Galapagos - Day 4: Rabida & James/Salvador Islands

 Our first full day in the Galapagos started off with the sound of the anchor chains being lowered. It was SO noisy. At first I thought it was may just our cabin (perhaps the cost of the cheap cabin?) but many other travelers assured me that no, it was super loud for everyone. It makes sense now that the expedition leader told us they don't bother with wake-up calls because the chains will wake people naturally.  So off I sent on the nature "long walk" (kind of funny, as it was only a mile long). Worth it though because we almost immediately came upon the flamingos!

The group was large enough it definitely qualified as a flamboyance. 

Bug the really cool part was that they even did a little dancing! I did not realize flamingos can get so noisy. Check them out doing their little movements seemingly in unison!

Here's a sea lion channeling Baba's skills in deep sleeping. 

The long hike eventually led us to a vantage point where we could see the boat and the red beaches of Rabida. 

For the plant lovers, here is the Galapagos tomato. The yellow/orange tomato fruits are so tiny!! Apparently the way you can tell if a plant or animal is only found in the Galapagos is by their name. If it is called the Galapagos, Darwin, or Lava X, then it's endemic to the islands. 

I think this is a Galapagos mockingbird. I like how it contrasts against the sky. 

Here we have a nice side shot of the Galapagos Dove. I'm told the blue eyes and red feet are it's distinguishing features. 

Coming back to the ship, we came upon some iguanas emerging from the water.

Up close their faces look really scary/mean! And look at those claws!

Olympic rock climbers have nothing on iguanas in terms of climbing skills. Had to take a video to document what I mean:

We had all sat down on the beach with shoes removed for the water entry (you climb into the zodiac from about a foot of so of water) when we received one more wildlife visitor: sea lion . 

After a short rest, lecture on snorkeling safety,and lunch buffet (I would describe the food onboard as very good, not amazing-omg-Michelin or anything like that, but reliably quite good - portions are also nicely controlled so you don't stuff yourself and become uncomfortable), we went off for some deep water snorkeling along the shoreline of Rabida. I bought some waterproof phone cases for this trip but sadly couldn't figure out how to unlock the camera on this snorkeling trip. It kept telling me face unlock was no successful 😆. So I have no photo proof of all the things we saw -- which included a wide variety of fish, including a group of 5-6 sharks, bunch of sea stars and starfish, and some interesting vegetation. The water was a bit cold...but not unbearable, but we still very much enjoyed the hot tub afterwards. The day was not ever yet though! In the afternoon, we transitioned to Salvador island for a hike. This is the adopted island of National Geographic and Lindblad -- over the course of the past few decades, they helped remove the foreign goat population that was wrecking havoc to the native animals. Our guide said we would take the counter-route, leaving the best stuff for the end. But we still started off with some nice animal encounters - the lighting was SO good.

Ian got to get some up close facetime with the iguanas.

The encounters with the sea lions here were amazing. A bunch of the pups were hangry and howling out for food -- you'd see the moms exhausted coming out and then the pups immediately bothering them to nurse. 

Photo of the mom and pup (and a jealous pup in the background perhaps).

I really liked watching the sea lions. Here is one cleaning it's face with it's flippers while swimming around - so cute!

This is mainly a shot to showcase the landscape (though there are a ton of iguanas there too) -- very much the dry season - I think a lot of plants and animals are looking forward to the rains!

This was kind of cool -- essentially the tides create this little pool of water that overflows and then empties out every 5 seconds or so. Our guide said this is cheekily referred to as Darwin's toilet. 

Baba's cheeky shot of me taking a picture of the toilet. 

As we were approaching the shore to take our zodiacs back to the ship, we happened to see this cool phenomenon that is unique to the Galapagos: the sea lion cooperative herding/hunting of fish. Basically a group of sea lions band together and hunt a school of fish together and force them to a beach/cove where the fish are washed up on the shore and then flop there helplessly and the sea lions have a buffet. The boobies see this happening and circle the skies above because once the fish are forced on land, there is enough to feed all the sea lions and all the birds too. I recall them saying a successful hunt can yield dozens upon dozens of fish PER participating sea lion. Sometimes the birds don't wait for the fish to reach the shore and bomb dive into the schools of fish underwater. 

