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Published: October 22nd 2015
Palace Guards
We got access to the front of the palace on our walking tour.Quito is a colonial time capsule engulfed in a sprawling grimy metropolis with a crime problem that you need to be aware of. It is easy to see why Quito’s historic centre has been granted UNESCO world heritage status. In fact Quito and Krakow were the first two cities bestowed with this title. The buildings have not been touched much in the past few centuries. From the outside they appear unchanged. And when you go inside the many large churches, they are impressive for their size and intricate decoration. The most impressive is the Jesuit church, la Compañía, which is covered in gold leaf. I wonder how many stolen Inca icons were used to create this. There is a no photo rule inside this place, which kind of turns it into a sport to sneak a shot without being caught.
On every corner in the historic centre there are some sort of police; traffic police, tourist police or just normal police. I don’t know if this makes you feel safe or unsafe, but we kept our possessions and Nathan close and stayed in a very secure apartment with security guard to let people in and out. So nothing was stolen.
Campania Ceiling
This church is covered in gold leaf. The other problem we had was that things shut down too early in this part of the city. When we arrived (at dinner time) we walked to plaza grande and found only a few restaurants that were closed or closing. The good eating is a few kilometres away, we learnt.
Quito sits at an altitude of 2800 metres and is in a valley so the surrounding mountains are much higher. We caught the teleferico cable car to the top of one (4100 metres) where it was considerably colder and saw the huge city that Quito has become. The 99% of the city that we didn’t touch doesn’t look very appealing.
The highlight of our stay here was the free walking tour we did from a nearby hostel. We saw the local food markets and were introduced to some new fruits and a drinks made from their juices and coconut milk that we went back for a second time. Our guide was very knowledgeable about history, politics, religion, culture and everything else to do with Ecuador. We saw the parliamentary palace, where we heard stories about various Ecuadorian presidents being assassinated and had photos with the guards who look
Tortoise
On the farm in Santa Cruz we walked around dozens of these giants. They sometimes pull their neck and head into their shell, but are otherwise undisturbed by humans. after the place like the guards at Buckingham palace.
The best reason to come to Ecuador is to see the Galapagos and that is where we spent most of our time. Upon arrival, to get from the airport to town you need to catch a crammed local bus, a short ferry and then another bus. On this journey we saw giant tortoises wandering through fields, a flock of boobie birds who dived into the water to go fishing then flew up to repeat the process over and over again and various other birds. Then at the shore of the only place to stay on the island, Puerto Ayora, we saw sea lions resting on the platforms beside the water, iguanas catching some rays and these bright red crabs clinging to vertical walls and rocks. And all this even before we found our place to stay! You don’t need to try to see these curious creatures. They are everywhere.
The taxis here are all white dual cab 4WD utes. And there is no need to haggle over price because it costs $1 to go from anywhere in town to anywhere else in town. Some of the drivers
Big Shell
No tortoises were harmed in the making of this photo. let you ride in the back too which was a thrill for Nathan. Apparently it is not legal, but the police car that followed us home one night had no issue with it.
We went to a farm of sorts with heaps of giant tortoises and took heaps of photos. It is easy to get a shot of a creature that moves so slowly. They are amazing to watch. Every movement seems to require so much effort and they have extra difficulty going over medium sized rocks. Large rocks would be impossible. On a snorkeling tour we were lucky enough to actually swim with sea lions! They were playing in waves near the shore and were just as curious about us as we were about them. This is the best thing that you can do in the Galapagos.
Nathan made another girlfriend from a generation above him. Ilona from Holland travelled with us for most of our stay in the Galapagos and he decided to give her one of the toy koalas we brought from home. He always seems to make friends with girls at least 20 years his senior and refers to them as “his girlfriend”.
Las Grietas
A deep crevase formed by volcanic action on Santa cruz. Now a popular swimming hole. Our next island was Isabella and it took an unpleasant 2 hour speed boat ride across rough water in the aroma of outboard petrol fumes and other peoples spew to get there. After this experience we decided to arrange plane tickets for our next journey. Our first impression of Isabella was that they wanted to extract every dollar possible from us. Our boat ticket didn’t include the water taxi from the pier to the boat. Then at the other end we had to pay for another water taxi then “jetty tax” of $5 each to use the jetty!!!!! Another problem is that there is no ATM on the island and we soon ran out of cash meaning we were slugged at least 10% surcharge for using credit card. But the welcoming committee here was similar to Santa Cruz. At the jetty were dozens of sea lions, some resting on the human’s chairs, penguins swimming in the water, iguanas and other lizards and pelicans.
