GoneToSee

On Sunday, another team was going to the parrot lick but our group wasn’t.  This was something I wanted to see so I switched groups for the day.  Our guide was Fredy.  The trip to the parrot lick took about an hour first by paddled canoe, then a walk on the boardwalk to the motorized canoe and then up the river toward Coca.

The parrot lick is a place were parrots come to eat the clay on the cliff side.  They come by the hundreds.  The clay helps them digest what they’ve eaten.

We spent about a half-hour watching the parrots.  There were two different kinds of parrots but you won’t be able to tell the difference from these pictures.

After that, we headed to the Sani community center to see them prepare their local food and look at some of the crafts they have to sell.

This woman was mixing fish with different ingredients in a banana leaf to put on the open fire.

The long black pieces are bananas.  The lady in the white t-shirt is cutting off the cooked peels.

Here they have taken a large cacao and are getting the pieces out of it to also cook.  Cacao is the basis of chocolate but once cooked it tastes more like nuts than chocolate.

This was my fish.  I ate about half of it.  It was actually pretty good.  I also tried the cacao and ate one of the cooked bananas.

One of our guide’s nieces and Fredy.  The dyed markings on his face last about a week and they re-do them for special occasions. It gives them individual identities.

After lunch….and the rain had stopped…we headed out for more bird and monkey hunting.

We worked our way into some pretty tight spots.

We also spotted some squirrel monkeys and another kind I can’t remember the name of at the moment.

This last one is a red howler monkey.  He’s about 200 yards away.  These monkeys make so much noise.  You and here them a mile away.  It is a loud growling sound.  This was the best view we got of one.  We saw three others the day before but they were even farther away.

On Monday, another guide and I went out by ourselves since most of my original group had already left for home or other stops on their trips.  We spotted some parrots and some other birds.

After lunch, another guest, Clinton, from British Columbia and I went back to the canopy tower.  We stayed there until after 6pm and finally, I was able to get some good pictures.  As I mentioned, the tower is 120′ high and the platform is probably about 50′ x 30′.  There are 210 steel steps to the wood platform.  The first shot is the tower from a canoe earlier in the day from some distance to show it in the top of the tree.

The second shot is is looking up the side of the stairs.  Next, we go onto the platform.

I was able to photograph six or seven different types of birds.  Clinton and the guides probably saw a few others that I didn’t get pictures of.

This is a rather rare sighting, I’m told, of a scale breasted woodpecker.

Opal crowned tanager.

The prettiest one of all. Black-tailed Trogon.

After dinner, we packed up for an early start for the airport in Coca.  Breakfast on Tuesday was at 5:30 and Clinton and I were in the canoe at 6:30.  We got to Coca about 10 and by 11 we were on our way back to Quito.

I was met at the airport by a cousin of Fredy, our guide, who might be my guide for my next leg of the trip to Mindo.  After discussing his fees, the car rental, gas, his hotel and meals, I decided I couldn’t afford it.  Meanwhile, I went to the AeroGal counter to see if they had a seat available for Cuenca.  They did.  I booked it and started hunting online for a hostal in Cuenca.  About a half-hour later, I had a room there and one in Otavalo for Friday and Saturday and probably, Sunday and one in Mindo for the following Monday-Thursday.  I’ll return to Quito on Thursday, March 21 and spend my last days there.

My next post will cover Cuenca and I hope to do that tonight.  Then we’ll be up to date again.

Javier had a long day planned for us on Saturday.  Breakfast at 5:30 and then it was off on a five-mile hike.

First they bailed out the boat before putting the seats back in.  Then we paddled to our starting point.  It rained much of the hike but we were primarily looking for birds.  About the only mammals here that we’ll see are some monkeys.  The birds are everywhere and the guides are amazing at spotting them.

