Galapagos & the rest...

South America » Ecuador
November 5th 2008

Published: November 8th 2008

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stevureno

Quito

A teary farwell.... A drunken 30th celebration... a bus to Calgary... a great steak... the flight to Quito!

Hola mi amigos (still having trouble with the lingo)

We are currently hanging out in a town called Mancora, Peru. It is just south of the Ecuador/Peru border and literally a surfers paradise. We have decided to stay here for about 3-4 days, so we now have
some time to give you an update on the first 2 weeks of our South American adventure.

So we arrived into Quito, Ecuador about two weeks ago now and spent 3 nights there checking out the city and visiting the sites. Mitad del Mundo - Middle of the World/the equator (very touristy but had to be done), the Basillica de voto Nacional (climbed some very dodgey bell towers), the Monasterio de San Fransisco, among others. We met up with some other travellers at the Secret Garden Hostel (mucho impressio) and made our way slightly south to Cotopaxi, Ecuador´s second highest peak and I believe the world´s highest active volcano. The weather wasn´t great with very low cloud (although not so low I guess considering how high we were) and rain at 3pm every

Basillica del voto Nacional, Quito

afternoon on the dot. We never really saw the peak of the volcano in all it´s glory but a great experince never the less as we stayed on a farm with a local family and the family´s pooping dogs.

Making our way south again was the beginning of the epic bus journeys. This first one from Cotopaxi to Guayaquil took about 8 hours for just under 400Kms and was an experiece to say the least. After a night in Guayaquil, we flew to the Galapagos for 4 days and
joined a 30 passenger cruise. The boat was called Coral I and due to the fact that we booked last minute we were able to get a very cheap deal and chose our boat - 1st class please! The idea of seeing the Galapagos via boat is that the boats travel at night while you are sleeping and allow you to maximise the time that you spend actually exploring the islands. By the end of the first morning alone we were able to get up close and personal with turtles, tortoises, sea lions, crabs, sea iguanas, blue footed boobies (birds), albatros´ as well as many other types of birds including

Photo 17

a Galapagos Hawk - I think that covers most of the must-sees! We had the opportunity to snorkel and the highlight was sea lions circling and playing around us as well as swimming with a sea turtle. We saw sharks circling the boat as well. It was amazing just how much wildlife there is and how close you are able to get. We know that everyone visiting the Galapagos raves about it, but we did not expect it to live up to and exceed our expectations quite like that.

We spent a night back in Guayaquil after our ´break from reality´ and, with another couple that we have met, checked out the redeveloped waterfront and Las Peñas (coloured houses and cobbled streets) which is a considerable contrast to the way the rest of the city lives.

We have now continued further south (Guayaquil to Tumbes - epic bus journey #2 and Tumbes to Mancora - epic bus joureny #3, although not so much a bus but a van the size of ´Montego´ stuffed with 16 people plus a driver) and have crossed over into Peru, stopping at Mancora. From here we plan to head to Trujillo (another surfing

drummer boy

Quito by night, from the Secret Garden rooftop terrace

town) and then inland to Huaraz for some hiking. Lima will be our next city stop after
Huaraz and then we will either fly or bus to Cuzco to prepare for our Inca Trail hike.

We hope that this ´el bloggio´ finds you all well. We´ll try and send another in a couple of weeks. To the Banff crew - we miss you heaps. To everyone in Australia - we can´t wait to see you soon.

Hasta Luego
El Gringos (Steve ´n Lotty)

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