Return to Quito

Travel day to Quito today. 

This is how our day started.  Pick up by taxi in Puerto Ayora Galapagos as 7:15, 5 of us are leaving so they come with 2 taxis.  Taxis here are pick up trucks and very inexpensive.  We take the taxi about 45 minutes, and then a little ferry across to Baltra Island. 

In Baltra we catch a 10 minute bus to the airport.  Our flight is 1 hour late arriving so of course our departure is over 1 hour late, I guess this is very usual for the flights to the islands, but this airport is extremely tiny, only 1 gate. 

There are quite a few little shops set up outside so we spent some time there looking around. 

Finally departure time, arrive in Quite and another taxi ride to the hotel.  The flight is only 2 hours, but travel time for us today was a total of 9 hours, crazy.






Our good-byes said to our new friends from New York city and Los Angeles.  We now have a tour guide if we ever want to visit the LA area, he is a pro at Disneyland he said, and the couple from NYC we are talking about doing a house swap with at some point.  We would love to see NYC and they want to visit the Maritimes.  They were in Newfoundland last year and loved it.  It was hard to say good-bye, we have spent so much time together the last couple of weeks, but unfortunately life must return back to normal with work for us so we can continue to travel.

Arranging the day tour has been fun, there is an agent here that is supposed to help us out, we spoke to her and the day started at $140 per person for the day, then it went to $80 per person, then I told her we would just take a driver, that would be $125, the receptionist at the hotel heard all this and told me she know someone who would take us for $100 but he doesn’t speak any English, should be an adventure, we have gone with $100 for the day, and we have to figure out how to find where the other girl is staying, she drew us a map hopefully he’ll understand it. 

The others are all being picked up at 5am tomorrow morning for their flights home.  The last girl that is still here is going with us as well.  We had to take to taxis to get there, they were 3 dollars each, taxis are incredibly inexpensive here. 

We have arranged a day trip tomorrow outside of the city, we have no desire to stay in a city of 2 million people for the day. 

The 6 of us all met for supper at a very nice restaurant that had entertainment.  There were 3 guys playing guitars, and then after them a band of 6 people came around playing guitars, drums and different traditional Ecuadorian instruments.  It was great to all be together for 1 last meal.  5 of us are staying in the same hotel we started in, and one is staying in a home near the airport. 

We got the same great room that we had the first time here, not much time to do anything today.

We went to a little shop around the corner for hot chocolate and bought some of what is supposed to be the best chocolate in the world from Ecuador. 

I had never heard of it but the girl from NYC knew what it was and it was less than ½ price here from the states so I bought a couple of bars to take tome.