These are Hoatzin.  They are very common.  You take pictures of the first 50 and then you ignore them the rest of your time there. I’m of the opinion that that were four kinds of people at Sani Lodge.  Birders and I mean pretty serious birders.  People who had check lists that they were trying to fill in.  There was also bird photographers.  Not necessarily serious birders but serious bird photographers.  There was a Swedish couple and they had shot 50+ different kinds of hummingbirds around South America in the past 60 days.  They had a private guide for their stay.  Third, there was me.  I consider myself a decent photographer but it could be birds today, bears tomorrow and hot air balloons the day after that.  Lastly, there were people who just wanted the experience of the rainforest.  The day before I left a couple from Quebec arrived with their 6-year-old daughter and their point and shoot camera.

To be a great bird photographer you need extremely large lenses because most of the birds are some distance away and they’re smaller than a bear.  I have a decent long lens but it pales in comparison to what the big boys carry.  My Swedish friend’s wife had a lens that cost more than my entire collection of gear.  And that was just the lens.  The camera doubled that.  Anyway, I digress.

I bought a small guide from the lodge to help identify the birds the guide was calling out as he spotted them.  I’m not going to try to identify all of them here but simply show you some of what I was able to capture.  Some I’ll identify.

Masked Crimson Tanager

Tiger Heron

Common Potoo.  It’s hard to see because he blends in so well with the post he’s sitting on in the first picture.

Tropical Screech-Owl

Great Potoo

White-tailed swallow.

Greater Ani

It’s in the passion fruit family and is a Granedilli. (I’m not sure on the spelling.) We stopped for a snack and got this along with a small cheese and preserve sandwich and a small chocolate bar.  The inside of this fruit is like small sacks of a substance with a seed in each sack.  You suck it out of the peeling and chew up the seed.  It is very sweet and tastes great.  The seed is like eating a rice crispie.

We did find one small, non-poisonous snake.

By noon we were back at the lodge for lunch which was always at 1pm.  Dinner was a 7pm daily.

I think I can get two more days out of this outfit.

Late in the afternoon we go to the canopy tower. You climb 210 steps to the top of the 120′ tower.  All of the birds I see are so far away I thought they were dust specks on my computer screen.  I’ll be going back on Monday and I’ll show you the pictures I got later.

Well, I’m headed out for a special dinner tonight in Cuenca.  A local delicacy.  Tell you about it a couple of posts from now.

I spent the last five days in the rainforest.  Late yesterday, March 12, I flew to Cuenca but I’ll pick up the story last Friday when I left for the rainforest.

I flew from Quito to Coca where I was met by a guide from the Sani Lodge.  There were five others on the flight but I didn’t know that until arriving in Coca.  It’s about a 25 minute flight from Quito.  We met two others guys, friends from New Jersey, who had taken the overnight bus from Quito for 9 hours.  A couple of more guides from the lodge were at the docks when we arrived by taxi.  We were off for a 2 1/2 hour first leg to the lodge.  It’s 90 miles approximately from Coca by motorized canoe.  This is the main transportation from village to village on the Rio Napo.

Javier would be my guide along with this couple from San Francisco and the two guys from New Jersey.  After our motorized canoe ride complete with a boxed lunch, we had a roughly 1/2 walk on a 6′ wide boardwalk over the swamp to the last leg of our journey.  A paddled canoe trip to the lodge.

Our first sight of the lodge docks.  Several of us in this group planned to tent camp about 5 minutes from the main lodge.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your outlet, the travel gods smiled down on us.  The previous week there had been a windstorm that damaged the thatched roofs on several of the campsites so…..we were moved to one of the cabins.  This was mine.

It was very comfortable and even had hot water and mosquito netting.  The upgrade to the cabin was worth about $600.  It was worth every penny but I’m glad we didn’t have to pay it since we’d reserved the campsites.

The Sani community has 90,000 acres here.  The rest of the lodge had an dining room/office building, a bar/lounge, a employee dorm and the individual cabins.  They also have a canopy tower which I’ll tell you about in a future post.

There were wooden walkways connecting everything as the ground gets pretty soggy from the daily rain.  We were issued boots and a rain poncho.  We never went anywhere without them.  After arriving, getting assigned our cabins and settling in, we were off for a short one mile hike before dinner.

After dinner we hiked the same trail with our flashlights to see the difference.  This was the creepy, crawly tour.

Some of the spiders, etc., were as large as your fist.  It was so quiet and the stars are nothing like we see in a populated area.  They were much brighter and much more numerous than we are used to.

