La Costa #1

The Ecology kids went to the coast during this long weekend and it was really awesome. We took the 8 hour drive to Muisne on Friday, not a very pleasant experience (very twisty roads made us all feel unwell) but was totally worth it when we got there.

Muisne is in the province of Esmeraldas, close to Atacames. Muisne town itself is an island, though we stayed on the mainland in Nuevo Muisne. It used to be a huge shrimp town, as was most of the Ecuadorian coast, but has since lost its main economic source. During the 90's,

Ecuador was one of the top producers of shrimp, worldwide. It was crazy with people moving to the coast to make their fortune. Think: California Gold Rush style. Yeah, it was the time of plenty. Unfortunately, there was a huge virus that swept through the area, destroying the market. The sickness is still around, and this has prevented any large-scale shrimp farming from coming back. Because of this, the coastal region of Ecuador has remained pretty poor over the years.

One of the main reasons we went to Muisne was to see the mangroves. For me, this was not as exciting, given we have mangroves everywhere in Hawaii and that I have a dislike for these invasive species back home. But it was still fun and cool to be here in Ecuador doing ecology

things. On Sunday morning we all got up early to go through the man

groves to go see howler monkeys! It was really exciting since I've wanted to see monkeys in the jungle since I was in kindergarden.

One of the fun things about the mangroves is that it's super muddy. We also left in the middle of low tide, so at one pt we all had to get out of the boat and push so it could float to where we were going. Needless to say it was a dirty day. The picture up top is of the 8 of us after the monkey walk, waiting for the tide to come back up so we could leave.

That afternoon we got to the beach and it was glorious. I absolutely love the ocean. More than oxygen, probably. It does something to me that I can't explain, but I love being in and around the ocean more than anything. We all hung out, had some ceviche, played frisbee, jumped in the waves, it was great. We got to go to another beach (Mompiche) on Monday, which was also great. Took a walk and did some actual learning (looked in the tidepools, went to a cemetary and talked to some locals about Dia de los Muertos). But all in all just kind of hung out. That afternoon, we got a show by an Afro-Ecuadorian marimba group. (There's a very high population of blacks on the Coast, mostly from slave-trade days). It was fun to watch them dance and sing, getting even us up with them. We fooled around with the adorable kids for a while before heading back on the boat to Nuevo Muisne.

All in all, a great weekend comprised of beach, hammocks, no shoes, mangroves, and good people. It was hard for me to come back to Quito on Tuesday, but I'll be heading back to the coast this weekend for volcanology, so I won't be away from the sea too much this week :)