Galapagos Islands: Day 12

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Day 12. March 19, 2011: Puerto Ayora, San Cristobal, Quito

Puerto Ayora, San Cristobal

We spent the night on the boat in the port, and woke up early to get ready to depart. We brought our luggage out to the pangas, then headed in to see Lonesome George at the Darwin Research Center. Lonesome George is the last remaining tortoise from the island of Pinta. He was discovered in 1971 and they have been trying to get him to reproduce with any tortoise to try to keep a part of the Pinta line alive. He is like a gazillion years old and just isn't interested. We also saw baby tortoises that they keep until they are old enough to release back to their native island (they use unique numbers on their shell to keep track).

Then we headed towards the airport in Baltra. There was a woman on a stretcher waiting for the ferry. After they loaded all the luggage onto the top of the ferry, they wheeled her on to the top of the ferry. It works. We said goodbye to Samanta and Boris, as they were heading back to spend another week in the islands scuba diving, and we all got onto our plane, which was a direct flight back to Quito.

Quito
Steve had reserved a room in the new town for our last night in Quito. It was a hostel, called the Traveller's Inn. The room was quite nice for $36.00. It was raining a little, but we still went for a walk to see the area, and walked all the way up to Carolina Park. It was close to sunset, so we headed back before dark. We went to a restaurant close by, and Anne had an awesome steak for dinner. Back to the hostel and to bed since we had a 6:25 am flight back to Houston. I love South America but the flights to/from there really stink.

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