We had three meals a day in the dining room.  Breakfast was between 5:30 and 6:30 depending on your activity for day.  You usually had to use your flashlight to get to breakfast and always on your way back to your cabin.

Power comes on at 4am and comes off sometime during the morning after breakfast and is off until about 5pm until 11 pm.  It is a generator.  After dinner several of us might gather in the bar/lounge to talk about our day and have a beer or coke.  Beer was $5 and cokes, $2.

By the way, Lois and Larry, there was a group of 19 Oklahoma State students and professor on my flight from Coca to Quito yesterday afternoon.  They were on their way to the Galapagos for a few days.

Well, I’m off shortly for a city tour of Cuenca.  I’ll try and post again this evening with a continuation of my rainforest experience.

Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island is the most populated town in the Galapagos.  I believe the population is around 20,000.  I believe the entire Galapagos population is about 80,000.  In 2011 they had 140,000 tourists and last year the number grew to 170,000.

The people here are very friendly and I have no fear when walking through the town.  I’ve ventured away from the downtown area on several occasions to see residences and about the only thing you have to watch out for are taxis.  The right-of-way doesn’t belong to the pedestrian. Here are a variety of scenes from around town.

I shot the first picture because I knew my friend, Bill, would enjoy the bamboo used for the scaffolding.

This is one of those more expensive hotels.  This afternoon I had to have a check scanned and emailed to a lodge in the jungle so I stopped at one of the oceanfront hotels because I knew the front desk people would speak English.  The young lady told me it was $330 per night…BUT, that included breakfast.

A pharmacy.

Local produce or you can get it right off the truck.

Cheese

Later in the afternoons and into the evening, there are a number of street vendors with watermelon, cakes, pastries, ice cream, etc.

I had a piece of this chocolate cake.  It was great and the portion was huge.  Cost me $3.

Couple of restaurants.  There are dozens of mom and pop places along with quite a few more established places to eat.  So far, I’ve stuck with the those.  Most all of them are open air places. Also, most stores don’t have their lights on during the day to reduce the heat.  They’re only turned on in the evening.  Even then, almost all the bulbs are flourescent.

This was lunch at a small restaurant across from my hotel.

This is a shrimp ceviche.  It is fresh shrimp in a lime/onion juice with double deep fried bananas.  Later, I’ll show you how those bananas are made.  I watched it being done.  Notice the Coke in a bottle.  No cans of Coke.  Actually, while some residences have lots of discarded junk in their yards, the streets and sidewalks are kept very clean.  They are very environmentally aware.

A bin for paper, plastic and organic.  Street sweepers are out most mornings.

The main streets have a bicycle lane nearest the curb and brick paving.  There’s lots of construction going on in downtown to make it modern for tourists.  The back streets are narrow and not as nice.

This guy isn’t what your typical Galapagan looks like but I liked his face.  He’s having a coconut juice he bought from a street vendor nearby.  I’ve played it pretty safe and haven’t eaten much, other than the chocolate cake, from a street vendor.  What could they do to chocolate cake?

Last night I went to the fish market.

After the market closed, a street vendor set up shop with his whole family.  He deep fried some kind of fish whole…head, tail, etc….People where lined up for it.  You got a whole fish, rice (of course) some fried bananas and salad.  All for $5.  The way they fix the fried bananas is quite interesting.  They peel them (obviously) slice them into two-inch chunks, deep fry them, then mash them with a mallet and deep fry them again.  The are delicious.  I’ve had them several times in restaurants.

  Here’s lookin’ at ‘cha!

I think I’m going back there tonight and have a dinner for myself.

Here’s my dinner from last night.  Shrimp in a coconut and passion fruit sauce, rice (yippee) and friend bananas.  The small bowl had spicy sauce to dip the shrimp into.  It was quite good but cost me more than $5.  A fair bit more!

While I was at the fish market, the pelicans and sea lions hang around looking for handouts or droppings.  If you notice this pelican has a fish in his throat and is working it down to his stomach.

There’s also a small marine iguana in the background.

