Quito, at 2800m above sea level, in a valley between two mountain ranges, has a very pleasant climate. Green and hilly. A bit of drizzle, then sunshine. 11 - 17 °C. 2 hours ahead of Seattle. It took 3 flights to get here: stopped at Houston & Bogota. All airports have free wifi (however, the service in Houston airport requires watching ~30 seconds of commercial). No one sells beer in Quito on Sunday, but canned Heineken is ok :)
Historical center is not big, one of the first cities listed by
UNESCO. Colonial buildings in the 1500s and 1600s. The core of the center is the lively Grand Plaza (Plaza de la Independencia), franked by Bishop's palace (now a host of smart boutique shops),
presidential palace (Palacio de Carondelet, current president,
Rafael Correa, doesn't live here, free guided tour a few times a day, completed with a photo souvenir),
Cathedral, and the City Hall. The Culture Center at the southwest corner also merits a visit (a couple of temporary exhibitions, and nice court yards to rest).
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Plaza
Santo Domingo was crowded: a small group of amateur musicians was playing (loudly) under a canopy. Just behind the square, a shop was repeating some ad over speakers. People sure don't mind the noise here. San Francisco plaza is near by. From the stairs of San Francisco, you can see clearly the green domes of La Merced (which has a pinkish ceiling inside).
Most impressive is
La Compañía de Jesús: gilded to the teeth, twisted columns. Many more churches and monasteries / convents can be visited.
The public park Ejido sits between old town and Mariscal (the new tourist center, but uninteresting, except for more bar scenes). The giant circular building at the north end houses a movie theatre, Casa de la Cultura, and the most important museum:
Banco Central. In this Sunday late afternoon, many locals hung out here, kids in playground. Endless booths selling snacks, souvenirs (alpacas, handbags, and other junk). More interesting are the artists selling their works. Around 6pm, they packed to leave.
Tried: caldon de pata (cow hoof soup), shake made with
borojo (sour) in the central market (fairly small). Almost every block has either a grocery store, or a fruit and veggie store. Usually only one small room. Later in the week, from one of those, I picked up some
taxo (too many seeds),
granadilla (sweeter than taxo, equal amount of seeds), and
tree tomato (hint of tomato, bitter skin, many seeds, but small enough to ignore). All quite flavorful.
Practicality: Ecuador uses US$. From the airport, get a voucher for taxi: $6 to Mariscal, $8 to old town. Only 8km. Taxi from Mariscal to the airport only needs $5. Trole (trolley bus) is 25c. Cramped, pickpockets are reported to be numerous. Metro bus, only one line at the north end, is less crowded, and has its own track. Its eastern terminal Ofelia is a long distance bus center. From here, a La Mitad del Mundo bus is only 15c (takes ~40 minutes). Taxi back to town is $15. A set lunch is $2 - 7. A big bottle of beer is $1 - 1.2. Price in Galapagos Island is the same as in US, if not more costly. Temperature in the 20s, but when the sun is out, mid day can get pretty hot. We were at the beginning of the cooler dry season. The Humboldt Current from the southeast keeps the island cooler.
6/21 - 29. Joined
Gap's guided tour around some of the
Galapagos Islands.
~$2400. Great service, but not enough activity. One excursion in the morning, one after siesta. That means cooped up in a small yacht almost 20 hours a day, making small talk with a dozen tourists and 6 crew members. Activity level fits to both 8 and 80 year old: short flat walking or snorkeling, plus taking pictures.
3 well prepared meals on board every day, drink and snack after each excursion. Relaxing, but not resting, since I wasn't able to sleep well, nor to read long, due to the wave + the stuffy cabin + noisy AC. Water can be quite choppy especially when traveling between islands.
Flying to Galapagos requires a $10 travel card. Need to keep it until you leave the islands.
Aerogal feeds passengers even during a 30 minute flight (between Quito and Guayaquil). Very tight leg room. Fully packed plane. Good business ferrying locals and foreigners to and from the islands.
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9:30 flight landed at
San Cristóbal harbor ~12:30pm (1 hour behind the mainland). Crowded custom area. $100 national park fee. Cash only! They don't really check what you bring in. Seems the talks of "preventing invasive species" are perfunctory.
