Last Day in Quito

We were lucky enough to get good weather for our last day in Quito, which was perfect, because the plan for the morning was to ride the TelefériQo to get the best possible view of Quito.  Even just driving up to the base station was quite a climb.

Mom is afraid of heights, so she was on the fence about going up in the cable car, but in the end we convinced her.

We stood on our yellow circles and waited for our cable car to arrive.

Then it was up, up, and away.

By the time we got to the top, we had gone from 3,117 m (10,226 ft) at the base to 3,945 m (12,943 ft) at the top.  They had all kinds of oxygen for sale, some of it flavored, but we didn't feel the need for it.

You might need it if you continued climbing up the surrounding mountains, but we were fine where we were and just enjoyed the view.

Eventually, we made our way back down the mountain and to the old town.  Now that the weather was nice, we could stroll through the Plaza Grande and head to another restaurant my dad wanted to try at the Hotel Plaza Grande.

The setting was quite fancy, but once again we encountered incredibly slow service.  The girls got their pasta right away, and it was actually quite good, but it was an hour before any of the adults got food, and we had to practically tackle a waiter any time we needed something. Jeff finally got tired of waiting for a spoon for Elena, so that she could eat her pasta and went up to the bar to get one.  Overall, we would not recommend the dining in Quito.

Luckily, the house was just a couple blocks away, so we had some time to enjoy the sunny courtyard before packing up and heading back to the airport.

The four of us had a flight back to Bogotá at 5:45, but my parents' flight didn't leave until midnight, so we said goodbye to them at the house and headed to the airport.  When we got there, we discovered that our flight had been delayed for an hour, which I suppose is better than when it was cancelled coming back from Costa Rica, but it's a disturbing trend.  Luckily, there's an Outback at the airport, and it was all decked out for Halloween, so we camped out there to wait for our flight.

The girls and I walked around a bit and found a nice painting.

The hour delay turned into an hour and a half, but eventually, we were on the plane and headed home.  Even though we are all missing the Galapagos, it is nice to be sleeping in our own beds.

Galapagos Day 4: Cerro Colorado Tortoise Reserve

We got up in the morning with heavy hearts.  After breakfast we were leaving the ship for good.  Before leaving, I took pictures of the routes the ship does.

We had done the eastern itinerary in purple.

I want to come back though for the yellow western itinerary.

The trick is finding sail dates that match school breaks.

After breakfast, we all hung out on deck waiting for our group to be called.  Elena decided to hang out at the bar.

Eventually, the called the boobies.  We got in our zodiac with our guide Cornelia and sailed to the port of Baquerizo Moreno.  It was weird to see a town after all the wilderness we had experienced on the islands.  The sea lions were still there, but they were hanging out on fishing boats.

Elena was excited to see a prickly pear cactus, but it was a decoration in the middle of a drop off road.

We walked down one of the main streets until we came to our bus.  

The bus was going to take us on the 40 minute drive to the tortoise reserve.  Along the way, Cornelia told us about the town and the history of human habitation on the island.  She and her family live on Santa Cruz, one of the other inhabited islands.  It was an interesting drive, but we were all excited to see the giant tortoises.

The tortoises had been on the brink of extinction because of human interference.  Because they can live for months at a time without food or water, pirates and other sailors would stop by the Galapagos, collect a bunch, and then store them in the ship's hold during a long trip to have fresh meat in the middle of the ocean.  It's estimated that over a 100,000 tortoises were taken this way.  That has obviously been stopped now, and there are breeding programs on San Cristobal and Santa Cruz which are successfully reintroducing tortoises to the wild.  They keep a few of each species at the breeding centers as "insurance", but most of the occupants are little ones being protected until they are ready to take care of themselves.  We met a big guy almost as soon as we walked in.

Adult male tortoises can way around 600 pounds!  The females are still large, weighing in around 300 pounds.  They move slowly and deliberately, but they do move.  We stuck to the path to see what we could see.  It was paved at the beginning but then became rocky.

As we walked, we spotted a beautiful little yellow bird as well as some giant tortoises, including one outside a nest it had built to stay warm at night.

