Galapagos

We flew out of Quito on schedule on Monday, with a brief stop over in Guayaguil, Ecuador's largest city on the Pacific coast. From the air we really got to see what the rain that we have had a remarkable talent for missing on this trip had done - there was very extensive flooding of low lying areas.

We landed at Baltra, a small island that was the site of a US Air Force base in WWII that is just north of Santa Cruz Island. We then had an hour bus trip that crossed Santa Cruz from north to south and brought us to Port Ayora where we connected with Yata Fragata (Yacht Frigate) our home for the rest of the week. We were in a group of 15, hailing from Sweden, USA, Netherlands, Australia, UK, South Africa and Israel.

That afternoon we walked through the town to the Charles Darwin Research Station, home of research into Galapagos wildlife and breeding programs aimed at repatriating endangered species, particularly the giant tortoises that are a cluster of subspecies, each unique to one island. The site also has lots of wild small birds and lava lizards, colourful little lizards that declare territory by furiously doing push ups.

We spent the night in Puerto Ayora's harbour, watching sea lions and small sharks check out the boat or the small fish attracted by its lights. In the afternoon we sailed to nearby Santa Fe island for some snorkelling and walk among the sea lions.

The following day was off to Espanola, for more birds, including blue footed and Nazca boobies, seal lions, and iguanas. We had a couple of hours on a free beach which is where I shot this video. I suggest you bale out when you start to hear talking - the video on the camera did not turn off on schedule and I don't have a video editing program!

The next day we moved on to Floreana, where we saw flamingoes, more iguanas, herons and turtles, rays and sharks cruising off a turtle nesting beach. Another great snorkelling session followed. In the afternoon, we walked into an underground lava tube, with a lot fewer flashlights and people (the one thing I forgot to pack). Kudos to Olympus - it is amazing what you can see using the autofocus ranging flash on the E-Volt 500 camera! The crews of the various boats have a small soccer field set in open beach area and Thursday afternoon soccer is a tradition!

We were up before dawn the following final morning for a sunrise walk on North Seymour Island, very near the airport on Baltra, where we saw the famous mating dance of the blue footed booby and the unbelievable red pouches of the male frigate birds in breeding season. We then headed back to the airport to be greeted with the good news that our flight had changed to an earlier departure going directly to Quito, giving us more time to get organized for leaving our hotel at 3.30 a.m. CST this morning.

In all a great time, in large part due to Priscilla, our guide and the boat crew.

Now, we have 8 hours in George W Bush Airport in Houston after a nearly 6 bour trip from Quito (groan) and then Vancouver by midnight and home tomorrow.

Sunday in Quito

We transferred to our base hotel, Hotel Los Alpes this morning. So what do you on Sunday in Quito?
You could play some "volley" - this is a variant on volleyball with 3 per team and while it is played recreationally on the many courts in public parks, it is taken very seriously and a lot of money can ride on games in side bets. There are lots of people out playing soccer, cycling, playing basketball and running. Given a population about the size of Vancouver, probably does rather put Canadians to shame.
You could take in some street art in Parque El Ejido. There is a lot of it as well as many other traditional crafts stalls. Much of the art is really good, although there are many Guayasamin knock offs; a bit of a shame as the artists involved look talented enough to be able stand on their own merits.
There's always street theatre - these guys are doing a circus clown type slapstick.

You could rent the kids an ancient pedal cart and turn them into instant traffic hazards in the park! You see lots of children with bikes with training wheels being guided through the parks by their parents.

Off to Galapagos bright and early tomorrow!

Of Volcanoes and related travel

On Thursday, April 3rd, we left for the Cotopaxi area. We had a very rugged 2 and a half hour drive to the town of Puyo, which is famous for balsa wood carvings and the sale of various sugar cane products, most of which are alcoholic. Once past Puyo the roads got much better. We had our first contact with law enforcement as we were pulled over at one of the frequent checkpoints and the vehicle searched for drugs. There is no charter issues of reasonable suspicion here! The officers involved were very polite and to be honest the search was rather perfunctory. The recent unpleasantness with Columbia has seemed to create a need to reinforce Ecuadorian efforts to combat drug, people and gun trafficking and I can’t help wondering if we were stopped as part of an effort to get the word out internationally.