Lots of waiting around. Finally the whole group is gathered, next to the bench where a sea lion was sleeping. ~12 people (2 Austrians, 1 British, the rest Americans), plus one Tunisian from another tour operator.
Snorkel at
Ochoa beach.
Sea Lions swam with us, or shoot us away. Quite some fish. Not very colorful. Some small black ones with green trim and red tail. A school of grouper like bigger fish, with yellow tail.
Couldn't stay too long in the cold water. Walked around the small beach. Saw 2 hermit crab, one ugly
marine iguana, a couple of
blue footed boobies, some frigate birds and bright red
Sally Light-foot crabs. Rainbow on and off.
Breakfast (same everyday): scrambled egg (perfect), bologna (awful), salami (good), cheese (tasteless), yogurt, 2 types of cereal.
Lunch: mushroom w/ tomato sauce over spaghetti.
Dinner: shrimp in cream sauce, rice, mixed veggie cooked with onion.
Almost every meal was accompanied by watermelon and pineapple, every dinner had a desert. All nicely laid out.
The entire crew lives on this island. They were given leave until midnight, when we sailed to Española island. The 5 hour ocean journey (at ~ 7-8 knots) was very choppy.
6/22 Tuesday ------
Española (Hood Island)
7am breakfast everyday.
8am landing at
Punta Suárez, west end of the island. A loop trail. Lots of marine iguanas (a sub-specie only found on this island: red and green skin, looks half peeled), one piled on top of another, barely moving, smelly.
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Many Sally light footed crabs dotted the coastal rocks, very shiny shells. One bright
yellow warbler. A few nosy
mocking birds, and some
finches (too small to see any feature once fascinated Darwin).
Slightly inland, blue footed boobies standing in the middle the trail, didn't budge when people walked by. Many
waved albatrosses nesting on higher open ground, a couple of abandoned eggs. Quite impressive when they fly: large wing span, clumsy landing. Also saw one tiny snake and some tiny
lava lizards (dark gray).
The trail leads to a cliff with more albatross. Windy, birds gliding and chirping, excellent view. When approach to the edge, you can see a pile of hundreds of red tummy iguanas at the bottom enjoying the splash of the wave. Saw one
red billed tropicbird, beautiful long white tail. Many gulls, a few
masked boobies (equally silly hair style). A blowhole shoots high every minutes of so, drawing an ephemeral rainbow.
During the daily siesta, sailed to northeast of the island. We snorkeled in
Gardner Bay. Swam with at least 3 sea lions. Saw grunt, king angle fish, damsel fish. Saw a couple of sea turtles on the water surface. Rained, I could stop shivering with cold on the way back to the boat. Happy to see hot chocolate (with cinnamon) on our return.
Beautiful sunset. Our chef Angel fed fish entrails and bones to pelicans, and they came and perched on the boat roof.
Sun sets around 6pm, it gets dark quickly. Clear night sky: Southern Cross + Orion's Belt + Bigger Dipper at the same time. We set sail shortly after dinner (~7 hours). I hurried down a motion sickness pill and went to bed.
Today's meal: lunch = rice + beef chunk cooked with carrots in tomato sauce; dinner = fish (overcooked
Wahoo).
6/23 Wednesday ------
Floreana
Finally sunny. Landing at
Post Office Bay, north end of Floreana. Small. 20 meters inland is the postal barrel. Everyone started reading and sorting postcards. Many of these were marked "do not pick up". A few were taken by some of us to be delivered back home. I didn't find any addressed to my state, nor the neighboring states.
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Here, William, our guide recounted the bizarre stories of the early settlers (~1930): Dr. Ritter fled his wife with a patient after removing their teeth (so they had to share one steel denture),
Margret Wittmer's family,
Baroness and her 3 lovers.
Punta Cormorant is a short distance east. No Cormorant. We snorkeled around Devil's Crown: 2 sets of semi-circle rocks not far from shore (probably an immersed crater). 3 short runs from the dingy on each side. Saw a
white tip shark swimming during the 3rd run. He's about my size. An eagle ray at the end of 2nd run, however, not very clear. More fish here. Strong current. Cold. I couldn't stop shivering.
