Quito, Galapagos, and End of the Road

See our Quito-Galapagos album at
Quito-Galapagos Album#
Ecuador has been the subject of much travel buzz for the last year or so as "The new Costa Rica"--beautiful, cheap, exotic, hospitable, and expat-friendly.  We saw none of that.  For us, Ecuador was Quito as a jumping-off point for the Galapagos.  Ecuador needs a second visit!

Quito
Quito, a lesser prize of Spanish plunder, is a modern city with a colonial core (like Lima and Cusco).  We stayed in the modern financial district, though, which was pretty much closed up for the weekend when we arrived.  The blowing litter and shuttered store fronts made us think of home; it looked sort of like Detroit, but with fewer wig shops.

We met our guide, Roberto, who would shepherd us through our week in Ecuador, and Sylvia, who would show us around the Quito portion.  Roberto gathered us together in a hotel meeting room for our orientation get-together. Sandy was feeling a bit puny, though, and didn't attend.  We didn't know it then, but an emergency room visit with an IV antibiotic drip was in her immediate future.  Roberto lacked the optimistic enthusiasm of Pavel in Peru, but he was a serious man with a great sense of humor--a wonderful combination.   He was a university-trained  experienced naturalist and third-generation Galapagan--just the sort of expertise we would need in the Archipelago.  But Quito?

Sylvia: Cute as a guinea pig!

But we had Sylvia!--young, bubbly and and effusive, passionate about her city, and cute as a guinea pig.  Roger wanted to put her in his pocket and take her home with us. Linda said no. She handled the goofy gringo tourist portion in Quito while Roberto took care of more serious business, like taking Sandy and big sister Linda to the clinic, arranging for hotel doctor visits, scouring the city for pharmacies in the middle of the night--that sort of thing.

We visited the Middle of the World, sort of a geographic Disneyworld just outside of Quito. It sits squarely on the Equator (marked with a prominently painted red line, so you can't miss it), and we were treated to all manner of physical demonstrations of equatorial oddities. There was a cultural element, too, like the shrunken heads.  We saw a mummified sloth head (see album) and then the park guide displayed a wooden box, from which he removed with great solemnity a shrunken human head of a long-dead native chieftain.  "But you cannot take pictures," Sylvia warned us.  It was out of respect, the park guide said.  We're not making this up.  Roberto watched the whole circus with detached bemusement.  His feet might have been in Quito, but his heart was in the Galapagos. 

The Galapagos

Our Galapagos portion of the trip began with an early morning flight. Service was quite wonderful, with Roberto handling our bags and even our boarding passes. By this point we had become well-trained group travelers dependent on our leader, much like a group of three-year-olds,"What are we doing today? What should we wear? What's for dinner? Is it bedtime yet?" Docile, but not totally tamed.

By lunch, we were aboard the Tip Top II, a small ship built to hold exactly 16 travelers. Our routine aboard the ship included fine food and two or three excursions daily. The ship's two zodiacs would ferry us to shore for hikes, or to various rocky reefs for snorkeling. We were busy and active, but had plenty of time to lounge about the ship, much like the chubby sea lions on the beach. Our Cipro consumption dropped, and everyone returned to our pre-trip levels of well-being (Welcome back, Sandy!).

The islands were astounding. This is not a terrific description, but vocabulary constraints keep us from describing them accurately. The Galapagos are inhabited by 38,000 people, but 97% of the land is a national park, under very strict control. No one may visit without a naturalist guide, and the islands are pristine. We saw other tour groups, but not many, since access to each island is strictly monitored. Animals were everywhere, and had no fear of people at all. We tried to stay the requisite 6 feet from the animals, but they were often right on the trail. Roberto knew them all, and our heads spun with the names of dozens of birds and lizards. The sea lions, giant tortoises, and absolutely precious blue footed boobies were our favorites, as you can tell from our photo album. Thank God for digital cameras. If we had been shooting photos with film we would have spent a fortune.

