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On our last morning, we got up, got a nice breakfast, and then decided to walk down to the Old Town in Quito before our flight.

In the Old Town, we saw "the Basilica" which has gargoyles that are different indigenous animals.

Kate in front of the Basilica

Turtle gargoyles

Crocs

Monkeys and Mountain Lions

Iguanas

More monkeys

Anteaters

Sharks? Dolphins?

We also went to the main plaza, where we got to walk into the President's palace, and this guy was guarding the door. (The actual guards that we had to get permission from had scary machine guns, instead of lame staffs)

Quito, etc.

Our last day in Ecuador....

Today, we joined up with Sarah and James, and took a trip to the equator. We first visited the official monument, which was really quite bizarre. They have this monument that is on the equator, as it was measured in the 1700's.

And inside the monument, they have a fairly crappy ethnographic museum. However, all around the monument (and after the gate where you pay to get in) is a small village of shops and restaurants. Kate thought it looked a bit like EPCOT's version of Latin America, and it did resemble that, insomuch as you have to pay to get into a place where you just buy other things.

The village from atop the monument

After the "official" monument, we went down the street to a museum at the "real" equator. This museum claims that they are on the real equator, since they used GPS to measure it. We agree with their reasoning, over that of an 18th century explorer with a sextant.

This museum was really neat. They had some ethnographic stuff, including a blow gun that we got to try out.

Yoel kind of sucked with the blow gun

Kate was able to hit the target multiple times!

And then they did a bunch of scientific experiments, to "prove" that we were on the real equator. These included showing us that water goes down the drain in a different direction on either side; balancing an egg on its end on a nail; and our favorite: the "walking the line sobriety test", where if you try to walk down the equator, the gravitational forces on either side won't let you walk straight.

Yoel's balanced egg

Kate also balanced her egg (they gave us special certificates for achieving this)

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and napped a bit, and then went to dinner at a place we had seen earlier, which boasted that it had "the most draft beers in Ecuador". When we got there, it turned out that there was a locked gate, and a security guard had to let us in, which doesn't bode well for the safety of that neighborhood. When we got inside, we found out that "the most draft beers" means 4 micro-brews, and none of them were very good. They made reasonably decent nachos though, but we didn't stick around to play pool, because we didn't want to be walking through that neighborhood too late at night.

Day 8 - back to Quito

Today we sadly left the Galapagos. Thankfully the plane on the way back was slightly more roomy though. We got back to Quito mid-afternoon, and rested a bit, while figuring out how to pack the grossest of our clothes in the same bag, so that they wouldn't touch the rest of our clothes.

We met up with the people in our tour group for one last dinner together that night at a Mexican place. Yoel decided to order a "cerveza gigante" - the menu didn't describe how big it was, but it wasn't too expensive, so he gave it a try.

Pictured here beside regular and the usual "large" bottled beer

Yoel was already a bit woozy from all of the sun he got over the week

It turned out to be too much for him, and he enlisted some help from James to finish it off.

After dinner, we went to a casino in Quito with Sarah and James, a couple from our trip. James won a quick 20 bucks on blackjack, while Yoel eventually ended up even on roulette (after being up quite a bit at one point), and Kate and Sarah both bottomed out on roulette.

Day 7 - Santa Cruz

This morning, we went to the Charles Darwin Research Center, which is another giant tortoise breeding facility. We saw some more baby tortoises -

and there were also some enclosures where we could go in and see the tortoises close up.

and we got to see Lonesome George, who is the last of his particular tortoise species. The scientists have ben trying to get him to breed with tortoises of similar species for a long time, but nothing ever comes of it.

At the Research Center, we also saw our only land iguanas of the trip. No clue why they are yellow, but they look neat.

This guy wanted to get at the iguana in the next enclosure

We then got to take a walk through a lava tube. It was essentially just an enormous underground cave, but there was one section that we had to "crab walk" through on all fours. For some reason Yoel was the only one who ended up covered with mud from that part.

We then went to go look for some giant tortoises in the wild. The breeding centers have been so successful that they have been able to introduce a good number of tortoises back into the wild.

On our way there, we had to make our way through a wall of cows.

Once there, we went on a walk, and found some tortoises in the wild, but these ones were obviously more wary of humans.

Near the preserve where the wild tortoises lived, there was a little place where we rested afterwards and got some coffee. They also had some empty tortoise shells there, so the smaller members of our group got to try out life as a tortoise.

Kate as a tortoise

A tortoise who is curious of her surroundings

After lunch we took a loooong walk to get to Playa Mansa and Tortuga Bay. The walk would have been nice and pretty, since we got to walk down a path lines with cacti, and we saw some finches, but it was at least 100 degrees at that point, so we ended up pretty bedraggled by the time we actually got to the beach.