After the siesta, we walked inland from the south of Punta Cormorant, crossing a Flamingo lagoon. Saw only one, flew from the bushes and then stood in the water motionless. It was far enough that a binocular was summoned. Should have hiked to the other side of the lagoon and hide in the mangrove, in order to see these timid birds closer.
The north of the Punta Cormorant is a nesting beach for
Pacific green turtle (chelonia mydas agassisi). They laid eggs 2 - 3 times a year, 70 - 100 eggs per clutch, ~50 days to hatch. They get pretty big too. It's said that the waters at this beach have sharks and rays (probably to prey on the turtle hatchlings), but no snorkel is allowed. Didn't see any turtles nor eggs, only tracks and sand mounds (nest?). A yellow warbler landed on Kristin's hat when William lectured about the turtles.
Today's meal: lunch = shrimp ceviche (mixed with last night's wahoo), pork chop + mashed potato; dinner = chicken, potato salad. Drink:
naranjilla.
6/24 Thursday ------
Santa Cruz
Drizzle then sun. Humid, hot.
Darwin Research Center (a Belgium NGO, not funded by the $100 park admission). Free to wonder around. Display of projects and information about the islands. The highlight is the giant tortoise breeding program: saw eggs (look like ping pong balls), babies of 1 - 3 years old, lonesome George (the last survivor of the Pinta island sub-specie, who refuses to breed), and Diego (the father of the current population on Espanola). Giant Tortoise (
geochelone elephantopus) can live to ~200 years and over 250kg, with a carapace over 1.2m long. They can survive for a year without water and food: capable of metabolizing fat into water. There're two extreme types of shell shape: smaller saddleback in arid habitat (4 - 5 nests a year with ~6 eggs per clutch), dome shaped (more similar to the rest of tortoise species, 2 - 3 nests a year with up to 20 eggs per nest). Eggs are laid between June and December. Incubation takes 5 - 8 months. Warmer nests result in females. It takes 20 - 25 years to reach adult age. It's the saddleback that gave the name of Galapagos. The other place in the world with any giant tortoise is
Aldabra in the Indian Ocean.
Tall
Opuntia. 2 big
land iguanas. Our temporary guide Edger is very knowledgeable.
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A short walk leads to the town center, Pueto Ayora. Very touristy. Tour operators, souvenir shops, restaurants line on the one street in front of the harbor. Ferry to Isabela or San Cristobal is $25. There's also a small "super"market, and a fish stall.
Many pelicans fought for entrails when the fishermen clean and cut their catch. A small crowd watched a 3-3 volleyball game next to the harbor.
Here, our group split: 3 going to
Isabela, 3 staying in town, 1 leaving. We were to be joined by 5 Israelis in the evening on board, plus (finally) fresh towels and water. The old ones were damp and sandy after 3 days.
Turtle Bay. Lovely beach: long and wide, fine white sand, rolling waves. Almost 3km away from town. A well constructed stone path over lava rock in thick vegetation keeps most tourists away. Pleasant walk, quite a few joggers. Tried the yellow "tiger's ball" fruit, smells like cucumber, tastes very bitter.
Snorkeled in the mangrove (white and red) beyond the main beach, saw some puffy fish, and some gray fish with yellow stripes. Too cloudy.
Saw the endemic
Galapagos flycatcher,
lava heron,
lava gull.
Sailed north around Santa Cruz to North Seymour. ~ 4 hours.
Today's meal: lunch = chicken in soy sauce, rice, salad; dinner = wahoo fish with mushroom sauce, potato, zucchini. Poor Nahum, an Israeli abuelo (in his 80s) only eats Kosher, so had to rely on dry supplies, supplemented by the uncooked veggie and fruit. The other 4 Israelis eat everything. Two young guys already traveled in South America for over half a year, impossible to be picky about food.
After another welcome ceremony, our new guide, Hanzel, told us about himself, and his theory on the fur colors of an animal (on the back of his ears). Over an hours long!
