Galapagos Bound

Trip Start Mar 02, 2005

Trip End May 07, 2005

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Flag of Ecuador Guayaquil, Ecuador
Monday, March 21, 2005

So I decided to go to the Galapagos Islands. The wildlife is supposed to be incredible, plus the Galapagos have played such a vital role in shaping the history of science (which I studied in college). Charles Darwin´s theory of evolution first began to take shape when the author observed how the birds of the galapagos had evolved to fit specific ecological niches.

The guidebooks say you can often get last minute spots on boats that are scheduled to depart within the next few days, so I made a few phone calls on Thursday to travel agents that book Galapagos tours. They told me to call back on Friday. So I called on Friday and found that there was a one week tour departing on Monday that had a space available but I would have to come to Guayaquil, a four hour bus ride from Cuenca, to book the tour. I told the travel agent I would come on Saturday. However, the one caveat was that I could only pay for the trip in cash

Guayaquil Waterfront View

. This meant that I had to get to a bank Saturday morning in Cuenca before taking a bus to Guayaquil. So I went to the bank and was told that it´s actually not possible to take out more than 200 dollars on Saturday. Then I called the travel agent in Guayaquil who told me to just take a bus to Guayaquil and I could pay by credit card. Finally I get to the travel agency at 5pm and it turns out that I lost the space on the boat for Monday but there is a space on a boat leaving Friday.

So I decided to book a flight to Puerto Ayora in the Galapagos Islands on Thursday to have a free day to explore the main island before leaving on Friday for the 7 day boat tour. Oh, did I mention that the tour is on a sailboat! And the travel agent told me that as long as there is wind they plan to use the sails. It only holds 8 tourists and a crew of 4 including a licensed Naturalist who will be our guide for the trip. It was expensive ($750) but this is the high season and there are only a limited number of boats. But the price includes everything for the seven days: food, accomodations (we sleep on the boat), and all of the hiking and other excursions that we will do with the guide, and it also includes snorkeling which I hear is supposed to be really really great in the Galapagos. We will visit a different island every day, some days we will even visit two islands.

So as I have til Thursday to fly to the Galapagos, that gives me three days to hang out at the beach here on the coast of Ecuador

Palm Sunday

. Today I go to Puerto Lopez, a four hour bus ride from Guayaquil, and from there I will also probably visit Montanita, the surfing capital of Ecuador.

Oh, I also spent time this morning walking around Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador. It´s a big city but it does have a few cool things to see. There´s a park called Parque Bolivar where hundreds of Iguanas live. So it was quite fun to see all of the iguanas just roaming around in the park. They were everywhere - you looked up in the tree and you´d see forty iguanas all climbing about in the branches. Some of the local kids played games where they would grab the tail of an iguana and watch it try to get free - it´s really quite mean to treat the animals this way, but there´s no one to stop people from touching the animals.

I spent a couple hours trying to find binoculars. Since I´m going to the Galapagos I decided I really should have binoculars. But no one seemed to know where to go to buy them. I went to a mall downtown and asked at lots of shops. Finally, I walked into a random toy store and they had a pair of binoculars for 7 dollars that were kind of crappy because you can´t really focus them, but it´s better than nothing so I bought it. They should serve me fine. They are set to focus on things that are further than 50 feet, which is what you would use them for anyway, so it shouldn´t be too bad.