That golden hour for photography, it is just incredible.  I'll leave with this as the parting shot for today. Pretty amazing first day in the Galapagos!

Galapagos - Day 3: Hello Gemini

Alright, so my previous description of how we were getting to the ship was a bit off. We are boarding a flight in Quito that STOPS in Guayaquil and then eventually lands in Isla Baltra where we will board the ship. I also had the name of our cruise ship wrong -- we are actually on the Gemini - pretty apropos, eh? 

So...the 4:30 wakeup call ended up being somewhat unnecessary because I woke up at midnight. I think my body was like "oh this is your six PM nap" -- I caught maybe another 60-90 minutes after that but gave up entirely by 2am. Packed the suitcases, rolled them outside to be picked up, had some tea and bread at the breakfast, and on the shuttle bus by 6. Arrived at the airport and through security WAY too early in my opinion (6:30 or so for a 8:10 departure). I guess it's a good thing there were some shops and lounges available. 

I tried really hard to convince Baba to get this hat:

Yes this was in the domestic airport too (sorry L&R, we did not stop and get anything here). 

With so much time, we stopped in the lounge to get a second breakfast. Nainai had mentioned this cool fruit - hard on the outside, looks kind of like an orange. 

Turns out it is passion fruit! (I've never had one whole like this before - I think L&R would say the crunch of the seeds was very satisfying.

The view from the lounge was also not bad:

Couple interesting things about the flight: 1) Before arriving, the flight attendants had to treat all of our luggage with some sort of ecological WHO spray, so they walked down the aisles opening every baggage compartment, spraying the luggage, and closing it again. Felt bad for the people with fragrance allergies...maybe I just had guava on the mind but it smelled kind of fruity. 2) The airport where we landed was so small that the pilot had to land on the single runway and then then around at the end so that they could come back to the actual terminal. Here is my first sighting of Darwin's Playground!

Literally walking from the plane to the terminal we passed our first giant iguana. Eating a cactus leaf no less!

After collecting our bags, we zipped off on a zodiac adventure...

Ok a very short adventure -- just a seven minute ride or so to get to our home of the next week: National Geographic Gemini!

There were no Disney characters or decorations, but it's a fairly nice room still. This was the cheapest cabin available - so no balcony, just an oceanview window. 

We went through the obligatory muster drill and then got our first educational lecture - just a quick intro to the Islands, their formation, the endemic animals, and our planned voyage. 

After a short break to get changed, we were off on our first expedition! Zodiac exploration ride among the mangroves at Black Turtle Cove on the Santa Cruz island. Not five minutes into the ride....we come upon a group of blue footed boobies:

Here's a female looking straight at me:

And the lone male of the crew (notice how his feet are a more sea green color compared to the female cornflower blue). 

There were also some gnarly Sally Lightfoot crabs. We saw them feeding on a jellyfish at the dock earlier. 

A shot to convey how close to the birds we could get.

Also passed by some whitetip and blacktip reef sharks.

And a TON of turtles. Floating, eating, we even came upon a couple mating sessions. I'd say more but this is a family friendly blog, let's just say apparently turtles and humans share some similarities...

Can you spot the warbler?

It was pretty cool how the birds would just stay there and pose for you. We saw a bunch but I'll just keep one more photo here:

Ok one more. I don't recall what these even are. 😆 

The sun was setting (read: it was getting colder) and I was getting hungry. So I was glad to be heading back. Here's a cool shot of the cacti landscape against the skyline. 

The guides were great -- very very knowledgeable - the zodiac was very nimble and the fellow guests were polite and pleasant -- all in all, a very successful first expedition! All smiles on the way back home to dinner. 

Toasting to the start of a great vacation! Calling it an early night today because excursions start at 6:20am tomorrow...jury is out on whether Baba and I will make the first one.

Good night from the middle of the ocean!

