Close to the city of Portoviejo, on the western Pacific coast of the country, marvelous Machalilla National Park is located. It is a place where you can enjoy the beauty of nature, see bizarre animals, and get a lungful of stupendous aromas of exotic plants.

Machalilla National Park, founded in 1979, is a truly unique spot. Even though it is situated relatively close to the big cities of Ecuador, the delights of modern civilization are almost absent here: there are no cars and skyscrapers, trains or countless shopping malls. Here, nature is the governor, it is pristine and very beautiful. That is what the tourists come here for: to rest from the hustle and bustle and see what our planet had looked like centuries ago before man started conquering it.

For the guests of the park to walk with comfort and enjoy their time, there are special tourist routes here. These routes are surrounded by tall kapok trees whose trunks are tightly wrapped in orchids of surreal beauty. And if you go off the trail just a bit, you can see the endemic plants typical of the area, like the Jubaea palm.

Walking around the forest, mind every movement in the depths of the foliage. Anteaters and rare deer species live here, loud-voiced howler monkeys break the silence, and more than 350 species of birds fly in flocks in the air.

Besides, there is a small village within the area of the park where buildings of the pre-Columbian epoch were found. Now, there is an open-air museum there.

And, of course, Machalilla National Park is a paradise on earth for divers. Not only bright-colored fish and giant turtles inhabit the place but also unique corals studied by the experts of the ecological center of the park. Thanks to them, Machalilla National Park became the only protected zone in the country.