Birding Ecuador 2011 4k, Part 7: Going south! Puerto Hondo & Ecuasal (Feb 12)

OK, it's now six days since arrival to Ecuador, and now our main geographical part of the trip begins. We take an early flight from Quito to Guayaquil, meet our driver for this part, and start the transport to Puerto Hondo, then to close-by Cerro Blanco, for a few hours birding.
The transport part offered some new trip birds: Scrub Blackbird, Snowy-throated Kingbird, Parrot-billed Seedeater, Variable Seedeater and Chestnut-throated Seedeater.
Puerto Hondo didn't yield much, bird-wise. New trip birds were Little Blue Heron, White-browed Gnatcatcher, Saffron Finch and Southern Rough-winged Swallow.
We relocated to Cerro Blanco and got a bunch of new birds, some even on photo (no video at all from these locations): Pacific Elaenia, Whooping Motmot, White-tipped Dove, Streaked Flycatcher, Streaked Saltator & Groove-billed Ani. Oodles of new butterflies as well :-)
Then it was time for lunch, before we continued to Ecuasal Salinas. We had planned to bird the salt lagoons AND the beaches for gulls and sandpipers, but those plans had to be abandoned due to car problems. The car refused to restart after a short while, so we were stuck birding the lagoons. Plenty of birds there, of course, it was the main attraction, but we missed out on finding Lava Gull.( I mean we might have missed them anyway, there's no way of knowing.)
For once I remembered the videocam, so we have video from Ecuasal, plus photos. We saw Black-crowned Nightheron, Snowy Egret, Tricolored Heron, Black-necked Stilt, Hudsonian Wimbrel, Willet, Lesser Yellowlegs, Wilson's Phalarope, Spotted Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Semipalmated Plover, Snowy Plover, Grey-headed Gull, a few Laughing Gull, Cabot's Tern (split from Sandwich Tern), Royal Tern, Gull-billed Tern, Chilean Flamingo, Brown Pelican (and 1 or 2 distant Peruvian Pelican) and White-cheeked Pintail.
Sunset approached, we got some late help with the car so we could drive to the hotel and check in and have dinner. End of video. (The driver got to swap car for tomorrow, while parts got changed in the one we're having for the rest of the southern part of the trip.)