After stops at the Pailón del Diablo (Devil's cauldron) falls and taking a rather ancient and open cable car over the Manto de la Novia waterfalls we had lunch in the hot springs resort town of Baños (baths). We were increasingly being bothered by gritty eyes and as we left Baños, passing though a temporary road cut into 10 to 20 metres of pyroclastic material that the nearby volcano, Tungurahua had dumped there a month before, reason became obvious.

This picture of an ash cloud rising over Tungurahua (5023m) taken from the edge of the Patate valley (about 14 km away in a straight line) is one a sequence taken at intervals of about 5 seconds that show that the ash is moving at roughly 300 km per hour! The area under the cloud was evacuated several months ago. Similar photos made the national press the next day.
We stopped in the town of Salasaca, another centre for indigenous weaving and crafts. If you want a closer look at the hammock, wait until I find some way to hang it this summer! This was one of a series of towns with particular specializations including Pelileo, where every store sells blue jeans, Salcedo for ice cream and Machachi for milk and cheese.
From the market, there is quite a spectacular view of Chimborazu, the highest Ecuadorian volcano at 6310m, here the pointed white peak in the background, with Carihuairazo (5020m) the line of jagged peaks in the foreground. Chimborazu is the highest peak in Ecuador, third highest in the Andes and due to the bulge of the planet at the Equator, the furthest point from the centre of the earth.
We spent the next 2 nights at another amazing old hacienda, Hosteria de Cienega. We had a 2 room suite with a fireplace that was lit when we came back from dinner each night.

The next day we set out for Cotopaxi. The photo above was taken in the 10 minute window between ground fog lifting and mountain clouds descending - sometimes you get lucky. We drove up towards a high car park (4500m) with a view to a short hike to the Refuge that is the starting point for those making a final assualt on the 5900m summit, but were blocked by mud and snow at 4300m (14,200 ft). The walk to the car park from that point was directly up a steep loose scree slope and seemed a bit much as we were feeling the effects of the altitude.

We did see some wild llamas on the high palmero - the plain between the volcanoes.

We descended to Lake Limpiopongo which sits between Cotopaxi and Ruminahui volcano. The lake is shallow but does give stunning reflections - in this case looking towards Ruminahui.

We went for a walk around the lake which was quite rewarding in terms of flowers and birds, but when we got to the end of the loop, we found recent rains had raised the lake over the trail. At Jane's urging, we decided that a quick wade through 3 or 4 shallow channels of ice cold mountain water was a lesser evil than an hour's hike at 3800 m (12,500ft). The ground is "cushion plant", a soft springy moss, and quite comfortable to walk on as long as you avoid the brown bits (also soft, but left courtesy of llamas and wild horses).

Meet the neighbours, Iliniza Sur (foreground) and Iliniza Norte to the west of Cotopaxi; the hacienda is at base of these.

Volcan Corazon the north west of Cotopaxi. The palmero is bounded to the north by Volcan Sincholagua but this was obscured by clouds all day.

Today, Saturday April 5th, we returned to Quito to prepare for our trip to Galapagos on Monday. We spent the morning at the museum and gallery dedicated to the great Ecuadorian painter, Oswaldo Guayasamin (http://www.guayasamin.com/) and the afternoon cruising the shops in the commercial district. Tomorrow we return to our base hotel, Hotel Los Alpes, to redistribute goods between our bulging packs and our "storage" suitcase and then an early start on Monday for Galapagos.

On the subject of bugs

I have to say up front that I did not get any good photos of the spectacular butterflies, yellow, orange and blue, that flutter over the rivers and streams as they never seem to land - at least not anywhere that does not need a major jungle expedition to access. No scary birds here, Claire, although we did see lots of vultures.
Aranya Toro - "bull spider", see the horns on the body; this guy is quite small, about 2 cm.

