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Published: December 7th 2009
In a bored moment on the very dull plane journey to Quito we decided to be true to our professions and come up with some statistics for our trip so far so here is what we worked out:
Number of days so far 37
Number of beds slept in 23
Number of photos taken 1,982
Number of photos kept 819
Amount over budget £500
Number of modes of transport 14
Number of journeys and distance travelled in each form of transport:
1. Plane (excluding flight from UK) 9 journeys (13,732km)
2. Hire car 3 journeys (6,023km)
3. Minibus 7 journeys (520km)
4. Bus 8 journeys (380km)
5. Other people's cars 3 journeys (270km)
6. Taxi 23 journeys (190km)
7. Tow truck 1 journey (150km)
8. Ferry 3 journeys (120km)
9. Bike 2 journeys (61km)
10. Metro 4 journeys (33km)
11. Catamaran 2 journeys (25km)
12. Helicopter 1 journey (20km)
13. Raft 1 journey (17km)
14. Speedboat 1 journey (10km)
15. Funicular/lifts 3 journeys (1km)
TOTAL 71 journeys (21,552km)
1 December (day 38) - Quito
The good night's sleep we were hoping for didn't materialise, possibly because we still didn't feel great. We are fed up with
being at altitude and looking forward to getting to the Galapagos - lets hope altitude sickness isn't replaced by sea sickness!
Today was planned as an admin and see Quito day. We dropped off washing then went to Happy Gringo, the agency we have booked the Galapagos and our jungle trip with, to pick up our tickets. An hour later we emerged having handed over vast quantities of cash, booked a half day trip to the Equator for the last morning of our trip and found out about going to Cotopaxi. We returned to our hostel to book it for all of the remaining nights we are in Quito - we will be coming in and out of here on 4 different occasions.
We caught a ridiculously jammed bus to the old town and spent a couple of hours wandering round the very picturesque streets and squares. This is much more like we imagined South America to be. Beautiful colonial buildings, hundreds of people everywhere, men cleaning people's shoes and stalls on every corner. I dragged James into a church badged as the most beautiful in Ecuador - it was very ornate and even James had to admit
it was quite impressive. We had lunch at Hasta la Vuelta, Senor, a pretty touristy place. We decided to try some of the Ecuadorian specialities and ordered humitas (corn dumplings) and seco de chevo (goat stew). The former was a much bigger hit than the latter. We have decided that they love avocado in South America - wherever we have gone, everything seems to be served with avocado. Goat stew and avocado was a particularly interesting one.
We continued on the walking tour, the weather getting pretty sticky, until we reached a big gothic church high on a hill. Just as we got there the threatening clouds that had been looming over us decided to kick into action. We had the biggest thunderstorm we can remember, the thunder was so loud that it set off hundreds of car alarms. The rain came teeming down, shortly followed by hail. We took shelter in the entrance of the church, but soon realised this wasn't keeping us dry so ran to a nearby cafe. We were stranded for about an hour while the sky exploded. Eventually the rain calmed to a drizzle and we ventured back outside. It was about 10 degrees
cooler now so James in his shorts and t shirt and me in my vest top both with sunglasses on heads were getting some odd looks from the locals. We sped through the rest of the tour, noting one slightly more odd sight than us on the way back, namely two party buses heading through town completely packed with people dancing in broad daylight at 4pm.
Having decided to leave jungle organising until we got back from the Galapagos, we suddenly realised it would be Sunday when we got back so nothing would be open. We headed out in search of cotton shirts. We didn't find anything cheap enough to buy so gave up and hoped our long sleeved running tops wouldn't be too hot. We then stocked up on suncream etc at the chemist and headed back to Happy Gringo to book the Cotopaxi tour. After withdrawing $1,000 earlier, neither of our cards was keen to give us more cash, James will be making his favourite phone call to Egg again tomorrow.
