After leaving Mancora we headed for the border of Ecuador and on to the colonial city of Cuenca which had been recommended to us. The place was very beautiful and full of nice cafes and restaurants. We had a nice walk round and visited an art museum as well as a national museum featuring a number of shrunken heads used in ancient rituals by the indigenous Shuar people. However we heard from some friends that they could meet us on the coast so the next day we made the journey to Puerto Lopez.
Puerto Lopez is next to the Parque Nacional Machilalla, which means endless roads, with wonderful mountainous views which are flanked by the Pacific coast. Puerto Lopez itself is a small fishing town with a moderate tourism base as people come to the area to visit both the park and its beautiful beaches, as well as the big draw, whale watching! From June to September is the mating season for humpback whales and each day numerous tour companies depart the pier to search for these impressive creatures. We had met up with our friends and were set for a day on the sea but unfortunately the tour company (Machilalla Tours) our friends had reserved our names with decided to not let Matt and I onto the trip (even though we had been to the office early that very morning to confirm), after much discussion/arguments our friends still had to take the tour that day and we were left without anything. This was our first real bad experience when it has come to tours and although it was obviously an administrative error, the fact that the company decided to defend themselves by bare-faced lying to our faces rather than just saying sorry, we got it wrong made us even more angrier.
Disheartened we decided to continue along the shore front in the hope that another tour company would have space for us that day. We were in luck and managed to book onto a boat so were pleased that our day would not be wasted. We left the pier in our relatively small wooden boat with our guide and approx 13 others snugly fitted inside. Our guide only spoke Spanish but we managed to pick up most of his explanations. Our guide informed us that should we spot a whale we had to shout "Capitan" and then the time on the face of a clock as to its location so we could easily look there.
After about 15-20 minutes of leaving the pier we had made great headway into the ocean and at the same time as the captain Matt declared "Capitan a las uno a la tarde" (1pm). Sure enough there on the horizon we saw some dark bumps rising and falling into the water. Our captain went full steam ahead and as we neared the area we reduced down to a slow speed and all of a sudden we were 15 metres away from three humpback whales. It was truly unbelievable. There were 2 adults and 1 calf and they where rising in and out of the water frequently. Sometimes it was just their backs emerging, but occasionally you saw a tail flick up at the end. The most impressive though was when their heads came straight up out of the water and then disappeared back down again. For about 30 minutes we were on our own with these three magnificent creatures. We were so close you could see their shadows under the water which was when you truly realised their enormous size. We were all in complete awe and transfixed by their every move. 
It wasn't long until a number of other tour boats had also joined us and for another 20 minutes we followed our family until they obviously had enough of being gawped at and disappeared from view. We then made our way to the edge of a small island where we were able to do some snorkelling. Both of us are not extremely comfortable in the sea but we faced fears and jumped in for a little paddle which was nice. It was now time to head back to the shore as our tour had come to an end. It was a truly wonderful morning and we were so happy we got the opportunity to experience it.
We spent the next few days relaxing with our friends in this lovely little town as well as taking advantage of the beach front cabanas with dangerous cocktails, which resulted in a gathering in the local tattoo parlour until 4am drinking home brewed spirits and making friends with the locals (it's amazing how good your Spanish can become after a few Cuba libres)! Our friends then needed to leave, headed to Colombia, and we also had to get moving to visit the few other places on our whistlestop tour of Ecuador before we too headed for our last country on our travels, Colombia.
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