A millipede. The lens cap in this an other photos is 6.2 cm (about 2.5 inches) in diameter.
A moth - wingspan about 15 cm.
A stick insect - he was very persistent and would keep climbing my boots but as soon as he touched my skin he would jump off and climb the other side. Not sure if I should take that personally.......
A young tarantula - according to our guide, this species can get a bit bigger than this. Jane did have a close encounter with a juvenile about half this size getting out of the shower. She did not scream; Jane didn't make any noise either.

Leaf cutter ants - they are everywhere chopping up debris on the forest floor.

Cockroach
Conga ant - this is main reason for rubber boots. They are common and very active early and late in the day and have a very painful bite that generates severe discomfort for several hours.
Lemon ants (the tiny black dots on the pod) - a nocturnal symbiote of a particular tree, where they come out at night and eliminate any competition for the tree in about a 3 m radius. They are named for their taste - we tried them - they really do taste like lemon.

The Amazon Basin

On Monday, March 31st, we continued our descent into the Amazon basin, initially on a good but steeply winding road. Not long after starting we got our first glimpse of one of the high volcanoes. Antisana (more on this in the volcano posting). The road quickly deteriorated to a very rough route of large rocks, soft sand and mud, with occasional detours around landslides. We had to share the road with slow moving cattle and fast moving local buses who define the correct speed for any road condition as being faster than anything that has the misfortune to be in front of them.
We eventually reached Cotocochi (neck of the lake/water) lodge on the Napo river after lunch in the nearby town of Tena. The lodge has been around for a number of years and changed hands several times. The lodge is in an area of largely secondary forest, with a few islands of primary rainforest, and is staffed largely by local indigenous people from a nearby village.
Our first day there, we motored upstream in the lodge canoe, a long narrow and somewhat scarily unstable vessel driven by a 40 hp outboard, to hike up the surrounding hills to a secluded waterfall on one of the Napo tributaries.The boat did handle rapids quite well, although sometimes we were looking up at the white water.

Definite rubber boot territory! We had a lovely swim in the pool at base of the waterfall as did Jorge and Alfredo, our local guide.(a bit blurry, taken with the underwater camera in heavy spray).

We then went for a walk in a nearby area of forest preserve, really getting into the rainforest atmosphere by doing the walk under massive rubber ponchos in a thunderstorm. We saw a lot of interesting insects, although the near darkness of the storm made photography difficult.

The following day we went downstream through a bewildering array of branching rivers and rapids to visit a wildlife rescue centre. We had to stop at a local river checkpoint in a small town where the local plaza has been taken over by a family of white faced capuchin monkeys.

No-one else wanted to hold the resident boa constrictor – he was really quite friendly.

After a shore lunch, we headed back upstream to visit Alfredo’s village to see traditional gold panning (by his 66 year old mother), ceramic making (yes, of course we bought some!), to sample some chicha, beer made from yucca (let’s just say it is an acquired taste) and try our skill with a blow dart.

Jane seriously skewered a balsa wood parrot with this shot.

This is Jane's favourite Amazon plant. When the green pods go yellow they are the source of CHOCOLATE! It is actually quite difficult to find much Ecuadorian made chocolate - most of the raw material goes to Europe.

More about Amazon bugs on the next post!

Papallacta

On Sunday March 30th, we had a leisurely drive through away from Quito on a road following the North East Valley to the hot springs at Papallacta (pronounced papa yacta).
It is a pretty spot nearly 3000m above sea level so it is quite cool. There are series of walks of varying lengths and challenge into the surrounding mountains. After a short walk along a very cold river we decided to spend the rest of the day conscientiously doing nothing in the hot springs that were right outside the door of our cabin.
This is Jane with our guide, Jorge Castillo, by the way. He is single, doing graduate course in social sciences and extremely knowledgeable about Ecuador. We have his cell phone number……