Dinner was nachos and fajitas at Red Hot Chilli Peppers. For anyone thinking we haven't been relaxing very much and will get back to England
more exhausted than when we left, well we have now reached the same conclusion. By not climbing Cotopaxi and only doing a day trip, we have enough time to go to Bogota and Cartagena in Colombia. We spent dinner on the internet booking our flights. We moved from the restaurant to Magic Bean for pancakes but were upset to find they only served them at breakfast.
Although today has been full of admin, we now have pretty much everything booked for the rest of our 23 days away. Now we can just relax and enjoy the Galapagos.
2 December (day 39) - Galapagos - Bartolome
What is it with early starts? James was up most of the night with a dodgy stomach. Our 6am taxi took us to the airport where we were treated to first class treatment being met by a man who guided us round the airport and jumped to the front of the check-in queue. We were relieved that my bank card is working again.
We had the usual tedious transit in Guayaquil then were on our way. We were busy checking out the other passengers on the flight, knowing that some of
them would be on our boat. At the other end we were met by Mauricio our guide. The only other people with us were two Australians. We boarded a bus guessing that there would be other people already on the boat doing a longer tour. We were wrong, it was just the four of us on a boat that sleeps 16. We worked out that this was because the original boat we had been booked onto sunk just before we left UK, so this had obviously been put on as a special trip for those already booked onto it. We hung around while the boat was refuelled then headed on board to be met by about 10 crew members. We were quite clearly going to be getting star treatment.
After a safety briefing and rough itinerary chat we tucked into prawns, chips, veg, salad and a huge platter of fruit. Our fellow passengers were Emma and her dad Brenton. We had fairly stilted conversation over lunch then headed to our cabins to catch up on sleep. Our cabin is more luxurious than half of the places we have stayed in. We slept until we reached our first destination Bartolome
where we got a boat to the beach and had our first snorkelling experience. It was fantastic.
There were loads of colourful fish just within touching distance. We swam out about 30m and as I was happily taking in the scenery, James made an excited sound and pointed to my left. There was a 6ft white tipped reef shark just there. It had apparently swum within about 2ft of me and I hadn't noticed. The next amazing sight was two sea-lions fighting on the rocks and then both dived in and swam really near us. We spotted penguins, brown pelicans, blue herons, frigatte birds and a whole load of different fish. We returned to the boat in our dinghy and no sooner had we disembarked when 3 pelicans landed on the dinghy. The dinghy man was not happy when they started pooing on it and shooed them away. Back on the main boat we showered and got ready for our walk.
We walked to the top of the volcano, learning loads on the way. Mauricio is very knowledgeable which is just as well as James is quizzing him about anything and everything he can think of. He has
made it clear that he is very keen to see snakes, sharks and anything else dangerous! On our walk up we saw marine iguanas, bright red crabs, sea lions leaping out of the water either catching fish or escaping from a Galapagos shark and big schools of fish jumping in the water. The landscape is amazing, there are hundreds of volcanic craters, lava tubes and lava fields, with very bare vegetation. We stayed at the top of the volcano for sunset and then got back in the dinghy to be greeted by Daniel our bar tender with delicious warm bread and honey. This was shortly followed by 'meet the crew' which involved us all drinking caiparinhas and saying our names. Mauricio briefed us on the activities for the next day. We are travelling 120km (12 hours) tonight so lets hope for a calm night. He then joined us for dinner.
Dinner was a three course affair of soup, pelican and some kind of tasty fruit cake. We joked that the dinghy man obviously got a knife out to the pelicans after we had disappeared into the boat earlier. We can tell we are going to be spoilt rotten on
this boat. We heard all about Emma being a dog judge and Brenton running a race horse business - clearly the word accountant meant they didn't ask us too many questions about our careers. By 8.30pm we were all exhausted so headed to bed.
Our first few hours in the Galapagos has been incredible. The proximity to the animals is amazing, both snorkelling and on land. We have been within touching distance of pretty much all of the animals we have seen. If it continues like this for the next four days we are going to need more camera memory when we get back to Quito.
3 December (day 40) - Galapagos - Fernandina and Isabela
We didn't have the best night's sleep ever, mainly because James is still not feeling great and we hit rougher seas from about 1 - 5am. Breakfast was a four course affair- if we carry on eating at this pace we won't be fitting into any of our clothes soon.
