More whales

SO went whale watching again today as I am totally enamorado with them. And whilst they failed to display the required behaviour (ie lots of jumping and showing off) we did fnid a few groups, with one group of 4 in particular displaying competative behaviour (apparently!) with some splashing and tail waving and stuff - a kind of "i can splash higher than you" show of power amongst the boys! Plus one of the groups decided it wanted to swim really close to our boat so I really got to properly understand how massive the whales are. They were literally 10m away from our TINY boat so a little scary for the 2 small kids on board, but utterly amazing for me!!!

Yesterday was also pretty cool as I took myself off on a walk trhough the national park here to 3 beaches, one of which - Los Frailes - is apparently Ecuador´s nicest beach. So i think its fair to say that the beaches of Ecuador dont quite match up to other countries, but it was nice!!! Unfortunately as there has been hardly any rain this year, the forest looked rather on the dead side, and the August wind was really picking up, so when sunbathing on the aforementioned beach, I got a rather nice exfoliation. But I did have a chat with a couple of fisherman who were fishing for octopi (one i or 2, i never know....lets go for 2) using a pointy bit of metal and a snorkel so that was pretty cool to watch. Also got to watch some octopii die which wasnt so pleasant but didnt think the fishermen woudl appreciate me throwing the octopus back in the water!

Am now wasting time before my dreaded night bus to Quito - urgh. Whoever said travelling was relaxing. Then have to catch a 2 hr bus to Lataunga and then a 4 hour bus to Chicgulan where i am going to stay in a mountain retreat type hostal for a few days (the first of which will, i think, be spent sleeping!). Wish me luck