We went snorkeling at a nearby beach and swam with a large turtle and iguanas traversing the waterway between a small island and the shore. We saw penguins darting around us as we stood in shallow
water and pelicans diving for fish just metres away. Leanne noticed a solitary eel near the shore and sea lions waddled into and out of the water beside us as we took it all in. We stayed there for hours as there couldn’t possibly be anything better to do.
The next day we went on a snorkeling tour and saw with an eagle ray and a giant green turtle (about as big as the tortoises we had seen on the land). We saw two schools of reef sharks resting in caves because that is what they do during the day. They have poor eyesight and hunt at night. We saw a male and a female seahorse and many different types of fish. On the way to the snorkeling site we twice stopped to see a manta ray swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Yet again we were blown away by the diversity of wildlife and its amazing accessibility. Animals here are not scared of humans in any way. They have existed without us until just recently in the time frame of their evolution.
A surprising bonus that we had not expected here is the quality of the beaches. They
Lots of pretty faces
Just lazing around on Tortuga beach. are really good, by Australian standards even. As the Galapagos are very new volcanic islands, I thought there would be just rocky or perhaps some coarse black sand beaches. But that is not the case. The sand is fine and white and many local families enjoy them on weekends.
The flight to San Cristobal was highly preferable to the four hours on offer in the mountainous Pacific swells with noisy outboard motors to combat them. We could see the different terrains of the islands of Isabella and San Cristobal as we took off and landed. Isabella looks like the lava came out of the volcano last week and much less vegetation has grown there. To reassure us though, I noticed the pilot of our 10 seat plane using his Garmin Sat Nav to find the way to our destination. I bet that he put it in his car afterwards to get home from work. At San Cristobal the front street is named Charles Darwin Avenue, like the one in Puerto Ayora and so many other things on these islands. I guess the fellow must have done something noteworthy here. The brick paved streets give it a resort feel that
Swimming with seals
This was the highlight of our time in the Galapagos for me. the other towns are still developing and the restaurants are better. They also have two sets of traffic lights here which operate most week days. Every second shop is a dive shop and Leanne and Ilona went diving at Kicker Rock, the most popular site. Nathan and I spent the day at the park whilst Leanne saw many types of shark, but no Hammerheads which the site is famed for. She also saw turtles, rays and large schools of fish which blocked out the light as they swam above.
One sad point that I will mention is that El Nino is expected to be worse than usual this year. This has meant that floods are expected on the mainland and schools will finish one month early. For this reason they cancelled a week of school holidays during the year and there are more hours per week in order to finish the curriculum. It also means that the cold waters are not reaching the Galapagos with the fish needed to feed larger animals. Mother sea lions have to venture further into the sea to get food for their young, and when they return the young have grown tired of waiting
Eagle Ray
We saw this one while snorkeling off Seymore Norte. and gone looking for their mother. Many do not reunite and we saw a lot of dead and dying pups on the beach. This was most evident at San Cristobal.
We took the “highlands tour” in a taxi one afternoon, and climbed to the top of the extinct volcano hoping to see the lake inside, but there was too much cloud to see it for more than a minute or two. At another beach we saw more seals laying on the sand and rocks and sometimes on top of each other. There is a tortoise breeding centre with lots of baby and grown up tortoises as well as information on the animals. And just when I thought we had seen all of the highlights we could manage to fin in our time here, we went to the beach a fer kilometres down the road with some snorkeling gear and swam with sea lions one last time. This time I spent over half an hour in the water with five seals who grew more confident with my presence and started to touch me with their whiskers and tried chewing on my fins. There was a turtle and a large ray
The 'big' airport at Isabella
When we arrived we couldn´t find anyone else there. that joined for some of the time too. Just one more memory that I will never forget from this awesome place!
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Ilona
non-member comment
Hey guys, What a great blog! Good times on the Galapagos and what a beautiful world it is! Don't really like being back home and already miss travelling haha. It's terrible that your bag has been stolen, but I do hope you still enjoy the rest of your trip. Give Nathan a big hug from me and when you get back home for Christmas, there will be pictures waiting for you. Safe and happy travelling! Ilona