Quito itself is nothing special, in fact it is kind of less than nothing special. The smog was thick on the streets, crime against tourists is very frequent and the food is ok at best. The only reason to visit the city was as a stepping stone to other cooler places. We stayed at a great hostel though, and every night we'd head up to the open air roof to hear stories of how someone got mugged for the 3rd or 4th time over a few beers. We did explore the city a little bit, but honestly we found the smog so bad that we couldn't really stay out on the streets for long before our eyes started watering and we could taste the fumes in the back of our mouths it was that bad. While we waited for the Galapagos trip and also to prove to ourselves that Ecuador wasn't all like Quito, we did a day trip tour to some volcanoes which also took us through the equator stopping off at some of the highest lakes in the world, a huge market and some impressive waterfalls along the way.
Eventually our date came around and we caught a short flight to the Galapagos islands, 1000km off the coast of Ecuador. We landed and made our way through the small town of San Cristobel where we jumped on a small inflatable boat that the locals call 'pangas' which would take us to the larger boat. Along the way seals were playing in the water around the panga, surfing the wake and jumping out of the water in front of us.
Our boat for the 8 day cruise was the 'Estrella Del Mar' which means 'Starfish' in English. Originally we had booked our tour on a really cheap boat becuase the cruises were fiarly expensive and we didn;t have a lot of cash to throw around. A week before we set out for Ecuador we recieved an email from the tour operator saying the our boat was due for maintenance and they couldn't take us on board. Fortunately the tour operator upgraded us free of charge to a really expensive boat, the Estrella Del Mar. It was the best piece of luck we had all trip, basically it was like getting upgraded from an Economy seat to First class on a really long 8 day flight. Our cabin had two beds, a private bathroom and a small window. The food on the cruise was amazing considering the size of the kitchen the cooks (yes, there were 2) had to use, it was about the size of a bathroom on an airplane, I'm not kidding. They managed to cook 3 meals a day for 12 hungry tourists and the 10 crew - I will never complain about the size of the kitchen in my apartment again.
The Galapagos is one of coolest places we have ever been, and I could fill a whole blog with descriptions of what we saw. I think I'll leave it to the pictures to show the types of animals we saw and landscapes that we visited.
Our tour of the Galapagos took us round most of the islands in the archipelago. Usually we would wake us early in the morning, set out for a land excursion after breakfast, do a bit of snorkeling after the walk and then settle back on the boat for a few hours of free time. During this time the boat would move to a different location, then after lunch we'd repeat the morning regime of a land excursion and swim. All in all we spent about 4 hours on land and 4-6 hours swimming each day, it was a really good way of seeing everything above and below the water.
Everywhere we looked on the island was an explosion of life. On the islands we saw nesting Blue Footed Boobies, and watched Albatros waddle from their nests to the cliffs in order to take off. The Alabatros are so big they can't just fly whenever they want, they need a gust of wind like a glider to start. We walked through whole colonies of sea lions basking in the sun and saw thousands of sea Iguana's warming themselves on rocks to get the energy needed to make the perilous trip to the waters to find moss to eat. On a few islands we visited the famous Galapagos Tortoises, huge reptiles that live for up to 200 years. We visited a farm where the tortoises were being bred and even managed to try out a shell for our selves.
In the water the abundance of life was even more noticible. We swam with thousands of different kinds of fish, white tipped coral sharks and graceful giant turtles living around the coral, and played with curious sea lions who liked to try to bite and pull our flippers off and blow bubbles in our faces while we dived. The sea lions would swim right beside us, keeping an eye on everything we did before easily outpacing us and performing tricks just to show how strong they were. While we were on the boat cruising to new islands giant frigate birds surfed the air currents produced by our boat and the ever present sea lions played in the wake in the water behind us.
In our spare time we walked around the inhabited islands, did some more snorkeling or just soaked up the sun. It really was like living in a paradise.
Overall the 8 days that we had in the Galapagos were maybe the most enjoyable we have had on our entire trip. We didn't realize that we could actually stay in hotels on a couple of the islands, if we knew this we would have stayed for much longer.
Arriving back to Quito after our amazing cruide on the Galapagos was a bit depressing, not only because the city was crap, but because we had been looking forward to the Galapagos for almost a year, and then just like that, in a week, it was over. Fortunatly, we had just enough time to squeeze in a trip to the Amazon jungle before we had to make our way to Peru for the Inca Trail.
We caught a bumpy bus to a small outpost near the river Rio Napo (I think, or it could have been the Rio Aguarico) where we meet up with out tour group. We jumped in long canoes and took a 2 hour trip down the river to our camp sites through the jungle. The jungle was dense, full of sounds of animals and very humid.
We had three days in the jungle and spent our time wither exploring the dense vegetation or in the canoes on the river. It was a little bit un-nerving when the guides took us fishing for piranas in the same spot that they said it was safe to swim in the day before. Then after fishing we went looking for caiman (alligators) just around the corner. Safe my foot.
We had a really enthusiastic guide nick named 'Rambo' for his habbit of carrying a massive machette on his belt all the time. Rambo took us around the local jungle and showed us some of the ways the local tribes made things from the plants and animals, like ladders made from vines, back packs made from huge leaves and even insect repellant made from squashed ants (I tried this one - basically you jam your hand in a giant ants nest, wait for the ants to crawl all over your arm, then squish them and rub them all over your exposed skin).
We visited a local shaman who told us about the traditional way of using plants and animals for medicine. The shaman 'cleansed' Heidi's soul in a ceremony and then we tried the local plant used as an anesthetic - basically the leaves have large, very sharp spines in the bottom which are hit against the skin. This causes large welts to appear, and then later the skin goes numb, like pins and needles for about 10-15 minutes. I'm sure our doctor at home would be happy that we tried random medicine from a shaman in the Amazon jungle, might leave that one out when we're telling her of our trip.
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