If you are interested in exploring the San Lorenzo area, check with the owner of the La Estancia restaurant, or ask around town. People organize various tours in motorized dugout canoes including swimming trips to the deserted
island of San Pedro. Also ask here about trips to
Borbon and further up river. The local organization,
SUBIR, runs projects with the communities of
San Miguel and
Playa de Oro upstream, as well as trips into the remote
Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve. They have an office in
Borbon [
no phone], or in Quito [
02 - 528696 fax [2 656990] email
subir@care.org.ec.
Other areas covered under the umbrella of the reserve are inland such as
Reserva Ecologica Cayapas-Mataje, which safeguards the estuary islands to the northwest of this small town.
Another interesting area that is worth visiting nearby is the sandy beach of
San Pedro, located at the end of the bay.
The road to Esmeraldas
From
La Tola, clapped out buses run down to
Esmeraldas, about 122 km [
76 miles] west. Along the road west of
Limones, you pass the
Majagual Mangrove Reserve,where we clumped in our boots along walkways over oozing black mud, and peered up in awe at what are thought to be the tallest and oldest mangrove trees in the world, 60 m [
200 ft] high and 1,000 years old. This ancient, perfectly intact mangrove ecosystem is home to
three-toed tree sloths,
anteaters,
ocelots,
green iguanas,
capybaras,
small jaguars, parrots,
herons,
kingfishers,
woodpeckers,
storks,
pelicans and the deadly poisonous fer-de-lance snakes. But you have to be patient to see these creatures; all we spotted were a few birds, numerous butterflies and a number of crabs scurrying into black holes in the mud.
Back at the research station, we sampled a rare and exquisite liqueur made by soaking the roots of black mangrove in a bottle of
aguardiente. After years of maturation, the blood-red spirit has the smoothness of a fine cognac and the energy and health-giving properties of ginseng, but if you drink too you might hallucinate. In the silence of the swampy, prehistoric forest wilderness, I would not have been surprised to see a pterodactyl flapping overhead, or a dinosaur lumbering through the mud.
| |Article contributed by Dominic Hamilton||| |
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