Galapagos - Day 2: Quito & Mitad del Mundo

My plan had been to sleep in as much as possible to catch up on sleep debt...well...that plan unfortunately failed due to a hotel wide fire alarm that went off at 7:30. I guess my not being able to fall back asleep after that was for the best as the front desk later delivered some forms from our cruise operators informing me the wake up call tomorrow would be at 4:45AM!! Yeah, that's 1:45AM California time. Yeesh. 

Today I had a fairly full day of meetings planned but there were a couple hours before the West Coast day would begin, so we piled into Yeye and Nainai's rental car for some exploration. First stop: Teleferico Quito -- or apparently as some have dubbed it: TeleferiQo. This cable car takes you up to the top of the Pichincha Volcano where there are some fantastic views. Unfortunately, I had to stay at the bottom to take all of my work calls. I heard after the fact that I should have gone up and sat in the coffee shop with amazing views of Quito (I think that's a more visible shot of Cotopaxi). 

The others report that it was a nice ride up, pretty long, maybe 15 min or so? Some options for hiking around at the top and also mountain biking too -- apparently Yeye kept scanning the mountain looking for ways to back country ski down. 

First attraction: check! 

Now it was time to drive down to Old Town. The original plan was to do a quick skip over, find a place where they could park and I would continue taking my calls. Well...turns out this is the weekend of Quito's birthday celebration or something like that. Cue LOTs of crowds and mobs of cars. We literally spent about 90 minutes circling around the tiny streets of Quito before we called it quits. Here are some shots from the car. I was trying to capture a shot of all the wires strung up EVERYWHERE (no wonder I had great reception throughout the ride!) and all the broken glass shards that they would put at the top of each wall to prevent thieves from scaling over (very reminiscent of Rio). Unfortunately I didn't manage the latter, but at least you can sort of catch all the wires (the picture really doesn't do it justice). 

The traffic was really endless. As evidenced by the large number of vendors hawking drinks, snacks, and random things to all the cars moving at a crawl speed. 

Here is the Church of Santo Domingo right at the heart of the Historical Center of Quito. 

And also a shot of Basilica del Voto Nacional (Basilica of the National Vow) - very cool looking!

After we realized stopping somewhere was not going to be very easy (much less finding decent parking), we decided the tour from the car was going to have to suffice. Off to our next stop: lunch. We considered this option in honor of L&R...(yes apparently Ecuador enjoys boba too!)

But opted eventually for this local diner instead. Very authentic -- everyone else there was a local family or group of coworkers it seemed. Prices were extremely reasonable, like $3 for one plate. Chow down time!

With lunch (and perhaps a quick gelato stop) in our bellies, we went off to the true highlight of the day: Mitad del Mundo! (Middle of the World). I am being slightly facetious. I am pretty sure I was the only one who was super excited -- I mean being able to be at the single point in the world where you are in both the eastern AND western hemispheres AND North and South of the Equator? Gotta do it, no?!? As the museum exhibit would tell us -- this is THE most popular tourist attraction in all of Ecuador.

Update: turns out that is not the coolness of the location. Though my explanation would be a lot better and more unique, no? Turns out it's only famous because this is the location where a French scientist back in the day confirmed the location of the Equator. I guess that's less geographically cool but a bit more historically relevant?

Obligatory trick shot. There are some others of us balancing the ball on the tops of our heads but this one seemed a bit more tasteful:

Requisite shot of me straddling the N/S line:

It was actually a surprisingly well built out little area. Had we arrived earlier in the day, I could have seen us check out more of the side exhibits and shops and such. There was even a little museum with some science exhibits that include a toilet that swirls the other direction (Baba tells me that is a hoax, which is probably true, but who cares - it still seems cool 😆). It did remind me of some of the tourist parks that we visited in Xian, fewer people though (didn't even have to use AI to remove any people from this shot):

You could actually take an elevator to the top of the monument which had some decent views of the area. 

