Galapagos Islands

No problem catching my early flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands. The views from the plane as we left Guayaquil were great. It was a wide verdant delta with the river winding around in all directions. We saw some more tuna boats working just off the coast as we started to climb. They had the whole flotilla with planes, helicopters and lots of boats to find and corral the fish. The flight was fairly long but the views as we came over the group of islands and did our approach to the airport were worth the wait. The first land we saw near the airport, as we touched down on the tarmack, was very arid and rocky with lots of cacti and succulent type plants. The Cacti were huge almost like trees. The landing was fine but the post landing long lines, searches of our luggage and persons was kind of invasive. The paperwork was also needlessly long and involved. They are islands! Do they think they couldn't find somebody if they got past the customs and immigration officials??? We also had to purchase $100 permits to be in the National Park. If you wanted to, you could get your passport stamped but that was yet another line to wait in after all the other long lines. A couple of hours after landing we were loaded on buses or in cars and taxis for the ride to Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island where my hotel was.

My guide met me at the airport and helped me through all the hassles at the terminal. She was a nice friendly helpful woman who spoke perfect English. We took her car all the way to the hotel as we chatted about the plans we had for my visit. I checked in and had about an hour off before we walked over to the Charles Darwin Research Station. We saw Lonesome George at the Darwin Station. He is the sole remaining member of his species of tortoise. I hate to say it but he looked like he was pretty elderly so he won't be doing any more breeding. We saw lots of other tortoises of various species from the different islands. Several of them were endangered species as well. There were also the iguanas from both land and sea to check out including a rare pink species. I enjoyed my afternoon at the station.

I met another single woman at the Darwin Station and we went to dinner after the station tour. We were both at the same hotel which was all inclusive so we ate in the restaurant there. It was fun talking to her about her preconceptions of the Galapagos and her first impressions so far. She was pissed off that everything was so regulated. She wanted to go off and hike alone and experience the wildlife like that but it was illegal to be in the park without a guide so she was out of luck. Some of the other tourists were like Nazi police yelling at anyone who stepped out of the yellow or white lines where you were allowed to walk within. I could see yelling at stupid people but only if the transgressors were walking over things and trampling them or something else bad but most of the yelling was at people who just mis-stepped momentarily because they were looking around at the sights. I did not like the tension from that attitude either as I saw the same thing.

After dinner we swam in the pool and had a few beers with the other guests. It was a very pleasant evening with good people. I called it a night early and went up to my room to watch some tv and get some sleep because the next day had lots of hiking in the plan and that can be hard for me with my mobility problems.

Guayaquil Ecuador

I spent a day seeing Guayaquil. all the usual suspects from the square to the cathedral and a museum and a park. I enjoyed the day. This was a day of rest before going to the Galapagos Islands and I needed the rest. I found some good food in a small restaurant near my hotel. I went to a few different bars to see what was happening but there wasn't much action anyplace. I wandered aimlessly around the area near the hotel. Guayaquil was very busy with people running all around like they had someplace to go in a hurry and the traffic was heavy but the overall feel I got from the city was a small town.

I was happy to be back at sea level. For the last couple of months I had been up in the Andes mountains at an average elevation of around 9000 feet. The air down here at the coast felt heavy by comparison. I wasn't winded after walking around the block down here like I was up high in the mountains. My guide was very good and told me all the local history and interesting things but most of it was just more of the same... indigenous people having a good life, interrupted by the ugly Spanish who destroyed the existing culture and replaced it with Spanish Christianity and culture. This is true for almost all of Central and South America for that matter.

I was horny and would have loved to hookup with somebody for the night but the town was just boring and dead. I didn't even find anybody to talk to much less spend the night with. The people all seemed very uptight and not willing to talk to a tourist beyond the polite business level of communication. I gave up and just went back to the hotel and caught up on all my emails and internet addictions instead. For the rest of the night I watched tv in my room and read up on the Galapagos Islands. Tomorrow I was flying out early in the morning. I was looking forward to the experience.