There were some people surfing on this part of the beach, but our guide spotted a shark in one of the waves, so we decided against jumping in to cool off. We took a walk down this beach to Tortuga Bay. When we got to Tortuga Bay, we took out some sea kayaks, and headed for some mangroves along the side of the bay to look for sharks. We were able to find the place, and encountered what looked like 10-15 white tipped reef sharks that swam around under our boats. On the way back to shore, we also saw a sea turtle swimming under our kayak.

Day 6 - Isabella and Santa Cruz

We started our day today with a ride on a fisherman's boat around the lagoon in front of Isabella, where we saw lots of boobies, pelicans, sea lions, and some more penguins.

BOOBIES!

MORE BOOBIES!

Blue footed Booby looking wistful


Pelican and Penguin hanging out together

Sea Lion snoozing with some friends

The boat then took use to "Shark Alley", which was a small island of lava rocks. There were about a billion iguanas nesting on the island, and some of them were even nesting on the trail, which made some people in our group nervous.

The shark alley was a small channel that went through the middle of the island. Unfortunately, there weren't any sharks when we were there, but we did watch some sea lions playing in the shark free waters.

After that, we snorkeled for our last time, in the lagoon. The water was pretty shallow, and even though there was coral on the ocean floor, a lot of the sand was still being stirred up, so the visibility wasn't great. However, we still got to see a lot of parrotfish, damselfish, pufferfish, and a trumpetfish. Our guide also showed us an underwater cave where a bunch of white-tip reef sharks were hanging out, so we all swam down and looked in to see them swimming around with a great sense of purpose.

After the shark cave, the two of us were floating around some coral where Yoel was showing Kate what the different fish were, and out of nowhere, we saw a small octopus walking over the top of a coral formation! The octopus was probably only a foot long at most, but it was still amazing, and the two of us just floated there watching it, and shouting to each other through our snorkels, until we lost it when it went into a kelp garden.

We then took the boat to Santa Cruz, which was our last island stop, and is also the most developed of the islands. We walked around the town of Santa Cruz, stopping at a fisherman's pier, where there were lots of pelicans and sea lions begging for some scraps (and being chased away by angry fisherman).



Afterwards, Kate went with the women in our tour group to shop for souvenirs, and the menfolk went and waited at a bar for them.

Day 5 - Isabella

We were so tired today after all of the activities that we decided to skip our scheduled activity, and it turned out to be the best decision we made the entire trip. The scheduled activity was suppossedly a 4 hour hike, which ended up being a 10-hour hike up a volcano, and everyone in our group came back without much good to say about it, other than - "it was long", "my feet hurt", etc.

Instead, we relaxed on the beach and read. We also sat and watched marine iguanas for much of the day. They started out on the rocks on the beach, but as the sun came out and the tide came in, they all started running up the beach towards us for cover.

We even got to see one iguana swim a little bit, which was neat. They just use their tails to swim like a snake, and the rest of their body doesn't do anything.

Day 4 in Galapagos - Floreana and Isabella

We got up early this morning for a hike in the highlands of Floreana. We walked through some old trails and saw pirate caves, and some trails carved into the lava with holes for poles, that were used to hold livestock in. It all reminded us a bit of Indiana Jones.

There was also this carved face up there which no one knows the origin of.

After the hike, we got ready to head out for Isabella island, and while we were waiting, we saw a sea turtle swimming just off the dock, and a huge marine iguana hanging out in a lighthouse.

Also, there were tons of bright red crabs on the side of the dock.

We then took a boat ride of about 3 hours to get to Isabella Island. On the way, we saw some more dolphins, and Yoel lost his hat while getting up to see them. We also stopped at Isla Tortuga when our boat had engine problems, where we saw some penguins, blue footed boobies, and Nasca boobies.

We finally arrived at Isabella, and took a drive. On the way to our destination, we stopped at a small salt marsh, where we saw some flamingos.

After that, we continued on our way to see the Wall of Tears. In the early 20th century, Isabella was used as a prison colony, and the prisoners were forced to build this wall that had no purpose, to demoralize them.

We climbed up to an overlook nearby, and saw a great view of the island (including a rainbow)

After that, we went to the Isabella giant tortoise breeding center. While there, we saw some saddleback tortoises....

Baby tortoises....

And infant tortoises.


There was also one tortoise that we watched for a while, because he was too stubborn to move out of the way, even though everyone else wanted to walk down the path he was lying in.

We then went to the "Love Beach", which was one of the main nesting grounds for marine iguanas. They dig their nests into the sand and deposit their eggs. And they are fiercely territorial about their nests, we saw a few fights between iguanas when one got too close to another's nest.