La Ventanilla is a small village close to Puerto Escondido (about 1 hour). It is a great place for ecotourism: the area consists of a long, wild beach and a lagoon full of mangroves. There is also a wide variety of wildlife (iguanas, birds..).
Vivien and I took a tour on a wooden rowing boat and explored the lagoon for about 1 hour. Our guide was very knowledgeable and taugh us a lot about the wildlife of the area: la Ventanilla is actually home to about twenty five Zapotec families who work on preserving the ecology of both the beach and the lagoon.
The name Ventanilla means "little window" because of the rock formation you can see on the photo below. During the rainy season the lagoon meets the sea and the mangroves help regulating the salt quantity in the water in order to preserve the ecosystem. The two principale mangrove types here are the red and the white mangrove. Tannins from the roots of the red mangrove color the lagoon’s water into a reddish shade.
I really enjoyed the tour and all the explanations around how the ecosytem works. We also saw a lot of iguanas, who didnt seem to be scared of us at all (they even posed for the camera)! At the end of the tour, we encountered two crocodiles chilling in the water, a few turtles and many birds!
We did the tour in the morning, but it was already really sunny and warm! The lagoon was filled with the sounds of the many birds living there. It was amazing to be immerse in such a wild environment.
