AMAZON AND THE GALAPAGOS DAY 14 & 15 – QUITO AND OUT

After that incredibly peaceful visit to Cerro Dragon, we climb back into the panga and board the Sirius for the final time.  Breakfast is at 7:30 followed by a scurry of activity to pack and get our bags out into the hallway.  Then it’s making sure we get everyone’s contacts… Instagrams are exchanged, e-mails gathered, Facebooks faced. 

We pull into a small harbor right near the Quito airport and mug with the local Brigantine newspaper for the folks back home (it's a small town thing...)  We disembark and are transported to the departures door.  Check-in is quick and our guides Fernanda and Fabien perform their last duty by  taking us to the VIP lounge.  Hugs and very genuine thanks.

 

It’s about 2 hours in the lounge with our yachmates.  The group dynamic fades away as we’re all in anticipation of the next thing.  The Latam flight is easy and efficient, and in a few hours we’re back in Quito.  A driver with my name on a sign (that gets me every time!) whisks us from the airport to the EB hotel, where we’re warmly checked in.  It’s going on 6, we’re tired and hungry. 

When we ask the nice woman at reception for a local restaurant, she knows exactly what we’re after.  No hotel dinner.  No Michelin chef.  Somewhere she would go with her family on a Tuesday.  It’s a $1.33 Uber ride to Nuna-Restaurant in downtown Tababela, the closest town to the airport and home to just 2000 residents.  It’s tiny, charming, bright colors, lots of flowers, rough wood tables and chairs.  The waitress couldn’t be nicer making recommendations for house and Ecuadorian specialties.  I open with the liter of Pilsner beer ($5) which comes with an Octoberfest sized frosted mug.  Mandy and I split absolutely scrumptious green plantain soup and thank god we did, because the $7 bowl was at least 2 quarts.  The upside is that it made my ridiculous 40oz beer bottle look normal sized in the picture.  Mandy’s salmon has a beautiful papaya glaze (the house speciality) and I score the nicely prepared Churrasco (traditional steak with sunnyside eggs and fries).  Full, happy and a bit buzzy, we crash hard.

We don’t remember much before, but we’re both moving.  Awake? Maybe.  It’s pitch dark.  The ship is lurching, bucking wildly side to side.  It’s the Minnow in the storm.  We’re both trying to make it to the bathroom but are being tossed wall to wall in the short hallway.  I’m trying to save her, but I can barely stay upright.  One at a time, we make it.  The trip back is just as harrowing – the waves may have gotten worse – and we’re trying to not end up dumped all over the deck.  We have no idea what time it is.  It’s pitch dark.  We’re in a hotel room.  On dry land.  I think we just had a mutual hallucination, a joint trip within our trip.  Many hours later, this will be very, very funny.

Sunlight around the edges of the shades.  Our flight isn’t until 6pm, and we figure we can sleep on the plane.  Or when we get home.  Or maybe never again after what happened last night.  So we Uber back to downtown Quito.  It’s Friday of May Day weekend so all the kids are off from school.  We started this trip on Easter weekend in Quito, so it’s somehow fitting that we close it out on another holiday.  This is not an early city, but we like starting when the streets are quiet and we can take a moment to enjoy the art culture that captures the joy of this place. 

As we get closer to noon the town is in full swing.  We’re some of the very few foreigners, so we're extra apologetic to make up for our lack of language skills.  Thankfully. everyone we encounter is kind and accommodating.  We have fun with the street vendors.  The licensed vendors display their blue permits and set up tables on blocks designated to be outdoor markets.  It’s vibrant and colorful.  Their goods are regulated to be produced in Ecuador but after a half a dozen tables the merch gets pretty repetitive. 

The unlicensed vendors wander the streets, selling only what they can carry.  Early in the trip we learned that there is no social net in Ecuador (unemployment, welfare, etc.) so most of these folks are just doing what they can to get by day-to-day.  There is a very significant police presence (at least one uniformed officer on every block) but they generally leave the vendors alone as long as they keep moving and don’t get overly aggressive in approaching anyone.  The vendors sell a very random assortment of products.  One woman is just selling wash rags.  Another, a yellow liquid packaged in random used bottles that we suspect to be some sort of liquor.  But hey, those wooden spoons are nice….

There are also the meringue vendors, little men in retro blue and white uniforms with ridiculously tiny carts that dispense a sweet treat for a dollar.  They’re everywhere and they make us smile each time we see them.