How was the snorkeling? Even better than the hiking. As a prelude to this, you should know that Linda is an ocean wuss. As soon as she's in water over her head, thoughts of giant squid, great white sharks, and swift undertows throw her into a near-frantic, gasping wreck. It isn't the best state of mind to enjoy an underwater experience. Fortunately for us, Roberto owns a dive shop and is a skilled diver and group leader. Confidence in him made all the difference between panic and pleasure. The animals were close to us and abundant. In addition to schools of spectacular fish, we watched huge sea turtles munching sea algae, sting rays gliding below us, and (gasp) hammerhead sharks. Linda's biggest thrill of the trip occurred when a playful sea lion swam up to her and touched her mask with its whiskered nose. Yep, she'll want to snorkel again! The only unpleasant event was Roger losing his wedding band in 35 feet of water. At least that's the story he told Linda. No ladies, he's NOT available.

We had five days aboard ship, hiking, swimming, eating, and sunning. What a wonderful way to wrap up this trip! We headed back to Quito for a farewell dinner and our flights home. Thankfully Roberto did not give a heart-wrenching speech, so we laughed instead of cried. It was an amazingly full three weeks. We made good friends, got lots of exercise, and saw sights we had dreamed of for a lifetime. What a great trip!

Coming up next January: South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. You'll hear from us then!

Peruvian Andes

A Post-trip Blog Retrospective: Adventures in The Peruvian Andes and the Galapagos Archipelago  in an action-packed trilogy in two parts!

We had neither time nor Internet access in South America, so we're catching up with two post-posts from the safety of Detroit, all things being relative. 

Click on our Peruvian album link at
Peru Album


We left the Amazon in the same way most intrepid explorers have departed--swarming with viruses, bacteria, and parasites.  The Amazon is an amazing ecosystem designed to consume or destroy everything that invades its turf, and we were gracious hosts; by the end of the trip we were all popping Cipro antibiotics as casually as breath mints after a dinner of roasted guinea pig. So we fourteen ticking time bombs returned to Lima, where we met Lee and Ellie, the couple from Tuscon who completed our tour group for the rest of our trip.

Our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel, seems to be designed for Active Geezers, and they worked our asses off.  We took an early morning tour of the Incan Sun Temple, a feature of nearly every pre-Spanish Incan city, but we found it interesting in Lima because the sun rarely shines there.  The modern city was founded by Francisco Pizzaro on January 18, 1535, apparently because he liked the weather.  What he didn't realize is that the sun shines about four weeks a year (mid January to mid February, we're guessing), and the rest of the year it is dominated by a weather system known locally as garua, (Spanish for 'shitty weather').  Cool and drizzly, which doesn't seem fair for the tropics at sea level.

"I scored some fresh coca leaves..."

Roger had done his homework, and he began badgering our top-
notch Peruvian guide, Pavel, for access to fresh coca leaves. Pavel agreed that it is commonly (and legally) chewed by the indigenous population in the mountainous villages of the Andes, and its properties counteract altitude sickness, provide energy for arduous mountain hiking, and it constitutes an important part of the rural cultural heritage that we probably shouldn't miss during our Andean adventure. But in case we hadn't noticed, he kept reminding us, we were in the middle of a modern capital city. And we were at sea level.

Cusco and the Sacred Valley

Gonzalo Pizzaro: a Major Asshole

We then flew to Cusco for our Andean Adventure.  Cusco is the ancient Inca capital and is nestled in a valley at over 11,300 feet.  It was occupied by the notorious Pizzaro brothers shortly after the Conquest, and they plundered and raped and murdered with reckless abandon.  Not to be judgemental, here, but Gonzalo Pizarro, the youngest of the five, seems to have been a real asshole. 