So much for enriching your culinary knowledge.  This morning, Wednesday, I was off to get a small load of laundry done before leaving the Galapagos tomorrow.  This bus was loaded with kids in a summer program headed off to some activity.

From here I took at five mile round trip walk to Tortuga Bay.  This has got to be the most beautiful white sand beach I’ve seen here.  The walk is along a brick paved path.  There are two beaches here.  One for surfers and, further on, one for swimmers.  Frankly, after walking to the surfers beach I took my pictures and visited with a young guy who had been to college in Florida and then I headed back.  I was soaked with sweat.

My timing was almost perfect.  I no sooner got back to my hotel and it started raining.  So far, I’ve been pretty lucky.  It’s only rained one other day.  The rain doesn’t last more than a half hour and the sun is back out.

The other day I showed you the courtyard at my hotel.  Here’s the front and my room.

Don’t everyone rush out to book this place.  I’m staying one more night.  It’s clean and even though the staff, Louis, at the front desk and the maid, don’t speak English, they always smile at me and say “Ola!”

I’m leaving early tomorrow morning for Quito.  Then on Friday morning I’ve made arrangements to go to the jungle to the Sani Lodge for five days and four nights of tent camping on a raised platform to keep the caimans away.  At least, I hope it keeps the caimans away.  Caimans are South American alligators.  They are night hunters, I’m told.

Interestingly, today I emailed a copy of my personal check drawn on a Dallas bank as payment in full.  I do have to give them the real check when we meet up at the airport but they accept cash, credit card with a 4% penalty, or a check drawn on a U.S bank.

One last thing.  On our cruise last Thursday a couple of fisherman dropped two tunas off.  The crew cleaned them and several of our group sampled a freshly cut piece of sushi.  (I wasn’t one of them)  We had tuna steaks that night for dinner.

That’s Joline from the Netherlands. She joined us mid-week for a four-night trip.

I believe I’ll be out of touch after tonight until at least next Monday when I return to Quito.  I know I have to have matches to light a candle at my campsite for light so I doubt if they have Internet service.  Maybe at the bar.  They have everything at the bar.

More later….

As promised, sunset at the equator on Friday, March 1

This was about 6:30 Friday evening as we were headed north around the northern end of Isabela Island.

Saturday began with a 6:15 snorkel near the boat.  I saw my first spotted-eagle rays and a marbled ray but didn’t get very good pictures.  Also, saw a small shark and a sea lion and lots of other fish.  It was also a day for a short walk to hunt for the Galapagos hawk and luckily for us we found one and only one near the beach.

We hiked inland for about 30 minutes then returned to the beach.  We could swim, snorkel or just sit on the beach.  I chose to sit in the shade of a mangrove tree and watch the sand crabs do their work.

This was a wet landing for us so we had to scramble ashore and scramble back to our dingy without getting our backpacks wet and jump aboard.

After lunch there was another volcano climb and snorkel which I passed on.  We weren’t looking for any new wildlife and I spent the time downloading most of my pictures and making entries into my diary.

Our captain, Milton, didn’t speak much English but he was always there to offer a helping hand aboard the boat when we returned from a dingy trip or he was at the helm.

The chef was also very friendly but, frankly, I thought the food was just average.  I wasn’t expecting a Caribbean cruise-type menu but what we had was filling but just okay.  Lots of rice.  Rice with olives, rice with asparagus, rice with broccoli, etc.  Lunch almost always started with some sort of hot soup followed by rice and something else.  Dinner was more rice with chicken, beef, tuna steaks, casseroles, fruit, and a salad of some sort. We also had a dessert with dinner.  Maybe I prejudice because I like desserts but I thought they were always good.  I couldn’t pronounce our chef’s name but he tried with the budget he was allowed.

Saturday evening, a small pod of bottle-nosed dolphin started swimming with the boat.  Everyone headed for the bow to try to get a good look as they were right under the ship.

It was a great end to the day.

Saturday evening’s briefing covered all of the wildlife we’d seen on the cruise and the list was extensive.  I would guess there were 50 animals and birds on that list.  I didn’t get any pictures of Galapagos penquins and didn’t see any when I was snorkeling although others did.  I did see one or two along the rocks.  We also talked about our plans for Day 8.

