We're here - Quito (with photos)

Feb 24.  Quito

We are here. We are FINALLY here. It was a long two days. We left my house at 11:30 am on Wednesday to catch the one o'clock ferry. 



Goodbye Victoria!

 

Then we waited around the Vancouver airport for forever, drinking Starbucks coffee and reading, chatting, wandering, using their free Wi-Fi
.  

Our flight to Toronto left a 10:30 pm and was, as predicted, a cattle call. But nothing too dramatically horrid. I took a gravol as soon as we were in our seats and basically slept the entire way, I didn't even watch a movie. Val did not sleep at all. I don't know what she did (because I was asleep). We arrived in Toronto at 6 am(ish). Then another long sit about. We read our books, drank Starbucks, ate a very crappy airport breakfast (Coyote Grill). I had two naps, Val still didn't sleep.

looking a little worse for wear in Toronto.

 

We left TO around 1pm and then began the decent portion of our flight - Air Canada International - where the passengers are treated almost human like. They fed us and provided many movies to chose from. I watched 'The Big Year', a movie about birding, to put me in the right mind set. Very amusing. Then I watched another movie, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was also good (I remember now, Moneyball). Val watched a movie with Justin Timberlake (name? something about Time) and a cartoon about a sentient chicken (?). Dinner was sufficient (chicken - not sentient I hope, and rice and a brownie), snack was less so (dry sandwich and cookies).

Eventually we reached Bogota. International airports are always an adventure. As we left the plane, we were handed a new boarding pass. Then we just herded along with the others until a women yelled "Quito?" at us and steered us down a ramp and toward a screening machine. We had a school group (we dubbed them 'the science club') on our flight from Toronto. They were all guzzling their water as we moved toward the X-ray machine but we knew better - foreign screeners just don't care. So Val and I went through with our several litres of water. They didn't even bat an eye, just let us keep going. We then had to find Gate C5. That was a challenge because the airport was under renovation (is every airport in the world constantly under renovation?). We eventually found C5 behind a very long temporary wall. We were all corralled onto shuttles and boarded the plane. Uneventful trip. I watched the Simpsons. Val watched nothing - she was too spaced out from lack of sleep. 

Bogota airport - we are rough by now

 

We left with one bag each, but with all of the reshuffling as we passed through various check points, we each ended up with an extra bag!

 

(sidenote - a lady at a coffee shop today gave Val a free magazine and she just started to read it. It has a very detailed, illustrated section on the Kama Sutra! And that isn't even the most shocking part of the magazine. That was unexpected. Followed by a lovely article on the church and another on the 'luck of bingo' - ??).

We finally arrived in Quito at 11:30 pm. We were almost first out the door - no checked luggage. But then we waited for our pickup from the Blue House. Alas, no pickup. No worries, we hopped in a cab and found our own way there. 

36 hours later, our arrival at Quito, it's not pretty

 

As expected, the Blue House is a typical hostel. Lots of young people with dread locks wearing loose cotton pants while they smoke on the patio. Our room does indeed have two beds but the en suite was a bit of a stretch of the truth. We are sharing with room 9. We don't know who or what lives in room 9 but we know he/she/it uses the bathroom for long periods of time. The less said about the bathroom the better. Why did I not bring my flip flops? Watch for sales on fungicide for our return.

Val in our room

 

We went right to bed once we got our room. I fell asleep almost immediately, but Val, who hadn't slept in almost 40 hours by that point had hard time. We are right in what they call 'Gringolandia'. There are bars everywhere. Bars with loud music and rowdy patrons. Each one of which seems to own a car with an active alarm system. Plus it is freaking cold here at night. I blissfully slept through all of that, but Val had a pretty lousy night (she is a delicate flower, our Val).

Next morning we woke up at 9:30 and missed our free breakfast (we picked this hostel because of the airport pickup and the free breakfast, so far we are 0 for 2). But we soldiered on and found the Juan Valdez Cafe. Really. We ordered breakfast of scrambled eggs with ham, a ham and cheese sandwich (for some reason you had to take both), coffee and fresh squeezed OJ. Very good. We both saved our sandwich for a later lunch (I am a bad influence - now Val is carrying meat sandwiches around tropical countries too). The area we are in (Mariscol) is very high end, touristy, so there are lots of cafes and high end shops. So, of course, we headed to another section of town, the Historical part (old town) where all of the churches and old building are. Turns out it is also where all of the hills are. 

Some pictures of Quito
 

There are some terrifying images here, wait until I spring the clowns on you!

I'm not sure if I mentioned that our travel nurse had advised that we may want to take anti-altitude sickness pills because Quito high up. But we declined, figuring we were young and healthy. So far so good. Just a bit of a background headache so far. But the hike up the hilly streets may have been pushing it a bit on our first day. We cabbed it back to the hostel. Old Town has lots of character though. We will spend more time there when we come back.

More Quito pictures
 

By the way, it is quite cool (temperature) here. Which is my excuse for why Val and I both left the hostel without a lick of sunscreen. We are both burnt red now. I have lovely red squares on my feet from my sandals and Val has a red ascot from her V neck T-shirt. And we both have flaming red foreheads. We will remember tomorrow (hopefully).

 A week later, Val peeling (the second layer).  Gross.

Today, our goal was to find a Galapagos tour. We found a tourist office in Old Town but Carlos didn't have too much to offer. And after offering us what he did have, he said that we should 'wait and do some research'. We interpreted that to mean that his company's prices were high and we could find better. Which we did.

Our hostel guy, Nicolas, was at the front desk as we were about to embark on our second foray to find a 'last minute' deal on a tour. Val noticed a sign with a Galapagos deal. So we asked Nicolas. He was on the phone and someone was on their way to see us 'in 5 minutes'. Sonja arrived and gave us a great deal on a 7 day excursion leaving March 13.



Sonia.

We will be on the Sulidae Yacht. It only takes 12 passengers. It is a converted Danish fishing boat built in 1901 (yes, we fully expect to have to bail as part of our 'bargain' tour). There is quite of bit of pirate talk (and imagery) in the brochure. A bit worrisome but the cool boat makes up for it. (I am looking online for their website - it is 'budget class'.) 

http://www.galapagossulidae.com/. We are booked for the 7 day, 6 night tour (see itinerary tab).

And then, since we will be back from that tour on the 20th, we had time to fit in an Amazon tour. We land back in Quito at 6pm and then get on a bus for 11pm to overnight to our pickup spot for the next tour.

Tomorrow we leave for the cloud forest. We are supposed to be planning our route right now so I will sign off now and see if I can post this to blogspot. 

(blogspot spell check isn't working so please forgive any spelling errors). Let's see if I can post some pictures while Val organizes the next leg of our trip. - I got the travel ones, but I have to sleep and this tiny computer combined with public Wi-Fi is very slow so you all will have to wait for the picture of our first day in Quito.  night all.  PS, looks like we are heading for Mindo tomorrow.