Cuenca to Guayaquil

After a couple of days in Cuenca we headed out to cross over the Andes and go down to the coast at Guayaquil where I would catch my flight out to the Galapagos Islands. The ride over the Andes was awesome. The mountains were set off by clouds and blue sky. We went through all sorts of micro climates as we climbed up to the pass at the top and then descended into hot wet tropical jungles at the coast. My guide was driving very well, safe, slow and with lots of patience with my frequent requests to stop to look at scenery or to talk to people along the roads. I don't think he has ever had a client before that wanted to just stop and talk to people along the road. He always let me do the initial hellos but then he quickly jumped in to find out about these people standing or walking out in the middle of nowhere. I offered rides to some of them and despite his company policy not to pick up strangers, my guide went along with my requests.

There is a national park at the top of the mountains. Wild llamas and things wander around. My guide told me there are big cats like cougars, jaguars, panthers, ocelots and margays. There are also foxes, wolves are thought to be extinct but there have been some reported sightings, weasels, skunks, opossums, raccoons, deer, wild pigs and pecaries, armadillos, anteaters, sloths, agoutis, pacas, tapirs, monkeys, tons of birds from parrots to raptors and some rare spectacled bears around. We saw llamas and a fox but not much else. My guide told me the indigenous locals are allowed to hunt in the park for food but that other people are not allowed to hunt. That makes sense to me as long as they don't rape the place like some of the native Americans in the United States tend to do. The roads were good all the way from Cuenca to the coast. Very few people seemed to live along the way or at least we did not see many houses or much farming going on. I saw lots of pathways where people walk off into the mountains in areas that looked totally uninhabited to me. They must have been walking long distances to get to and from their destinations. Some of them were walking with very heavy loads too. I am sure they are considered to be very poor by most people's standards but they all seemed very happy.

We stopped at the top to look at the vistas. It was not clear enough to see to the coast but my guide told me that sometimes it is possible. I do love mountains though and there are definitely plenty of mountains in the Andes. The snow capped volcanoes and peaks were beautiful. My guide seemd to know the names of most of the big mountains but I could not remember all the names he told me.

As we came back down into the tropical zone there were large plantations of chocolate. I enjoyed seeing that. My guide offered to stop and let me tour a chocolate farm but I have done that several times and passed on the opportunity.

We finally arrived in Guayaquil around sunset. I got a quick road tour around the area before checking into my hotel. I had the next day off before flying to the Galapagos Islands and I planned on taking it easy after all the car riding I had done in the last week.

Cuenca

My guide took me around Cuenca the next morning. All the standard sights were there, Cathedral, square, government buildings etc. I told him I did not want to see the same old stuff but would rather just see how the people live and work or play. So he drove me around to see the different neighborhoods. Cuenca is a big city with bad traffic so I quickly tired of that tour also. We ate lunch at a place I picked out in an industrial area of town where I saw lots of people hanging around. I enjoyed the simple cheap food at this place. Then we went to a Panama hat company to watch them make Panama hats. Panama hats originated in Ecuador but became known as Panama hats when they were sold to all the workers building the Panama canal back in the day. The name has stuck ever since. Ecuador gets no respect for originating the hats. They are now made in China and Mexico more than any place else but the best quality ones still come from the factory we went through.

The factory had a good display on how the hats are made from the plant they use to the weaving technique used to make the various styles. They even make fancy wedding dresses out of the same material as the Panama hats. They had a photo display of famous people wearing hats made by this company and lots of pics of famous people right at the factory buying their hats. I tried to buy a hat after the tour was over. They had literally thousands of hats there but not one large enough to fit over my melon sized head. They were kind of embarrassed about not having a hat on hand that fit me so they took me out to the factory again, measured my head and made me a hat that fit me perfectly. The guy that made it was amazed at how fat my head was. He had a little pin sized head and I told him to try mine on and it covered his entire head. We laughed about it but I took my custom made hat and wore it around for the rest of the day before storing it in its box to take good care of it. My doctors have been telling me to wear a wide brimmed hat for years because of all the skin cancers I have been having and now I finally had one that fit me well.