We were up for another 6:15 wet landing on Muscara Beach.  It was time for sunrise on the beach and a sea lion colony.

We were back on board Guantanamera for breakfast at 7:15.

Our life on board was governed by the “bell”.  We were called to meals, briefings, dingy rides, snorkeling, whatever the event.  Whenever you heard the bell you knew you had to be somewhere.  Someone….either the bartender…who served meals or the guide were the primary bell ringers.  There wasn’t a wake up bell except for the two early dingy trips on Saturday and Sunday at 6:15.  Those mornings our guide rang the bell at 6am.

Saturday night we received envelopes and an evaluation form on our bunks.  You tipped the guide in one envelope and you tipped the crew in the other.  The crew split their envelope eight ways.  The guide got whatever you put in his.  I don’t know if the crew split their amount equally or if there was a formula based on your job.

It’s called an 8 day 7 night cruise but Day 1 started for me at 5pm on Sunday when I came aboard and Day 8 ended for everyone at 8:45am.  So it was really a 6 day/ 7 night cruise.  It sounds better in the brochures the other way.

Sunday morning the boat dropped all of us at the ferry landing near the airport and provide bus transportation to the airport.  All of had to go to the airport and either fly to their next destination or catch a bus back to Puerto Ayora.  The boat was off to get cleaned up for the next group.  The cruise was over.

I had tried to get my return flight to Quito changed while I was at the airport but the reservationist at the AeroGal ticket counter couldn’t do it.  I had to go to the office in Puerto Ayora on Monday, yesterday.

I checked in to the same hotel I was supposed to stay at the previous Sunday…the Sir Francis Drake which is near downtown.  It has air-conditioning and hot water.  It is probably a low to mid-range hotel.  I pay $35 per night.  There are some places available for $10 and others I’ll show you some pictures of tomorrow for $150-$200 per night.  Those are for people richer and older than me.  Well, at least, richer. Okay?

The courtyard at the hotel.

In the next post I’ll show you around Puerto Ayora.

Everyday we see new things.  Today we moved to Elizabeth Bay also on Isabela Island.  I think we stop at five or six places around Isabela Island during this cruise.  We took a dingy ride into the mangroves to look for sea turtles and other things.

The last picture is a sally-lightfoot crab.  They are just about everywhere.  Very colorful.  After we leave the mangroves we head for a spot to snorkel.

Our guide, Johan, knows all the best spots.  Afterall, he’s been bringing people here for three years.  You cannot travel around the Galapagos without a guide.  The national park forbids independent travel within the islands.  You can sail into the area but you must register with the national park and either take a cruise or enlist a guide.

We see sea tortoises and sea lions come right to our faces, there are sharks around but I don’t get any pictures because they’re out of camera range.

This last one is upside down near the surface but is within touching range.  Which, of course, you aren’t allowed to do.

After lunch we move to Urbina Bay to see land tortoises and land iguanas.

As we walk on the path, the tortoises withdraw into their shells but don’t move off.  Today we saw more than 20 land tortoises.  They weigh up to 250-300 lbs.  Further up the trail we see our first land iguana.

We see about 10 land iguanas.  Tomorrow we head to another locations to see marine iguanas.  They are dark green and black and tend to blend in with the lava.

They gather in large groups to warm in the sun.  Often you’ll see them on top of each to build up heat.

After dinner this evening we’ll cross the equator the third time.  The other two times were in the middle of the night.   Tonight it will be a sunset and we’ll be at 0’00’00’ latitude.

I’ll start my last cruise blog with the sunset picture next time.

Today, Monday, I went looking for the Aerogal Airlines office here in Puerto Ayora to try and get my reservation back to Quito changed.  I have a reservation for this Friday but I’d like to leave sooner, if possible.  Yesterday, when we arrived back in Puerto Ayora the boat drops us at the ferry dock and we have to ride the bus back to the airport.  While I was there I went to the Aerogal counter but they indicated they didn’t have any openings until Thursday and that I’d have to go to the office in town to talk to them about changing my reservation.

