Cloud Mountains and flight home

The cats have joined us back in bed again.  Andre has picked up something and is not feeling the best so he slept with both cats (hot water bottles) last night. 

Today we went to Bella Vista, a beautiful spot in the cloud forest about a 2 hour drive from Quito.  I knew it was 2 hours, but I never read anywhere that the last ½ hour was going to be on a twisty one lane dirt road!  We arranged for our pick up this morning, then had our driver go to pick up Ruth at the home she is staying at, this is the last of our travel companions.


 We had lunch in the lodge, watched the hummingbirds, then drove back to the hotel.  We all slept a little on the ride back, it was raining and really clouded in so the scenery was nothing to admire, we had a great drive in though so at least we did get to see the Andes.

A lot of the land has primary forest, but anywhere that had been farmed is secondary forest.  There are 14 staff employed here, there is a research center, and guides for hikes. 

We hired a guide for 3 hours and he took us on a 3 hour hike through some beautiful, but a little difficult trails.  We hit another guide that has a passion for nature.  It was incredible the birds he could pick up by their sounds and then find them in the trees.  He also went through a lot of the different flowers and fauna with us. 

We did hear a Toucan, but unfortunately we weren’t able to see it.  They had some beautiful turquoise jays that had an amazing color. 

I think the most fun to watch were the humming birds, we saw some on our hike, but when we got back to the lodge we literally saw hundreds of them in the hour that we sat watching them.  There are more than 70 different varieties in the cloud forest, I have no idea how many varieties we saw, but it was amazing. 

What an amazing spot, it was a farm that a couple from England purchased in the 80’s and have added a lodge and cabins that probably sleep 40 people.  They are working at bringing the land back to its original forest with trees that have not been introduced. 

Back to our hotel and we said our good-byes to Ruth, our driver was taking her back to her lodging from our hotel. 

Our last farewell to our fellow cruisers, Ruth is our new friend from England, another person that I think we will be keeping in touch with. 

She has had a very interesting life, full of travels and great fun to talk to.  She was Andres buddy on the first day when he deserted me snorkelling, and I never let her forget it! 

We made one more last run through the market that is quite close to the hotel, back for a quick supper and now we are finished packing up and pretty much ready for our cab pick up at 5AM. 

I just turned on the TV in our room, first TV in about 2 weeks, Dancing with the Stars is on, but I think it is at least 2 years old, and with Spanish subtitles.  That’s it for this trip report. 

I simply cannot express how much we have enjoyed ourselves, I would be very afraid to try to do this again, I don’t know how we could ever exceed this. 

Flight Home:

We are on the last leg of our journey now. 

We started this morning with a 5am pick up in Quito, and right now it is 6:30 PM and we are in Montreal. 

So close to be able to go and visit my family, but still a little too far away. 

We are due to arrive back in Moncton at about 11PM tonight, if it is not too late and I'm not too tired I will give you a call Joey, you'll be the only one still up! 

Tomorrow will be a huge laundry day, and a good shower.

I am so looking forward to our own bed tonight, Andre seems to think there will be cats waiting for him every night in bed, he's dreaming. 

Andre may not be too mobile tomorrow, he's suffering a bit of stomach problems, but thankfully hasn't been too bad today or it would have been a very long day for him.

Thanks everyone for reading along, or at least pretending to.  It has been fun reliving our days and keeping track of this, I really had to do it every day in the Galapagos because each day was so different. 

Looking forward to seeing some of you soon, and hopefully everyone in the not too distant future.

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. 

Last full day in Galapagos

Today is our last full day in the Galapagos. 

Today we have decided it is a beach day and found that there are beaches to walk to not too far from our hotel.


The first beach you reach is absolutely beautiful but not safe for swimming.  There are large breakers and lots of current, definitely not inviting for swimming but a beautiful white sand beach.  5 of us met this morning and walked to Tortuga Bay beach. 

It is about a 20 minute walk to the entrance, then a 45 minute walk along a path to the actual beach. 

This is the closest swimming beach to town which is too bad for the locals, it is quite a hike to take your kids swimming. 

If you walk to the very end of the beach through the mangrove you have access to a nice calm lagoon. 

We did a little detour before getting to the lagoon and walked out to the point, lots of marine iguanas here, and some more blue footed boobies, and from above you could see the turtles in the lagoon

2 people rented a kayak, Andre and I went snorkelling, and the other girl stayed on the beach and watched our stuff and wrote postcards.  The snorkelling was not that good, the water was quite murky.  This was the warmest water we have been in since we have been here, and it is so salty it was very easy to just float around. 

The 2 that went kayaking came in after about an hour and were all excited over all the sharks they had seen, Andre ventured out with his snorkel gear but didn’t last too long, there were so many sharks it kind of freaked him out, he said it was so murky that he wasn’t sure that they didn’t know what he was and that kind of bothered him, so he went and rented a kayak to check them out further. 


The other couple by now have headed back into town, but the 3 of us stayed on the beach for a couple of hours before heading back to town for lunch.  I wasn’t really interested in seeing them but after his visit with the sharks he brought the kayak into me and told me I really should go look.  I love the blue footed boobies, but when they dive behind you while you are looking for sharks I didn’t appreciate them so much!

The guide had told us about where to get the best cervices in town, turns out we ended up at a different place, right at the docks where the ferry leaves for the different islands.  This was a great spot, lots of action during lunch. 

After lunch we split up, we went back to our hotel to start packing up, did a little more exploring around town, and then met everyone for supper. 

To get to the restaurant for supper we had to take a water taxi across to the point in the harbour, during the crossing we got the driver to go by our boat the Samba, this was very funny for us because we saw a whole new group sitting at the dinner table we had spent the last week at, we started yelling at the ship for our waiter/bartender/porter on board named Nixon and he came out to the bow and waved at us, so funny I’m sure he had no clue who we were. 

We had a very nice last dinner, we had had some fun with the menu in getting this night organized, the meal was included in our tour but we were give so many different menu options, but then told we all had to decide on one, it was very strange and of course caused lots of laughs but we all survived.  I imagine this will be our last meal together, it will be strange just having the 2 of us together again, one of the girls thinks we are going to go through separation anxiety.  Off to bed, another early morning tomorrow, we’re being picked up at 7:15 for our ride to the airport.