We set off in the dinghy at 8.15am for the shore at Espinoza Point on Fernandina island. In the two hours we were on land we probably only walked about
400m but in that small area we saw a huge variety of wildlife. There were hundreds of sea iguanas basking in the sun, swimming, walking like aliens across the rocks and fighting for territory. They really are the ugliest animals. We were peering into a pool looking at the iguanas when Brenton pointed about a metre from us and there lying completely still was a one metre long sea turtle. In the same pool we also saw a moray eel and loads of fish. Further on we saw baby sealions feeding and playing, flightless cormorants, more turtles, millions of red crabs, some lava lizards and a Galapagos hawk. There were also skeletons from an iguana, a sealion and a whale along the way.
Back on board, we were given juice and snacks before the motors started and we were off to Isabela island. We sat in the sun-loungers on deck and read our book. It isn't a typo that I say our book, because we are both reading the same book at the moment, made possible by the fact that the first 150 pages of the book are loose from the melting book experience in Mendoza. We have now
got to the stage where we are both past the loose pages so we are ripping chapters out and then throwing them away - a great way to save on weight in our bags!
Lunch was again 3 courses and we all commented that we will soon have to stop eating everything on the plate. Luckily there was some time to relax after lunch before our afternoon activity. James and I decided we needed to burn off some food so went for a swim by the boat. We did lengths of the boat, which was quite a choppy experience. The afternoon started with snorkelling. As we were in the dinghy on the way to the beach we spotted 5 or 6 eagle rays which grow to 2m. As soon as we got on land we got our snorkelling gear on and headed to where they had been. I wasn't that keen on seeing them as I was worried they would hurt me. I stuck behind James which meant he spotted one and I didn't - I was quietly quite relieved. We headed back towards the rocks as the visibility in the deeper water wasn't great. There were lots of
small brightly coloured fish but nothing we hadn't seen before, until a metre long turtle swam within a metre of us. We followed it for about 10 minutes, fascinated by its appearance and movement in the water. Next we spotted some penguins bobbing on the surface so followed them, watching them playing and darting this way and that.
Back on dry land we put on our walking clothes and headed off on a 1.5km walking trail. We had been told this would take 2 hours, I was sceptical that it could take that long. Here we saw our first land iguanas - still not likely to win any beauty contest any time soon but brighter than their sea counterparts. The next part of the walk was quite dull (it is all relative though). We saw cotton growing, lots of coral as the land we were walking on used to be under water before a recent earthquake lifted it 4m up, yellow warblers, Galapagos mockingbirds, more pelicans, frigatte birds and Darwin finches.
After about an hour we came to a part of the track that Mauricio said was not walked along very often. It was clear this was the
case as it was a bit over-grown and we kept getting stabbed by the needles of some very sharp bushes. We soon came to a bigger obstacle as the path was flooded. We were instructed to take our shoes off and through we waded. The further we went, the more flooded the path became. Mauricio seemed to be oblivious to the problems our Australian friends were having but they eventually decided to just put their shoes on and get them wet. Progress had slowed down considerably and it didn't get any easier when we finally reached the sea. We looked out and realised we had an entire coastline to walk along before getting back to our pick-up point and the tide was in. After a lot of climbing on rocks and running up the sand to avoid the waves we could see the end. We had almost forgotten that we were looking for wildlife but managed to spot a blue footed boobie, some crabs in spiral shells and loads more red crabs.
Back at the boat we were given hot chocolate and pizza. The boat then set off for Elizabeth Bay, our location for the night. Trying to have
showers and get ready with the boat bobbing up and down was tricky and very sick making. Both James and I felt rough through the briefing and into dinner. We chose to approach it slightly differently - James eating only half of his food (he couldn't resist the strawberries for pudding though) and me eating as much as possible. Both tactics seemed to work, although we suspect feeling better was due to us getting to our destination more than anything else.