This morning I was at the office ten minutes before it opened and I was #16 in line.  Luckily, a lady in line helped translate for me.  (Knowing Spanish would be a definite help here since most people here don’t speak English and my Spanish is weak.)  Anyway, she told me that many tour companies block more seats than they need and 3pm is the release time for tomorrow.  The reservationist told me she’d hold a seat for me for tomorrow morning if something opened up.  I have to be back at the office about 3pm. to find out.

That’s it for this post.  The waiter wants my seat in the restaurant if I’m not going to order the land tortoise steak and seafood combo dinner.  Adios!

Everyone gets along very well.  Most of the passengers have traveled extensively.  Enie (pronounce onya like Sonya without the “S”) is a artillery officer in the Irish Army.  She’s on a one year leave and has been to India, Miramar, Thailand, and is now traveling through Ecuador and Bolivia before heading to Europe for a short time.   She’s seen here with Linda from Winnipeg in the center and my roommate, Douglas.

Roger and Jane Boyce are from near Detroit.  They’re the only other Americans on the boat.  I’m not sure if they’re related to a friend with the same last name in Grand Island but I believe he comes from near Detroit, as well.  They’re retired school teachers and have done a major trip each year for the last seven.

The couple on the right is Tom and Monica.  They’re from Switzerland and don’t expect to get back home until next October.   That’ll be about a year since leaving.  Tom was with an airline as a flight attendant.

Brian in the red shirt is on the trip with his significant other, Ann-Marie.  They are from Calgary.  Jordan on the right and the young lady on the right, Gemma, are from Australia.  They are 23 and they hope to be gone for a year.  They’ve already been on the road for 4 months.

The two with the glasses are both named Britta and both are from Germany although they didn’t know each other.  Britta on the left quit her job as a software consultant to travel a while and Britta on the right is a mechanical engineering student.  The lady in the front is Connie and she’s also from Switzerland.

After a dry landing, we hike to the top of a volcano on Bartolome…345 ft….on a wooden staircase/boardwalk.  No wildlife to see but a nice view of the cove where we are anchored with several other boats.

Later, we’ll snorkel.

After dinner we move to Isabela, the largest island in the Galapagos.  We’re going to climb the second largest volcanic caldera in the world.  It’s 4500 ft although we get a bus ride to the trailhead it’s still a pretty good climb to the top.

Once there, we’ll see the caldera that is approximately 5 miles by 7 miles.  This volcano last erupted in 2005.

In the afternoon, we visit a land turtle breeding facility and see some rather large turtles but since I’m more interested in seeing them in the wild a little later I’m going to skip showing you them now.

We also get a little time at Beto’s Bar to have a beer, enjoy the beach and use the internet.  I posted from here last Wednesday but couldn’t get any pictures up.  Here they are now.

Tomorrow is going to be one of the best wildlife days of the cruise.

I arrived last Sunday in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos.  After checking into my hotel, I headed out to find a last-minute cruise.         

This is the Guantanamera.  It carries 16 passengers but on this trip there will be just 15 of us.  After I meet up with the boat, we have dinner and start for Genovesa Island.  The northern most visited island on the north side of the equator.  If you haven’t brought your own snorkel gear you can rent it from the crew for $30 for the week.

We awaken on Monday morning near Genovesa Island and head to shore by dingy for the first of our hikes.

Most of the Galapagos was formed by volcanoes.  The land is primarily lava and after millions of years, mangroves and other plants and grasses have started to grow.  Our guide Johan is an expert.  He is constantly educating us about the plants and animals we encounter.

For example, there are three kinds of boobies here:  red-footed, blue-footed and Nazca.  We’ll see the red-footed and Nazca here and the blue-footed ones later.

This is obviously the red-footed one.  It nests in trees.  The Nazca booby nests on the ground.  Here’s one with two eggs.

Here’s a mother and her baby Nazca booby and a baby stretching her wings.

The babies look like puffs of cotton.We also saw frigate birds here.  The males have a red pouch under their chins that they use to attract the females with.  I have one in flight and one sitting with his pouch inflated.