The blocks are arranged such that all the shops of similar products are bunched together.  Two blocks of just party supplies.  Three whole blocks of barbers.  A few blocks with only butchers.  Our favorite blocks are home to the spice merchants.  Huge buckets, barrels, crates and sacks of fresh and dried herbs, legumes, spices of all kinds and dried fruit are piled to the ceiling of narrow storefronts no more then 10 feet wide.  We squeeze in and out of a few before picking $3 worth of cinnamon sticks (which is about 4 pounds in pieces almost the size of a paper towel tubes).  We also get $1 of the salty roasted corn kernels we have been loving on (about a quart) and another $1 of dried, salted fava beans that are kinda like a corn nut mated with a crouton.   

The altitude, steep streets and general exhaustion has officially caught up with us.  We find a rooftop with nice shade for our last meal in Ecuador.  The food is good.  The views are fun.  The Virgin of Quito watches over us all.

Our flight delivers us to JFK at 1am.  3 until we get home.  We sleep late into Saturday morning dreaming of tiny monkeys, mystical sea creatures, and birds with colorful toes. 

AMAZON AND THE GALAPAGOS DAY 14 - LAST STOP IN WONDERLAND

It’s been a whirlwind.  The Amazon jungle seems like a lifetime ago.  Our dream time in the Galapagos went by in a blink.  And here we are, the last time we’ll wake up on the Sirius.  If we get up really early, and half the passengers do, we can hop on the 6am panga to Cerro Dragon on Santa Cruz Island.  Here at the equator, sunrise and sunset is always the same time, 6am and 6pm, so we watch the sunrise as we board the little boat.  The blaze of fiery yellow hair on the sun portends the heat of the coming day.

When we disembark the sun is hidden behind the tall volcano at the center of Santa Cruz, the same one responsible for this island’s existence.  This gives us an opportunity to see an entire second sunrise from behind the mountain as if a single dawn was not enough to say goodbye to us.

We’re greeted by a female sealion.  She’s clearly exhausted, but her social instincts are stronger.  She addresses us several times, plopping face down between each greeting in fatigue.  We say hello, then stay with her in silence for a few minutes of peace for us all.  Take it in.  Breathe.  Be.

The colors of the world are rich and deep this morning as if the photo saturation slider was turned up in real life.  Browns glow gold.  Blues are bluer.  Landscapes look like golf magazine covers.  Wildlife appears to be cut from 1960s puzzle boxes as a great blue heron crosses our path.

It is still.  Quiet.  A few black winged stilts cause the only ripples in a puddle-depth lake.  We only walk a few hundred yards to take in our surroundings.  No one speaks.

Our walk continues.  We step quietly as to not disturb the Sunday morning vibe.

We walk back to the beach as the island begins to wake.  Our sea lion friend is still there.  In the background a blue footed boobie sails close to the water's surface, tracked by its ripply reflection.  

The sea lion give us a deep courtsey as a farewell.  In her meditation voice, our guide Fernanda says a few words to encourage us to imprint this moment, this place, this time on our mind.  It’s 7am.

AMAZON AND THE GALAPAGOS DAY 12 - BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE!

We wake up, disappointed.  Surly this trip has already peaked.  This is our last full day in the Galapagos.  Last day on the boat.  We can’t imagine there is anything left.  We, of course, are wrong.

Breakfast is with 14 of our new closest friends.  The conversation is easy, the laughs are plentiful.  We realize the joy of the group.  There is no other iteration of the multiverse that we are together, but here we are, bonded by shared adventure. (sniff, sniff) I’m gonna miss these guys when they’re gone.

We arrived at Santiago Island overnight, more in the center of the archipelago, and our first venture is a wet landing at Puerto Egas.  We all expertly jump from the tenders like well trained marines and storm the beach (at least in my mind that’s how it looked… the videos may tell a different story).  First order of business is a hike to explore this new place.  We’ve gotten good at understanding the differences of each island, and the different areas of any given island.  We did not expect that a piece of land this small could have several different climates. 

We also understand how Darwin got his inspiration.  How can islands this close together have vastly different flora and often very different species of an animal or entirely different animal populations altogether?  For example, we encounter a pair of the tiny Galapagos lava lizards and a Galapagos flycatcher bird for the first time here on Santiago.

A little Espanola mockingbird decides that he needs to make us feel welcome.  He comes right up, addresses me with a cheep! then starts dancing around and nipping at the yellow logo on my sandals.  He and we were all fascinated, so we all just let him do hit thing for a few minutes.

On the far side of the island, we explore the lunar-like surface and have some fun watching the sea lions in the water under the natural bridge.