This is also where I had the first-time-in-my-life experience of looking unusual enough (read: apparently East Asian tourists don't get out here much?) that a bunch of kids actually stopped me and asked to take a photo WITH me. I was very confused. I  thought they wanted me to help them take a photo! I hear this used to be a fairly common experience for Yeye and Nainai in China (20 years ago...I feel like Westerners are a bit more common throughout China now) but this was my first experience in being the foreign curiosity during travel.

As we finished up here the sun was starting to get lower in the sky so we called it a day and set off for the rental car return office. How was driving in Quito? Well...a mix I would say. Merging in/out at roundabouts and certain exit turns can get a little hairy. You definitely have to be a bit aggressive otherwise people behind you will complain. The roads were in generally pretty good condition, but be prepared for a LOT of large speed bumps even on main thoroughfares. I think I probably would just opt for the taxi if I were to return.

Once back at the hotel, we met up with the National Geographic representative, got our luggage tags, our water bottles, and a run down of what to expect tomorrow. All sounded pretty good except for the 4:45 start time. With that in mind, we did a quick dinner at the hotel restaurant (satisfactory, not great, also very overpriced compared to lunch, but great for convenience and peace of mind in food safety for consumption). Got luggage tags placed on our bags and off to bed by 9:30.

Tomorrow: Galapagos!

Galapagos - Day 1: Hola Ecuador!

We are off on a new adventure! This time we are traveling with Yeye and Nainai only, no L&R. Why you ask? Honestly I wasn't sure they would enjoy it enough to be worth the cost. Kid-ing aside (haha, get it?), L&R have school and their willingness to do multi hour hikes remains questionable. So, a childless vacation! I'm really glad we are traveling with Yeye and Nainai though, as retired academics with PhDs in biology, I feel like the Galapagos is like their Disney Cruise. In the same way that it's fun to travel to Disneyland with a toddler because of how excited they become, I am hoping their excitement over Darwin's playland will make me all that more excited by association too. 

Traveling to South America is always a bit misleading. You think hey, it's only two or three hours time difference! Must be a short hop over there. Wrong. In order to get to the Galapagos Islands, we are taking an 8am flight to Miami, laying over for 2 hours, then another 4 hour flight to Quito. We will catch another mini flight from Quito to Guayaquil on Saturday morning and then board the cruise from Guayaquil (I think). I say I think because this is my least planned trip perhaps ever -- we just booked with National Geographic for the Lindblad Endeavor II -- everything else was taken care of for us. Hotels before and after, all excursions on the cruise -- everything is included in the one booking. No planning! Just pack and go! This must be how Baba feels when he goes on all of our trips...

The flight in was fairly uneventful -- we are actually getting in a full day in advance because I definitely did NOT want to risk a delayed flight causing us to miss the cruise departure. I actually got a LOT of work done on the flight and even took a call from the Admirals lounge in Miami on the layover. This was my first time using the Oneworld Sapphire benefit for Admirals access - it was less crowded than Centurion for sure but I think the food was not as tasty.  Big plus to there being no wait though. 

Here is a photo of Quito from the plane as we are landing (I hear that may be Cotopaxi in the faint faint background with snow at the top). 

We had been warned by Yeye and Nainai who arrived a couple days before us that customs could take awhile. Luckily I think there are less flights arriving at 11pm so we got through fairly quickly...though I could definitely see how slow it could have been -- they asked a lot more questions than any other immigration check I've been through lately!

I was not aware that Ecuador was so big on their roses. There were displays at immigration, baggage claim, everywhere. 

We are staying at the Wyndham Quito Airport, which must be fairly established in Quito because they even have their logo on the airport directions next to all the rental car companies. It was super easy to find their desk attendant, who then walked us to the waiting shuttle. 

And here we are at our final destination for the night! Room is pretty standard, nothing to exclaim over but decently sized, seems clean, etc. 

Arrival day complete! Tomorrow is not going to be super exciting either as I've got a fair number of work meetings scheduled. Hoping I manage to get a couple hours in the afternoon to check out the "Center of the World" (I hear it's super touristy, but you know how much of a sucker I am for things like that! 😆). 

Until tomorrow!