Our destination was the nursery, where the youngest tortoises were being kept.  They were in cages that could be double wire sealed at night.  One of the other human introduced dangers are rats, which like to snack on baby tortoises.

Each tortoise has a number painted on its back to identify it.  Next, we moved on to the larger enclosures where they keep the ones that are three to five years old.  These ones were walking around, enjoying their snacks and their water hole.

Cornelia explained that the tortoises' shells were kind of like fingernails.  The number of squares stays the same, but they expand outward.  She said it's not quite like a tree, with one ring per year, but you can estimate how old a tortoise is by looking at its shell.  As we left, we came across an older one sitting in the middle of our path.

She moved a bit to the side and pooped.  The guide told us we could walk by and not to be alarmed if we heard a shrieking sound as it was just the air escaping as the tortoise pulled her head into her shell to protect herself from us.

They can actually pull their heads in quite far, as we discovered when we encountered another one along our path that was facing towards us.

Most of the tortoises couldn't have cared less about us and just went about their daily business.

It was an awesome way to end our Galapagos trip.  After the tortoise reserve, we went back to town to grab some lunch.  Cornelia recommended a restaurant called Casablanca, and we invited her to join us.  It was a nice lunch, and we had time to pop across the street and do some shopping while we were waiting for our lunch to arrive.

Finally, it was time to head to the airport and say goodbye to the Galapagos.

There was quite a bit of traffic in Quito getting back to the AirBnb, but we had potato soup waiting for us, and after a nice dinner we all went up to bed, still feeling some of the swaying left over from being on the ship for four days.

Galapagos Day 3: Pitt Point and Cerro Brujo

Overnight, we sailed from North Seymor to San Cristobal, the large, easternmost island.  Our first stop was at the north east tip, Pitt Point.  That excursion involved climbing up a steep, rocky hill.  They showed us a video of it the night before, and we could tell it would be really tough for the girls.  Add to that the fact that we were all a bit exhausted by our pace, and we decided to sit that one out.  Judy, Grace, and my dad decided to go though, so I gave them the assignment of bringing back a picture of a red footed boobie.  Judy did not disappoint.  You can see that the bill is still blue, but the feet are red.

The rest of us took it easy on deck.  Jeff and Vivian read.

Elena colored.

On the first day, the girls had gotten little gifts.  Vivian got a pillow with her name and Elena got a little backpack with blue footed boobies on it and a coloring kit inside.

Since we had the morning free, I signed us up for an onboard activity, visiting the bridge to see how the ship is sailed.  My dad and I found it very interesting.  The girls liked the view, but I don't know how much information they actually took away from it.

That afternoon we were ready to go ashore and explore Cerro Brujo.  The first part of the outing was a ride around the cliffs.

We even got to go into some of the crevices to explore and find birds.  We found a hunting pelican which was really fun to watch.

Eventually, we made our first wet landing on the beautiful, powder white sand beach.  We had brought shoes, but ended up not needing them.

The sea lions knew about this great beach too, and we spotted one playing in the waves.

The girls and Judy got into the waves too.

Water fun for everyone.

It was a beautiful stretch of beach.

Viv, Judy, and Grace got in the water to swim, but the rest of us were captivated by the blue footed boobie flying around them and hunting for fish.

Every so often it would dive dramatically underwater after fish.  We had admired the webbed feet for their color, but now we saw how they helped with swimming and getting fish for dinner.

It made us love the blue footed boobie even more.

We stayed on the beach, because there was a possibility that sea turtle eggs were buried farther up in the sand.  It was a beautiful stop though and definitely one of our favorites.

It was hard to tear the girls away from the beach, but we had a good lure in the form of an ice cream party on deck before dinner.  The mom part of my brain flinched at that a bit, but then, hey, we were on vacation.  We got the girls cleaned up and in pajamas, and then they went to enjoy their ice cream.

Dinner started with tomato soup, which Elena declared delicious.

Then it finished off with the waiters dancing with the guests.  Vivian, being Vivian, raised her hand and jumped right in.

It was a fun way to end our last night on the ship and keep us from being sad that it was almost all over.