After our hike, we return to the black sand beach where we landed to regroup and go for a snorkel.  To our left, there is a lava field jutting out into the ocean punctuated by a monolith rock formation.  We wander out to onto the lava to see if we can’t get some more pictures of the illusive blue footed boobies, but quickly change our idea.  Inside the two garage door sized openings in the rock are an entire colony of sea lions, enjoying the cool respite of the damp shady place. 

 

(Mandy notices later how much this looks like the Yoda cave in Iceland!)

A mama tries unsuccessfully to coral her pup who waddles in a tidal pool.  Mama gives chase and they both end up splashing around for a few minutes.  Satisfied that Junior is safe, she heads back right past us, pausing briefly to make eye contact and give me a nose bump on my leg as her way of saying “you know how kids are”.  It’s like we’re friendly old neighbors and she’s embarrassed at her child’s behavior. 

Just a minute later, Junior swims over to us, pops his head up and bleeets! like a lamb as his way of saying hi.  Then he climbs up towards us and plops right on my feet.  Remember when we thought this trip couldn’t get more special?  This is one damned magical journey.

We break away from our new buddies, pull our wetsuits the rest of the way up, and do our flipper-waddle down the beach and into the water.  (It’s just as sexy as it sounds, ladies.)  This time we have as much fun on the surface of the water as below.  Another friendly sea lion, this one a big male, stops by for some antics.

Topside, a nearby pelican is lunching as we’ve seen every day.  But this time a brown noddy – a small, dark sea bird with a white cap - literally lands on the pelican’s head and tries to steal fish from the pelican’s gular pouch.  By way of defense, the pelican holds his catch underwater, causing the noddy to flap and fuss like an animated hat.  This slapstick routine is the funniest natural animal behaviors we have ever seen, something out of a black and white cartoon from the 1920s.

The animals are not the only ones making the day extraordinary.  Back aboard the Sirius, the chef has a treat in store, too.  He’s scored some VERY local snapper (like rod and reel over the starboard rail) and is doing a fish ceviche demonstration as a first lunch course.  It’s ridiculous, as is the rest of the meal.

After a bit of rest, we’re back out for the last snorkel of the trip.  The current is strong, but this dive is, in its own way, as extraordinary as every other one has been.  We get washed this way and that with the turtles and sea lions, then I spot the most beautiful fish I have ever seen.   He’s teal, but in an electric neon way, standing out like a beacon in the churning water.  Later when I show our guide the video, Fernanda tells me it is a blue chin parrot fish, but a very rare find.  Most of the species are green-turquoise-pink but only a very few super males develop this radiant color.  In her 15 years as a guide, she has only seen one live.  Damned magical.

We finish today’s trek with a zodiac exploration of Buccaneers Cove.  We motor directly to the large rock formation jutting up 100 meters from the shore.  It’s here we first encounter the other booby.  Sure we’ve seen the first booby.  Of course, you know the other booby is there, but it doesn’t mean you’re not surprised when you finally get to see it.  This is the Nazca booby, white plumage with a black mask and wingtips, plus an orange-pink beak.  The larger females squawk while the smaller males whistle, and since there are a hundred or more Nazcas here, it’s a cacophony of sound. 

We’re watching and photographing and generally marveling all these big boobies when Fernanda points out the little booby.  There, up high, being tended to by its mother, is the fluffiest fluff ball on god’s green earth.  It’s a baby booby.  The entire zodiac, including the salty-dog panga pilot, awwwwwwwwwwws all at once.

A little further around the rock, on the lower tiers, we’re introduced to yet another character, the swallow-tailed gull.  Gray and white with a black head, this bird sports a riveting red eye ring, that glows like the colored halos guys put around the headlights of their custom jeeps.  This is a very busy rock.

Breaking away, we putter along the coast admiring the colors and formations, very different again from anywhere else we have seen.  This shore’s most conspicuous feature is a 100’-tall rock monument.  As we go around the prominence it morphs from one creature to another.  Our boatmates start calling out the figures we see… a standing and kneeling pair of Indian goddesses; a praying man in African garb; Picasso face; an elephant; a cartoonish guy with a pompadour, bulbous nose and a beer belly and more.  It’s a fun way to watch the sun go down.

Tonight is our last dinner on the ship, so the captain helps us celebrate with some espresso martinis for the whole lot of us (although I did notice the captain and the pilots were sipping mocktails – safety first! 😊).  After a spirited toast with a lot of Latin hip movement, we retire to the dining room where we guests drink in the last of our time together.  No one wants it to end, so this night does go long with plenty of after dinner cocktails and even more hugs.