Cusco is the jumping off point for throngs of tourists en route to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu--some via the four-day Inca Trail through the mountains, others by modern bus.  We were in the second group.  Our first stop in the Valley was the town of Pisac, where we arrived in the middle of a local native celebration.  As in Guatemala, their religion is a unique blend of pagan animism and Catholicism.  Our impression in Lima (and from what we had read), was that the Spanish ruthlessly crushed the native culture, religion, economy, and language.  True enough in Lima, but in the villages we realize that maybe the Spanish didn't do such a thorough job after all.  The celebration included a bizarre procession of music and dancing, with animal heads, monkey costumes, and masks with giant penis noses,  followed by a solemn float with a statue of the Virgin Mary.  Sort of like The Wicker Man meets The Song of Bernandette.  We then proceeded to the ruined Inca city of Pisac, located a couple of thousand feet above the town.  The Inca apparently built their cities among their mountain gods; the Spanish relocated them to the valleys. This was our first experience with Inca ruins, and we hiked along ancient wind-swept terraces, dodging the odd llama, with Andean pan-flute music wafting through the hills.  Pretty cool.
     We spent the night and a day at the town of Urubamba (yes, it is named for the river), where we visited a local school and had a lunch hosted by a local family.  We were served roasted cuy--guinea pig--which we believe to be  a local delicacy.  Either that, or it was the old "let's-feed-the-tourists-a- roasted-greasy-rodent-and-see- if- they-eat -it" trick.  We did.
     The next day we visited Ollantaytambo, a village as charming as its name.  We toured the ruins and astronomical sculptures in the hills above the town.  Add the glaciers shimmering in the distance, and the tableau is complete.  As great as this was, we knew it was just a prelude to the Big Banana the next day:  Machu Picchu.

Machu Picchu
Never believe the travel tales that tell you the place you are about to visit has been ruined by tourism so don't waste your time.  We have heard those tales for nearly fifty years, and if we believed them we would not have gone anywhere.  It is the most transparent form of travel elitism.  Machu Picchu was fantastic (don't waste your time, though; it has since been ruined by rampant tourism!)

The trick to our great experience at Machu Picchu had much to do with the expertise and the timing of our tour company, Overseas Adventure Travel.  We caught a narrow gauge train at Ollantaytambo, traveled though magnificent canyons along the Urubamba River, and arrived at the town of Aguas Calientes shortly after noon.  Aguas Calientes is located at the base of the ruins, which is its only reason for existence.  It is the terminus of the rail line (the only access to Machu Picchu other than hiking the Inca Trail), and it is the site from which you board the park's buses, which run in a non-stop stream up 2000 ft. of switchbacks to the park entrance.  The criticism of Machu Picchu is that it is crowded with tourists.  The truth is, they limit the number to 2000 a day, and nearly all of these are day-trippers whose schedules are defined by the rail schedule from Ollantaytambo.  We were able to arrive at the park in late afternoon, as the throngs were leaving.  By the end of day, we were nearly alone.  We spent the night in a local hotel, and Pavel roused us at 5:00 am so we could be at the park when it opened, where we saw the sunrise and enjoyed the ruins WAY before the first tourists began arriving from Ollantaytambo.  Books have been written on the beauty and engineering marvel that is Machu Picchu (and a couple of really bad movies, too.  We do not recommend The Secret of the Incas starring Charlton Heston and notable as a particular stinker.)  So we leave it to what we hope are creditable pictures on our Picassa Album (link provided near the beginning of this post).

We returned to Cusco for our last night in Peru. Pavel, our trip leader, arranged a pre-dinner debriefing session in the hotel bar. Our Arno school friends would have recognized this as a "Sue Vokal year-end staff meeting". Sue, our principal, would ask us to share our positive thoughts about the past year, which really sounds pretty harmless. The meeting would quickly degenerate into teary heartfelt soul-bearing until the staff was emotionally exhausted, surrounded by piles of soggy tissues.  How does this translate to Peru? Pavel, the most sincere man EVER, had us sniveling with his gratitude that we had chosen HIS country, of all the places on earth, to visit. By the time we finished sharing our personal memories of Peru, we were blubbering like the audience of An Affair to Remember. A box of tissues later, we had pretty much recovered, and were ready for part three of the trip, Quito, Ecuador and the Galapagos. We're aiming for fewer tears and more animals. Read our next installment to see if we accomplish that!

Coming next:  Quito, Ecuador and the Galapagos Archipelago.