Machala is the capital of the El Oro Province, and is located near the Gulf of Guayaquil on fertile lowlands. Machala has a population of 240,000 and it is the fourth-biggest city in the country, and the second-most important port. It has been referred to as the Banana Capital of the World. And in fact we were surrounded by ships in the port who were loading bananas by the lorry loads day and night
We were taken to the Hacienda da Buenaventura. They have been building up a nature reserve by buying up adjoining farms and returning those farms to the wild. Along with that they had a breeding program for macaws. Quite bizarrely once we started walking up the track in the reserve, we were accompanied by two armed police. I asked the local guide why they were there, and was "assured" that it was only a precaution as thee had been riots in Ecuador in recent months. I asked one of the policemen in Spanish why he was following us, and he said that Silversea had asked for an escort.. There really was no wild life to be seen, so we cut short the tour and looped back to the place where hummingbirds were being lured with sugar bowls
The 5 or 6 large sugar feeders did attract a lot of hummingbirds of all sorts of different species. In a way it is a bit of a cheat using these sugar bowls, and undoubtedly the photos look better when taken of the birds in nearby trees
There was an interesting packed lunch supplied by a local company called "Happy Fruit" which sells entirely sustainable products. It would have passed me by, had not one of the Expedition staff told me about that company.
Both going and returning to the nature reserve, we passed the results of a recent mudslide, presumably brought on by heavy rains. And interestingly, getting off the ship we had to disinfect our feet in a disinfectant bath, but also oddly the same on returning to the ship, when there seemed no point. But Ecuador clearly had a problem reducing unemployment as we kept encountering funcionarios doing unnecessary jobs - 13 came on board to clear the ship (most countries get by with 1 or 2); there were a dozen men guarding the entrance to the port; we were stopped 3 times in under an hour by police road blocks, each manned by half a dozen men; then two at the bottom of the gangway enforcing disinfection of shoes..
Click on any of the thumbnails to get a bigger version of the picture
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