After spending a good part of dinner talking about golf, Olympics and tennis - thankfully we have found something other than the scenery to talk to our Australian friends about - by 8pm we were all yawning and ready for bed.
4 December (day 41) - Galapagos - Isabela
At last a good night's sleep. We slept right through from 9.30pm to 6.50am. We haven't seen another boat for 2 days, it is so peaceful here. Our morning's activity was visiting a a mangrove lagoon. Our first spot of the day was two turtles mating with another male circling them. The lagoon was about a metre deep and the water was really clear so we spotted
milk fish, penguins and loads of turtles. Birds, including Galapagos hawks, frigatte birds and pelicans were circling overhead looking for prey. Our guide talks pretty much non-stop telling us so much about each animal and plant we see. I think he is beginning to think we don't listen though as he has now started saying 'as I told you before...' when we ask him questions. We visited a rock in the middle of the sea on the way back, which had blue footed boobies, penguins, iguanas, flightless cormorants and crabs all within 10m of each other.
Back on board we set off for our next destination and relaxed in our room before lunch. It is great having so much free time, we are catching up on sleep and enjoying having everything done for us. After lunch James had another sleep while I went up on deck and watched two frigatte birds flying just about the boat, they were there for ages until the thermals took them elsewhere.
Our first afternoon activity was snorkelling. Although we are having a great time here, we are glad we aren't here for longer than 5 days as the routine of snorkelling, walking
and being in the dinghy would definitely get too much. Snorkelling was not as good as the first two days, we saw some fish but it was pretty murky. The best things we saw were on the rocks - pelicans, including two babies and flightless cormorants. Back at the boat we got ready for our walk. We landed on the rocks and got up onto a huge lava field. It was really windy and all you could see for miles was a few cacti and small shrubs. We learned about the two types of lava flow - ah-ah and po-oo (Nigel will have to correct me on the spelling). In the lava field were loads of lagoons. We saw black birds with a red spot on their bills (the name escapes me), egrets, a peregrine hawk (which Mauricio got really excited about as he has only ever seen one before), two very pink flamingoes and a heron.
Mauricio has been warning us that tonight's journey is going to be very bumpy as we are going against the current and it is very windy. He decided to do the briefing while we were waiting to be picked up. It sounds
like there will be some good snorkelling tomorrow. Back on board we had our afternoon snack and popped some travel-sick pills. We then decided to take up residence at the back of the boat in the hope that we would suffer less here.
Dinner was a wobbly affair, I continued with my tactic of eating way too much, while James was more sensible and stuck to plain food. After dinner we stayed at the table a bit too long as the sea got choppier. Having gone into the room for 5 minutes I realised that my sea legs were failing me. I went to lie at the back didn't feel much better there so joined James in the room. Neither of us could move our heads from the pillow, let alone undress. It was 7pm and we knew this was going to continue into the early hours of tomorrow. The boat just kept rocking pretty violently. I slept on and off, occasionally waking up when my body left the bed and rose into the air as we smashed over yet another huge wave. There was also some very loud sounds as things fell off shelves and crashed around in
our cabins and outside. There was more than one occasion when I thought there was a hole in the boat and we were going to sink. I checked the time after what seemed like hours and it was 11.40pm, still ages to go.
5 December (day 42) - Galapagos - Floreana and Santa Cruz
By 4.30am we had arrived at our destination and things got a lot calmer. We slept through until breakfast. James was still feeling rough but I was feeling slightly better and food helped to calm the stomach. Mauricio told us one of the waves had gone right over the boat, he said it was the roughest that area had been for a long time. As we headed out for our first trip of the day, we found a sealion had taken up residence on the back of the boat, they really do get everywhere. Our first trip was a short walk to see some flamingoes. The second we got off the dinghy I felt awful. The whole world was rocking and I felt really dizzy. I hardly had the energy to walk to the lake. We stayed at the flamingoes for a while, having
to share the spot with another group - the first group we had seen in days. We then walked to a white sand beach where there were turtles drifting in and out of the sea. We passed some incense trees and Galapagos flycatchers on the way.
