The Galapagos & Quito

The Galapagos

First the boat! It was a 100ft, bi-hull beauty, just christened in April. It had 8 rooms for a guest occupancy of 16 and had a staff of 10. Not a bad service ratio, eh? Our room was great. Put it this way, if our room in real life could be so nice, we'd be happy. We had a huge king sized bed, great attached bathroom complete with rosemary-mint Aveda products and two big windows. There were actually just 15 guests: 3 Dutch, 2 German, 2 American, 2 Venezuelan-Americans, 1 Peruvian and 3 Peruvian-Americans. The age groups were spread out too - 3 under 20, 2 over 80 and the rest 50-60ish. We had fun getting to know everyone. The two ladies over 80 were very inspiring - they participated in everything and had a great time. Amazingly, 5 of the guests were from the NYC area. I think we would have preferred one last week without thinking of NYC, but I guess it helped us ease into things slowly.

I could go on all day about how amazing the trip was, but I'll summarize the important things first.

Animals we saw:

• Sea lions
• Sea turtles
• Land tortoises
• Lava lizards
• Land iguanas
• Aquatic iguanas
• Blue footed boobies (we didn't buy "I love boobies" T-shirts, though they were everywhere)
• Albatrosses
• Masked boobies
• Galapagos pigeons
• Spotted eagle rays
• Rays
• White -tipped reef shark
• Fish galore
• Sea stars (not called star fish anymore, I was informed)

Animals we didn't see (but wish we had)

• Galapagos penguins
• Hammerhead sharks
• Red footed boobies
• Fur seals (actually sea lions)

Islands visited:

• San Cristobal
• Baltra
• Santa Cruz
• Santa Fe
• Floreana
• Española

Each day unfolded according to this kind of schedule:

6:45am - wake up
7am - breakfast
8am - island adventure
noon - lunch
2pm - snorkeling
4pm - island adventure
7pm - dinner
10pm - bed, overnight travel to another island

The food was terrific, the best we had in South America by far. Breakfasts were eggs as you like, a sweet option like muffins or pancakes, meat and cheese, toast, cereal, fruit, yogurt and great fresh juices. Lunch we usually ate outside on the deck, usually something Ecuadorian as well as Western options. Dinners were formal events with orders taken in the afternoon and then served course by course. Gourmet! My other favourite thing was that each time we came in from an adventure or snorkeling there would be some sort of drink and treat waiting. Maybe hot chocolate and cookies after snorkeling or juice and empanadas when we returned from an island.

We usually went on an island twice per day. The landscapes were amazing and very diverse from island to island. One island was spooky looking with grey, leafless trees and volcanic mountains, some were more lush and one in particular had spectacular cliffs overlooking beautiful aqua water. Each walk had a goal, usually a specific animal to observe. The amazing thing is that because these islands have few natural predators, they are fearless! If you want to see boobies (hee, hee), you can just walk right up to them and they don't fly away. They have these crazy land iguanas which look like scary monsters and you have to step around them to avoid hurting them - they don't budge at all. We even saw 2 land tortoises trying to make baby land tortoises and they were unfazed by our prying eyes. Some of the walks were along sandy beaches and others were steep and rocky. The octogenarians preferred the sandy walks as you can imagine!

The snorkeling was cold but amazing. Where our diving experience was very disappointing, the snorkeling was better than I could have imagined. Even with wetsuits though, we could only stay in for 30-40 minutes because it was so cold. We saw all kinds of cool stuff, but my favourite was our second snorkel when sea lions started swimming with us! They are known as the golden labs of the Galapagos because they are so cute and friendly and love to play. We had seen this on land, but to have them swim around us was thrilling. They came up to a foot away from us! So fun!

I got seasick for about 10 minutes; other than that we were fine. Sleeping was easier than we thought. It was pretty rocky at times which made it fun, but it wasn't too bad. The funny thing is that even though we got off the boat on Saturday, we still feel ourselves rocking. Not all the time, but yesterday Paul looked drunk he was swaying so much while walking. If I stand still, I feel myself going forward and back. In bed this morning, I felt like I was still on the boat. Crazy!

So, we've been in Quito since Sunday, enjoying the last few days of our time off. Yesterday we walked around the old town which, like Cuenca, has beautiful colonial architecture. Today, Paul left at 4am to head off to his best man duties in Halifax and left me all alone. I head to Halifax tomorrow, but in the meantime, I got to have some fun on my own. I went to THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD today. Yes, I jumped over the equator several times just to say I did. Actually, GPS kind of wrecked the tourist attraction because they discovered that the true equator is 240m from where Europeans placed the official monument. Interestingly enough, native Ecuadorians had correctly identified the equator years before, but when more educated Europeans came along and claimed they knew better they went along with it. So, I visited the real equator too, minus the monument and fanfare (and admission price).