\n Machalilla National Park <\/strong>is located on the Pacific coast and covers an area of 550 km\u00b2 including the islands of Isla de la Plata and Isla Salango. It consists of beaches, cloud forest and tropical dry forest. The animals found there are armadillos, 2 species of monkeys and 270 species of birds, including the Galap\u00e1gos albatross. The coast in front of the park is the breeding ground for the humpback whale. Under the vegetation the opuntia cactus, the Palo Santo tree, kapok tree and Carob tree. In the park is the village of Agua Blanca, formerly an important centre of Mante\u00f1o culture, with a site and museum.<\/p>\n \n One of the beaches within the park is the breathtaking Playa los Frailes<\/strong> with the beautiful bay of Tortuguita. It is a pristine white beach where you can snorkel or follow a walking route along the beautiful coastline where you can get to a beautiful vantage point through the forest.<\/p>\n \n The Isla de la Plata<\/strong> is one of the islands that is part of the park. You will find several colonies of albatrosses, frigate birds and gents, such as the special blue-footed gent, red-legged and nasca gent. As on the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands, the birds here are not very shy and you can approach them quite close. The island is also called klein-Gal\u00e1pagos. There is also a small colony of South American sea lions and sometimes you can spot whales.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Visit to the coast of Ecuador National Park Machalilla, Playa Los Frailes and Isla de la Plata (Klein-Gal\u00e1pagos)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":21594,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"country":[252],"highlight_category":[602],"continent_category":[224],"class_list":["post-33616","highlights","type-highlights","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","country-ecuador-and-galapagos","highlight_category-gebied-en","continent_category-latin-america"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/highlights\/33616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/highlights"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/highlights"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/highlights\/33616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=33616"},{"taxonomy":"highlight_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/highlight_category?post=33616"},{"taxonomy":"continent_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.untamedtravelling.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/continent_category?post=33616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n Playa los Frailes<\/h2>\n
\n Isla de la Plata<\/h2>\n