6/25 Friday ------
North Seymour show more,
Chinese Hat show more
Cloudy. Dry landing on southwest tip of North Seymour. Lava rock. A few
swallow-tailed gulls. Their eyes are bizarre: bright red rim. A couple of
Galapagos doves: brown, spotty. Many blue footed boobies. The highlight here is
frigate bird. A large colony is nesting here. Even though it was the end of the mating season, we still saw quite a few with bright red pouch, so big that they couldn't fly. On one tree, 4 males with inflated
gular sac, vying for attention. Also saw 2 black land iguanas, 1 tiny snake, a few ugly machine iguanas, the ubiquitous sea lions and sally crabs.
Sailed west for 2 hours to Chinese Hat island.
Before landing, dingy ride along the small coast of Santiago looking for penguins: saw 2. Sombrero Chino is the most picturesque island here. Beautiful rocky coastal, splashing waves, red carpet of
sesuvium edmonstonei, patches of white shore petunia flowers. Very playful sea lions swam around our feet. Some black marine iguanas, red sally crabs. So captivating that Nahum didn't watch his steps and fell, broke his camera.
After the short walk, we snorkeled in the straight facing Santiago, where water is calmer. Same kinds of fish, quite a lot of them. Saw a white tip shark.
Sailed for
Bartolomé, ~ 2 hours. Beautiful scenery, one little islet after another. Right at the sunset, the dramatic pinnacle rock of Bartolomé came into view.
Today's drink:
guanabana,
Maracuyá; Lunch: lasagna, barbecue chicken, cauliflower; Dinner: beef (steak-alike, too tough), string beans, more cauliflower.
Lecture after dinner: sea lion (long neck bone, high fat milk).
This was my favorite day.
6/26 Saturday ---------
Bartolomé show more -
Black Turtle Cove show more
Bright early (~7am), we walked 390+ stairs to the light house (115 m).
Paused 4 times on the nicely constructed wooden platform. Barren moonscape: cinder cones, lava tubes. Few vegetation: silver
tiquilia nesiotica, green & milky Chamaesyce, 2
lava cactus.
The light house is solar powered. The lens was turning, but no light pulses. Maybe too sunny.
Magnificent 360° view of neighboring islets.
Dingy ride to search penguins. Saw 2 and a great blue heron.
Snorkeled from Golden Beach towards the Pinnacle Rock. Penguin dashing by chasing fish, sea lions tempting the swimmer. Lots of tiny orange fish, silver fish around the base pinnacle. Lots of cushion star fish with bumps, red orange sponges, sea urchins. Fantastic snorkel site. The best this week.
After lunch, sailed to
Baltra for fuel. On the way, a dozen or so dolphins jumping in water next to our boat, for a good quarter of an hour. Charming! At Baltra, a military base, we were instructed in stay inside our rooms.
Black Turtle Cove at north of Santa Cruz is full of mangrove, densely stretching for miles. Dingy ride among mangroves, saw 3 sea turtles. Hoping for rays, but none. A noddy tern, many pelicans, each perched on a branch, casting the leaves below him white.
Sailed for
South Plaza island. On the way, 8 frigate birds flew with us. Moored just outside of a sea lion beach. They made noise all night long.
Today's meal: lunch = wahoo, potato; drink = mora (blackberry); dinner = pork in pineapple sauce, pinto beans, canned asparagus, iceberg lettuce.
Lecture tonight: Charles Darwin. It caused a long debate of the importance of Darwin vs. Newton.
6/27 Sunday ---------
South Plaza show more -
Santa Fe show more
South Plaza is tiny: 100m by 1km. A loop trail covers half of the island. Sea lions and sally crabs greet you as you land (slippery). Red carpet of Sesuvium edmonstonei, interspersed with Portulaca oleracea and tall opuntia cactus.
Quite a few land iguanas, big and yellow. They like eating the yellow flower of Tribulus Cistoides (goat head / puncture weed: the strange seed is large, hard, with spikes). Little lizards with orange red neck (female). One black one was lying on the chest of a sea lion, attracted many cameras. Saw some finches, a molting sally crab (very slowly, foamy).