This is a young female frigate bird with a white head.  The mature female has a black head.

On Monday we also snorkeled three times.  We would snorkel from the dingy, from the beach and also off the boat although that was rare.  The first day we watched white-tipped sharks circle the boat while we were at anchor.  We weren’t allowed to jump from the boat there because they might think we were food.  We could swim among them if we had gone into the water from the dingy or from shore.  We also looked for hammerhead sharks.  If you look closely at this photo you can see the hammerhead shark.  It was about 15 feet below me and tends to blend into the background.

And here’s a self-portrait I took with my underwater camera.

We would snorkel from 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the activity around us.

Every day we returned to the boat for lunch while the boat moved to a different location.  We’d then do another hike and/or snorkel followed by some rest time and then dinner.  After dinner, we usually had a briefing about the next day’s activities.

Day 2 of the cruise is coming up.

We’ve been without an internet signal since leaving Puerto Ayora Sunday evening about 5pm.  RIght now, I’m sitting about 50′ for the beach at Beto’s Bar with an Equadorian Pilsner.  We have about an hour before we are due back at the center of town to go back to the ship.

Their are 15 passengers on this cruise.  A couple from Australia, another from Mhigan, a couple from Switzerland, two single ladies from Germany, a couple from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, a single lady from Winnipeg, a single gentleman—my roommate–from London, a single lady form Switzerland, and a single lady who is an artillery officer in the Irish army and me.

We’ve had great weather.  We hiked quite a bit, snorkeled three times on Monday and Tuesday and climbed to the second largest calderon in the world from a volcano that last erupted in 2005.

We’re in Puerto Villemil, Isabel Island.  This is the largest island in the Galapagos.  Typically we spend the day hiking or snorkeling.  I’ve photographed hammerhead sharks underwater along with starfish the size of large dinner plates.  There have been lots of colorful fish.  We’ve also seen red-footed, blue-footed and nazca boobies, frigate birds, huge land turtles and so much more.  The signal for the wi-fi is not the strongest here but I’m going to try to put up some pictures.  If not I’ll be back in Puerto Ayora on Sunday and will try another posting with more pictures at that time.

Each day starts with breakfast at 7.  The first two days we could see reef sharks circling the boat and we’ve seen them when we were snorkeling, as well,  They won’t bother you.  Yesterday some of our group saw Ecuadorian penquins but I wasn’t in the right place and missed them.  Others have also seen various kinds of rays.

The boat has nine crew people most of whom don’t speak much English.  Our guide is great.  Speaks very good English and is extremely well-informed.

It’s true.  I met 27-year-old Ingrid at the new Quito airport which is an hour and a half from town.  I had already planned on staying at the airport because I had a 6:40am flight to the Galapagos and I had to be at the airport two hours before flight time. 

Ingrid was one of a group of people who had camped out for the night waiting to board an early flight to somewhere.  Me to the Galapagos and Ingrid to Cuzco for a university conference where she’s doing a presentation. 

It wasn’t a very comfortable floor and I couldn’t sleep so we visited.  For example, she is studying to be mechanical engineer and she just started a job working 44 hours a week for $500 per month.  Her apartment is a two bedroom unit in Cali, Colombia in a complex that has a swimming pool.  She says she things she’s got a pretty nice place and it’s $200 per month.  Gas is about $5 a gallon and milk about $4.

Also met these three and their boyfriends.  They were from Chile and Argentina and we’re on their way home from a 5 week trip.

Anyway, at 5:30am the reservationists from Aerogal Airlines showed up and we started through the line.  Two tour groups showed up and immediately went to the head of the line.  We were about 15 minutes late departing but we made it to the Galapagos.  We boarded a unairconditioned bus for a ride to the ferry.  Paid .80 for the trip to the other side and then boarded another unairconditioned bus for a 45 minute ride to Puerto Ayora. That bus was $1.80.   I found the hotel I’d booked and dropped my bags and went hunting a cruise.  I found one and leave on an 8 day/7 night cruise in less than an hour.

I’m not sure when I’ll have wi-fi access so I’m not sure when the next post will be.

Ingrid left for Cuzco.