Mauricio spent ages telling us stories about some German woman who had arrived on the island with three lovers. I really wasn't listening as I still felt bad. Back on the boat, I felt ok again and it was James' turn to feel bad. This pattern continued for the rest of the day as we got on and off the boat. Our next adventure was snorkelling by Devil's crown rock. The dinghy dropped us at one end and Mauricio assured us the current was going with us - he was wrong. We battled our way along one side of the rocks. The sea was really clear so we could see hundreds of really colourful fish. At one point, we were on the sea equivalent of a running machine - swimming like crazy but not moving anywhere. The only thing that made us feel better was that the fish were having the same problem.
Eventually we made it to the end and headed into the middle of the rocks. (which is an extinct volcanic crater). Here the water was only a metre deep and there was millions of amazing coloured fish swimming literally within inches of us. We reached the other side pretty quickly as the current took us through and then battled our way back along the other side. We had spotted everyone else in the boat a while ago so waited until it came to pick us up. It felt like a while and I was very glad when we were back in the dinghy.
I think we were all getting a bit fed up with soup, huge main course and fruit. At least they had worked out we were all eating different amounts so all meals had turned to self service. When it came to going for our afternoon outing, Mauricio had gone. We were told he was already on the beach and when we landed we saw a very competitive game of football going on between our boat and the one next door. Mauricio was keen to carry on so we agreed to snorkel first then walk. Before he
returned to the game he spotted a sting ray just by the beach and told us to be careful - thinking of Steve Irwin I wasn't that keen to go in the water. The snorkelling was the most disappointing of the trip. The water was really murky so after trying one side we moved across to the other, but it was the same. We came out and waited for the football to finish.
Mauricio emerged and we wandered up to the post box. This is basically a barrel just back from the beach where people put postcards. If you find a postcard addressed to where you live then you take it and post it. We searched through but most postcards were destined for USA. Back on board we had a 3 hour journey to Santa Cruz. We were relaxing up on deck when we heard a shout from the crew and there was a dolphin swimming with the boat. It was much bigger than the dolphins we had seen in Hawaii. We watched for a bit then as the boat was swaying James resumed his horizontal position and I carried on reading.
When we got to Santa Cruz
we all expected the boat to stop rocking, unfortunately this didn't happen. After dinner we took the dinghy onto the mainland a did a bit of souvenir shopping, with the ground still swaying beneath us. Back on board we packed and had an early night ready for our 5.45am wake up call.
6 December (day 43) - Galapagos - Santa Cruz and back to Quito
I can always tell when James isn't feeling great as he doesn't eat as much. I was stuffing down loads of bread, fruit and even a cheese empanada while James just stuck to fruit. We finished packing then said our goodbyes and got the dinghy to the island. We were taken in pick-up trucks to the highlands where we saw loads of giant tortoises, some which were over 100 years old and weighed over 250kg. We then visited a huge lava tunnel and saw a barn owl.
A truck, boat and bus ride later we arrived at the airport. Check-in was chaos, not helped by the still rocking ground. I am beginning to think I would rather be back on the boat! We slept on the plane, having to change planes at
Guayaquil as they had cancelled our one. Back at our hostel, we both collapsed, still feeling very dizzy. We booked our accommodation for Cartagena and Bogota then after checking out the cinema options and deciding there was nothing good with subtitles we went out for dinner instead. We went to Texas Ranch for burger and chips then onto a cafe for pancakes and toffee cake. We were so glad to be eating something other than soup and fruit.
All evening there had been police, the army and loads of people everywhere and on our way back to our hostel we realised why. There was a huge parade going the length of Avenida Amazonas (our road) to celebrate the end of the Quito festival. There were people on stilts, acrobats, bands and all sorts. We watched for a bit then headed back to our room where we could still hear everything that was happening. We are hoping that given it is Sunday night and the Ecuadorians are more sensible than the Argentinians for bed-time, that they won't go on all night.
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Tessa
non-member comment
Confused
Number of modes of transport = 14 followed by a list of 15 - confused? Sounds like you are having a great time. xx