The south side is a cliff: boobies, shear-waters, pelicans, swallow-tailed gulls. Good view, wind and wave.
Sailed for
Santa Fe island. Very choppy water for over an hour: I had to lie down. Still felt dizzy when I went down for lunch.
A long beach, congregates 100+ sea lions. They lied on top of each other. Some young ones swam near the shore. Afternoon snorkel in the sheltered bay. Saw 2 rays. Many fish. Not as colorful. Quite a few sea lions swam with us.
Once showered and changed, we walked a short trail off the beach piled with sea lions. Visited the special giant prickly pear cactus (opuntia echios barringtonensis) and the special land iguana. However, I cannot tell the difference with other opuntia. The 3 iguanas we saw had lighter yellowish skin, certainly look different. Saw 2 Galapagos doves, 1 Galapagos hawk.
Rain started, instead of completing the loop, we turned back to boat.
Today's meal: lunch = spaghetti with meat, veggie sauce; drink = naranjilla, pizza; dinner = chicken, beef,
chorizo, lettuce.
Farewell ceremony (tip collection), no lecture. Packing.
6/28 Monday ---------
Santa Cruz - Baltra - Quito
Breakfast at 6am! Departed at 6:30am in rain.
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Drove to the highland to visit a private ranch: Rancho Primicias
$3, next to the
El Chato Tortoise Reserve. Terribly muddy. Saw 3 tortoises, many finches, some endemic pea flower, a yellow flower with strange orange fruit (assembles broken orange skin), heliotrope (white/purple tip). Too early for the ranch's restaurant. There's a cute wood chair sculptured like a turtle, two empty turtle shells and some bones on display (the youth and the young at heart crawled into the shell for photos). On the way down, saw many cattle egrets (white, orange/yellow beak).
Stopped at the large
Lava tunnel. At least 3m tall, pitch dark. An owl was sitting at the entrance.
Ferry to Baltra, Aerogal bus waiting at the dock to take passengers to the airport.
10:40am flight to Ouayaquil, Quito. Exit row! Reached hotel around 3:30pm.
Traversed park Ejido (no activity on this Tuesday afternoon) for
Basilica del Voto. Exquisite windows, 2 layers, tall, each a different story. Even though it was not sunny, the windows still shone magnificently. Boring alter. Cheesy bandena decoration. The ongoing mass had only about a dozen lambs. Loud speakers were employed.
Continued walking towards the old town. Delightful in fading daylight, and then in evening lights. After a week of western cuisine, I finally had the opportunity to try some local food.
Empanada the size of a rugby ball (light dough, much tastier than the small ones found in US), morocho (a sweet milk drink with white corn and cinnamon),
Chicharon, fried corn kernels, grilled meat on stick.
Finally a good night sleep: the ground was no longer rocking.
6/29 Tuesday ----------
La Mitad del Mundo 
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$2 entrance, the tower (topped with a giant brass globe) is another $3. The wide path leading to the monument is framed by coarsely carved busts of astronomers and manicured lawn. In commemorate the French expedition of 1743,
Louis Godin,
Pierre Bouguer and
La Condamine's busts are closer to the monument, and their names are carved on its SE surface, facing the entrance. About 5 lamas graze here. A group of elementary school kids spent quite sometime looking over the simple ethnographic display by the staircases. Had to lift a few of them on the observation deck so they could see over the railing. After the rain cleared out, volcano
Pichincha poked its snowy head out.
11:15
Calima tour of the inhabited
Pululahua crater.
($8. A better option may be the $26 6 hour tour to Pululahua, El Pahuma orchid reserve, Calacalí, museum Intinan, monument, lunch, transfer to/from Ofelia station.) 5km cross, 400m deep, 2 small cones inside, which I could only see one. Green, fertile, clouds were moving in from the west, because the crater has an opening on the west side (so is the road). Due to the moist wind, relatively steep wall, the west half of the crater is a geo-botanic reserve, flowers and birds live here undisturbed. Our indigenous guide lead us through the barbed wire without paying the park entrance fee on to their secret trail. Talked about the indigenous awareness of equator 1000 years ago and related rituals, pointed to various plants, even played a piece of music before return.
