launch area on the other side of the Chone River. Isla Corazon (Heart Island) is farther inland in the middle of the Chone River, in an area where the salt water from the ocean and the freshwater coming down the Chone River met and mix. This condition creates an environment where mangrove trees flourish and the sea birds roost.

We had to wait about an hour because two last minute guests were joining us (two young women from France who were on their last week of a four month trek thru Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador). The launching point had a nice covered area with hammocks, so Phillip and I watched the local birds and the people come and go while we waited. Also, our guide showed us a video about the ecological impact of cutting down the mangrove forests, something that has happened in Ecuador in the past.

Shortly before 10 am, we loaded into a motorized boat and towed canoes across the river to the island. Probably because of the current and distance, the guides don’t paddle us over to the island. Once we arrived near the island, the two French women, Phillip, and I transferred into a canoe with our guide, Francisco.  I think he put us in by weight to balance to canoe, and I ended up in the front of the canoe, an excellent vantage point to video our journey thru the mangroves. I got a picture of our group by holding the camera over my head and shooting back.

We began seeing the birds even before Fransisco paddled the canoe into an opening in the mangroves.  These long-legged white ones were on the west side of the island.

This is the opening that was cut thru the island for the canoes. Because it was closer to high tide, the canoe could navigate the entire distance. As we entered the canoe channel, the trees closed around us.

Sometimes, the canopy of branches opened up and we could see the sky, but most of the time, it was as if we were in a living tunnel. Crabs scurried along the tree branches. We could hear the birds moving thru, but couldn’t always see them because the mangroves were so dense. And the mangrove trees!

Their roots are branches that go down into the water like hundreds of legs.  I expected them to start chasing after us. Francisco didn’t talk much on this part of the trip, as he didn’t want to disturb the birds overhead and nearby. It was a fascinating adventure  thru the island.

When we came out on the other side, we saw the birds, hundreds of huge birds nesting in the mangrove trees. The frigate birds were easy to spot because of their size and black and white or black and red colorings and markings. Red-throated frigates roosted on this island. The males have the red throat, and they puff it out to attract the female frigates. The more colorful and larger the puffed out throat is, the more desirable he is to the ladies. You can see some Brad Pitt-ish frigates and some Steve Buscemi-ish frigates in the following series of pictures.

After visiting the frigate area, we got back in the motorized boat and went around the island, passing the pelican roosting area. I guess they don’t mind the noise of the boat motor, as they didn’t leave their trees.  I looked for Big Bird, but none of these birds were yellow. They were big enough to be him, just the wrong color.

The motor boat took us to a dock on the island. From the dock, Franscico led us along an elevated wood walkway thru the mangroves. Here, he explained the difference between the mangrove root types. The tree grows up from the roots in the water and mud, but it also sends out “air roots” which are like small branches that grow down, but break off when they hit the water or mud. These air roots don’t have leaves like the branches that grow up. Rather they act as roots, getting the nutrients from the air. We also had an opportunity to plant a mangrove by dropping one of their torpedo-shaped seedlings into the mud.

At the end of the walkway was an observation area. A family of bats lived under the roof. They sounded upset with us because the group took pictures and the flashes made them mad. However, they just put their furry little arms across their eyes and ignored us. Along this trek thru the mangrove forest, we saw these clumps attached to the trees. The clumps averaged about two feet across, and some were bigger than that. Franscico said they were termite colonies. When we ate lunch back at the launch area, we did see evidence of termite infestation in the bamboo covering the patio, hundreds of tiny holes in the bamboo poles.  After our traditional lunch of shrimp, rice, and salad (no soup this time), we returned by taxi to Bahia with the French women.

We enjoyed this day’s adventures, especially the spooky mangroves and the fascinating red-throated frigates.

Two miles of beach to ourselves (almost) on Sunday

In addition to the trip to Canoa, we decided this past weekend to have another adventure, a walk on the Pacific beach south of Bahia, at least to the point of land we could see in the distance. I wore my pedometer to know how far we walked. I checked for low tide time on the computer. This area is inaccessible during high tide, and we didn’t want to get stranded on a rock if the tide came in while we were walking. On Sunday, high tide was at 10:02 am and low tide was at 4:38 pm. We ate lunch near the beach and began our trek at about 1:15 pm, as the tide had gone out enough to see beach, not water, all the way to the point, and the tide would be going out more while we walked.

What amazed us the most was the surface of the beach. I say beach and you think sand. Yes, however…. close to the hills that border the beach and for some stretches of beach we did find just sand. Most of the way, we encountered surfaces of the following:

flat stones,

areas with channels running thru the rock surface,

gritty, light tan sandstone type areas,

areas that felt like walking on barnacles, in which the tiny sea critters scurried about,

larger rock rock outcroppings that extended out in the water – that we had to climb on, of course,

(unlike the rock scrambling that I did at Puerto Lopez on the previous trip, I did not slip and cut my knee this time)

and sand…. we did have stretches of sandy beach extending out into the water. This picture was taken looking back toward Bahia from the point of land that had been our destination. We did walk around the point a little farther, making it two miles along on the beach, and then two miles back.

We even came across moss-covered rocks. I would not have thought that moss would cover rocks in salt water, but it does. I avoided walking across these areas, thinking that the moss was probably something’s primary food source.

And the rocks…. unusually shaped because of the wear of the water.

This one was in the hillside, a scoop of rock ice cream!

We encountered only a few other people. Some were finding their meal in the rocks, capturing these critters, crabs that live in the rock crevices:

Several areas had rocks encrusted with these, but the critters inside are either inedible or they aren’t worth the effort because we didn’t see anyone picking them off the rocks.

Especially out away from town, we found some beautiful shells. Phillip couldn’t resist combing the beach for them, with the bigger ones found near the hillside.

Since I was the one carrying most of the shells, we did keep some as we walked back to town. Shells can get heavy, so we didn’t collect them walking out from town! We could have gotten many, many more, especially the white ones, but we were judicious in our selections (that is a rock in the upper right corner… I couldn’t resist it):

By the time we returned and got almost to town, three men were out in the water with their fishing nets.

And one final picture, of Phillip crossing one of the eroded streams. I just like the composition of the picture.