After the hat factory we went out and sat at a cafe to watch the people go by. I just did not have the energy to do any more touring around. I only wanted to sit and watch the world go by me. My guide didn't mind the easy day either. We talked at length about his education and family. I quizzed him on his attitude about almost every topic in the news from politics to gay marriage. He was very open and seemingly honest in his answers. He even told me where he diverges from the norm in Ecuador. There was not much divergence as far as I could see. The country seems to be very uniform in its culture.

The next morning we were scheduled to cross over the Andes and drop down to the coast before I flew to the Galapagos Islands for the last leg of my Ecuador trip. I wanted to rest up so I gave my guide the rest of the day off.

Riobamba to Cuenca

After a quiet night recovering from the long drive from Quito my guide picked me up and we were off again. The first stop today was going to be the train ride. The train goes down and then up a very steep gorge by going back and forth on switchbacks first going forward then after switching the tracks revsersing down the next leg and so on. The train perches on the side of the gorge as it crawls along. Some people can't look down because all you see is a long fall to the bottom of the gorge. I enjoyed the ride called the nose of the devil. The views of the surrounding mountains and the gorge were beautiful. The one thing I noticed was the long steep walking trails all over every single mountainside where the people walk up and down all the time. Some of these people do a lot of hard walking every single day. They must have some strong hearts to walk like that at such a high elevation. The train was called Train Andino and was worth the time it took for the ride on it. When I was there the real train engine was broken down so our train was a diesel bus converted to train wheels with a silly looking cowcatcher added to the front of it. I had to laugh at it but it was able to push and pull us up and down all the steep tracks. At one point the train engineer had to slam on the brakes of the train because a pickup truck was stuck on the tracks ahead of us. We stopped in time and a bunch of passengers got off and pushed the truck safely out of the way and we were off again. Several times we were allowed to get off the train to take pictures of the nice scenery. Some of the passengers were riding on top of the train cars so they could have a better view. I am not sure how many fall off doing that and go down the steep drop off on the side of the tracks but some must fall once in a while.

After the train ride we headed down the road to Ingapirca which is an old Inca ruin. It is the largest ruin other than Machu Picchu in the area. I was not feeling very well and could not walk much at all so I kind of skipped the ruin. We sat in the car and my guide gave me his talk about the place but all I got was a quick glance of it then we were off again for Cuenca. The drive was very nice. My driver was the best driver I had been in a car with so far in Ecuador. I complimented him many times to try to encourage him to continue to drive safely. We did witness some accidents and saw some really dangerous passing on the mountain roads. Even if you drive totally safely you can be killed by the other bad drivers coming around any curve on the road right at you when there is no escape path to get out of their way. Drivers education would pay for itself all over Central and South America.

We arrived in Cuenca earlier than we had planned because of me not spending time at Ingapirca. We took the extra time to drive around Cuenca for a while. Cuenca was a big city with all the associated big city traffic and things. We had enough time to stop in at a museum in town. I enjoyed the museum. My guide walked around with me and demonstrated his thorough knowledge of the history and current events of Ecuador and Central and South America. I liked the real shrunken heads on display. My favorite display in the entire museum though was a six hundred year old skull that had a fancy decorative gold grill on its front teeth. The kids today think they invented grill work but the Incas were centuries ahead of them.

After the museum we had a nice leisurely dinner at a restaurant near the town square. I had some grilled guinea pig, tasted like chicken. I was feeling a little better now but I still had an early night in my hotel. My guide offered to take me out on the town but I told him to go have fun on his own. I should have booked a slower paced trip. This trip was pretty hard on me physically with not enough rest stops along the way.