Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands

We’ve been talking about visiting the Galapagos Islands since Fletcher graduated from high school nearly 9 years ago.  We found a house/dog sitter so we could drag Fletcher along on this trip.  He’s a huge fan of wildlife and biology, so between the three of us I think he’s going to geek out the most.  We booked this vacation via the Galapagos experts, Quasar Expeditions, and for the first time I was happy I didn’t make all the arrangements myself.

We arrived at our starting point in Quito, Ecuador, two days ago.  We had a 7 hour flight to Panama City, a mind-numbing 5 hour layover, and then a 2 hour flight to Quito.  Follow that up with an agonizing hour in the Customs line (if only US Customs was this thorough), and we walked out of the airport at 8:00 PM, ready to crash.

Upon meeting our driver, he told us his General Manager wanted to chat with me.  He got me on the phone, and that’s when he told us what was going on in Ecuador.  Little did we know that the day prior, some local drug cartel gunmen had hijacked a TV studio, live on the air, in Guayaquil, an Ecuadorian port city an hours plane flight west of us.  On top of that, drug cartel members have been actively taking police officers hostage, one of them in downtown Quito, near where we were supposed to stay!  Well this is a great start to Ecuador!

So we were re-booked in a “Hacienda” near the airport, since the Colonial portion of Quito, where we were supposed to stay, is currently heavily guarded by the Ecuadorian military and police, and the streets are basically shut down.

The ride to the Hacienda was a tad unnerving.  It was dark, the street we were taken on is the worst version of cobble stones I’ve ever encountered (and I’ve seen some jaw-shattering cobble stone in Lisbon), there are no street lights, and the surrounding area looked like Tijuana…the bad part of Tijuana (is there a good part?  I have no idea).  We pulled into this heavily gated square, which immediately reminded Kim and I of a “Mexican Hacienda” scene from the TV show Better Call Saul.  Here is the gate as we reentered yesterday.  It’s much more imposing at night with a guard standing just inside, and the doors closing behind you.  Trust me.

The room is comfortable enough, provided you enjoy planes flying overhead at what seemed like 500 feet for most of the night.  Dinner was an unmitigated disaster.  Perhaps we have just become too picky with our restaurant choices?  The hotel restaurant is your only choice, unless you want to scale the gate and fight over chicken bones with stray dogs on the cobble stones.  It was tempting, as the local stray was cute enough in the light of day.  Check out that awesome “street”!  That’s the main drag outside the hotel!

The hotel grounds were beautiful in the daytime, and they did have some interesting animals around.  At least they weren’t in a spitting mood!

So our first day, to get out of town, Quasar set us up with a tour guide so we could visit a bird sanctuary, the Guango Lodge.  This trek from Quito was interesting, as it took us over the Andes via a pass that sits at over 12,000 feet!

We had read that this was a Hummingbird Preserve, with hundreds of birds flitting around at any one time.  We saw “tens” of birds, so maybe this is the off season?  There was an interesting variety though, far more than we’d ever see in the states.

We have never seen a black and white hummingbird before.  Our guide told us that there are more than 132 species of hummingbird in Ecuador, more than anywhere else in the world.

Fletcher got a good shot of this one on a feeder.

Our guide took us to a special spot where he was able to point out a Black-Billed Mountain Toucan.  Seeing one of these is apparently a rarity.

While we were at about 9,000 feet of elevation here, the place looks incredibly tropical.

More tropical!

Our main stop of the day was Termas de Papallacta, a beautiful forested spot between two active volcanoes that offers thermal baths and a spa.  There are 5 different thermal baths here of differing temperatures, some hot, and at least one that was like “holy crap, am I a lobster?” hot!  Everybody got a well deserved massage here.

Up next, because the situation in Quito hasn’t gotten any better, we worked with Quasar to head to another beautiful spot near the active Cotopaxi volcano.  With our luck on this trip, let’s hope there isn’t an eruption!