Ninety minutes south of Manta on Ecuador’s Pacific Coast is the fishing village of Puerto Lopez. With the exception of a new gas station and a couple of new banks, not much has changed in Puerto Lopez since I first visited here 10 years ago with my wife Suzan Haskins.

The beach is still wide and flat, the fishing is still good, and the humpback whales still come up from the south every June through September to mate just offshore. Whale watching is a large part of the tourist industry here, but fishing is still the mainstay of the economy.

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