Saw humming birds and flowers: red earring? pink
pantana, red taxo, hallucinogenic black
shanshi berry (I tried a few, no effect), yellow zapatito de virgen, wild lavender. If time permitting, it's good to stay at the hostel at the bottom of the crater, and hike into the reserve the next morning before the clouds cover everything.
Lunch: 1/4 guy, trucha, accompanied by boiled potato, maiz, rice, fried banana.
Museo Intiñan is a couple of hundred meters away, looks like dump. Guided tour. Display of Amazon odds (
anaconda,
candiru, giant spider,
shrunken heads), strange tribes, demonstration of equator (balancing an egg on a nail, water rotation, force). Entertaining but no scientific base.
From Quito, there are many day trips one can do:
Calderon dough figure,
Sangolqui market,
Pasochoa Wildlife Refuge,
Otavalo indigenous market. 2 day trips: climbing Pichincha, cloud forest around
Mindo, thermal retreat at
Papallacta. For more time: volcano
Cotopaxi, waterfalls along
Baños -
Puyo road, UNESCO listed colonial
Cuenca, national parks
Cajas and
Podocarpus, birding in the Amazons. Well, next time.
Quito, at 2800m above sea level, in a valley between two mountain ranges, has a very pleasant climate. Green and hilly. A bit of drizzle, then sunshine. 11 - 17 °C. 2 hours ahead of Seattle. It took 3 flights to get here: stopped at Houston & Bogota. All airports have free wifi (however, the service in Houston airport requires watching ~30 seconds of commercial). No one sells beer in Quito on Sunday, but canned Heineken is ok :) 
Historical center is not big, one of the first cities listed by UNESCO. Colonial buildings in the 1500s and 1600s. The core of the center is the lively Grand Plaza (Plaza de la Independencia), franked by Bishop's palace (now a host of smart boutique shops), presidential palace (Palacio de Carondelet, current president, Rafael Correa, doesn't live here, free guided tour a few times a day, completed with a photo souvenir), Cathedral, and the City Hall. The Culture Center at the southwest corner also merits a visit (a couple of temporary exhibitions, and nice court yards to rest).
6/21 - 29. Joined Gap's guided tour around some of the Galapagos Islands. ~$2400. Great service, but not enough activity. One excursion in the morning, one after siesta. That means cooped up in a small yacht almost 20 hours a day, making small talk with a dozen tourists and 6 crew members. Activity level fits to both 8 and 80 year old: short flat walking or snorkeling, plus taking pictures. 
3 well prepared meals on board every day, drink and snack after each excursion. Relaxing, but not resting, since I wasn't able to sleep well, nor to read long, due to the wave + the stuffy cabin + noisy AC. Water can be quite choppy especially when traveling between islands.
Aerogal feeds passengers even during a 30 minute flight (between Quito and Guayaquil). Very tight leg room. Fully packed plane. Good business ferrying locals and foreigners to and from the islands. show more
7am breakfast everyday.
Beautiful sunset. Our chef Angel fed fish entrails and bones to pelicans, and they came and perched on the boat roof.
Drizzle then sun. Humid, hot. 
Sailed west for 2 hours to Chinese Hat island. Sailed for Bartolomé, ~ 2 hours. Beautiful scenery, one little islet after another. Right at the sunset, the dramatic pinnacle rock of Bartolomé came into view.
Bright early (~7am), we walked 390+ stairs to the light house (115 m). 
South Plaza is tiny: 100m by 1km. A loop trail covers half of the island. Sea lions and sally crabs greet you as you land (slippery). Red carpet of Sesuvium edmonstonei, interspersed with Portulaca oleracea and tall opuntia cactus. 
Traversed park Ejido (no activity on this Tuesday afternoon) for Basilica del Voto. Exquisite windows, 2 layers, tall, each a different story. Even though it was not sunny, the windows still shone magnificently. Boring alter. Cheesy bandena decoration. The ongoing mass had only about a dozen lambs. Loud speakers were employed. 
