Monthly Archives: July 2016

The Galápagos Islands

July 3

There are 43 islands that make up the archipelago. We are aiming to visit 5. Our flight from Quito took us almost 1000 km west of Ecuador. We landed on Baltra Island and took a ferry over to the most populated Island, Santa Cruz, where about 18000 people live.

The islands got their name from Tomas de Berlanga, the Bishop of Panama. His ship went off course on the way to Peru. They did not stay for long, but wrote to King Charles V of Spain about the giant land tortoises with shells that were shaped like riding saddles. Galápagos means “saddles” in Spanish. They were also called Las Islas Encatadas (The Enchanted Islands) by Diego de Rivandeneira, a Spanish Conquistador. He claimed they were enchanted because the islands supposedly moved with the currents, making it difficult to find them. Scientists now know that this is partly true. Santa Cruz island shifts about 3cm to the east every year. Our naturalist guide, Ricardo, told us that the humans don’t feel it, but the animals and the islands feel it.

During the 1600s, various pirates used the islands as a base, and were the first humans to interfere with the ecosystem. This started the decline of the giant tortoise population. Before humans came along, there was an estimated 250,000 giant land tortoises on the Islands, now there are about 4000.

In 1832, Ecuador officially took possession of the islands.

The islands were also made famous by Charles Darwin, who spent time there studying the wildlife population. These were crucial field studies that led to his formulating his ground breaking theory of evolution.

Today we were lucky enough to visit an area heavily populated with giant land tortoises. Watching them plod along and eat guavas was positively mesmerizing. Their feet look like they belong to an elephant and their jaws are as powerful as a crocodile. We could have sat and watched them all day.

We also walked through a 400m lava tube that ran deep underground. It was amazing to picture the huge vein of molten lava that flowed beneath the surface so long ago, as we were hiking through the cool, humid tunnel, periodically stopping to crawl though cracks in the rock walls.

Also impressive were two volcanic implosion craters diving almost three hundred metres down. Now vegetated, the crater valleys are lush.

After a long fascinating day, we checked into our 3 bedroom apartment suite with a view of the coast. It feels like paradise. After sorting out some of the details for tomorrow’s adventure, we had a delicious dinner at a recommended restaurant around the corner. On this particular street, they close it off to cars, put out wooden tables and chairs, and people eat outside the restaurant in the middle of the road. A perfect end to a perfect day. Tomorrow we visit South Plaza Island.

July 2

Otavalo

Otavalo is a small town with a population of approximately 90,000, but hosts one of the largest textile markets in South America every Saturday. It was over two hours on the main road from Quito.

Although we missed the morning live animal sale (thankfully), instead enjoying a view of a local lake and listening to local indigenous music, we certainly made it to the market while it was plenty busy.

The market was a familiar twisting and turning labyrinth of stalls, where sellers acted as members of a team to provide change (although more often a sales technique to have none) and monitor potential sales. Some sellers appeared to have several stalls far away from one another. The maze made it difficult to find the way back to a previous favourite, which was probably a detriment to the seller.

There were so many amazing things to buy, We had to remember that there is only so much room in our packs to take things home. Ecuador is famous for its hand woven alpaca blankets, scarves, sweaters, indigenous jewellery and indigenous music.

We had an authentic lunch at a local restaurant, a two course meal with soup (we saw sellers at the market eating the same soup!) and a slice of beef under an egg. We even ventured into some cut up tomatoes.

After lunch we more efficiently made our way around and bought a belt, two blankets, a tablecloth and a runner for our buffet. We got a chess set, juggling balls and some trinkets.

Despite the crowded many streets around the market, within the market itself there were several tourists and some locals. But it really wasn’t very crowded and never intimidating. This was most unique aspect of the market: although everyone wanted to make a sale, the selling was never aggressive or intimidating.

The toy tops the boys bought, after seeing a few local boys having a blast in the market, kept them busy outside for over an hour once we returned home to Quito.

Tomorrow we have to get up at 5:30 to catch a plane to the Galapagos.

July 1

Quito, Ecuador

So far, so good.

Today was lovely. We had planned for today to be completely unstructured. Besides the crankiness which we expected, it was a great day. Our main goal was to explore our surroundings.

We went to a cute little mini supermarket and bought some ingredients for breakfasts and lunches. It was a small little store, and we had 4 very excited boys. They weren’t quite sure what to make of us. We are staying in an apartment in a busy residential and business area. There are no tourists. We definitely do not blend in.

We walked about 20 minutes to a park called Parque La Carolina. We were really impressed, It had everything you could want in a community park, and was full of people. First we took advantage of the many mini turf soccer fields to play a family game of soccer. A few people stopped to watch and one of the park workers took photos of us playing. The game didn’t last longer than 20 minutes as some of us were feeling the effects of the 2900m of altitude. There were also basketball and volleyball courts open to the public. There were informal games of soccer happening all over the park in the open spaces. The boys also spent some time rock climbing on some large sculptural piles of rocks put in the park specifically for climbing.

We also took advantage of a huge exercise park. There was all sorts of work out equipment there: chin up bars, giant truck tires to flip, climbing ropes, rings, hurdles, ellipticals, stairs, among other things. It was like an outdoor community gym. Almost everyone was doing things in their street clothes, but there were some serious people doing cross fit or kick-boxing training in pairs.

From there we went to a surprisingly great, but very small museum of biodiversity. Ecuador has a huge variety of geographic areas. They have the coastal area, the Andes with 43 volcanos, and of course, the Amazon rainforest. Although the museum was entirely in Spanish, we got a lot out of it. There was an interesting collection of specimens from insects, butterflies, fish, animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, rocks, shells and minerals. One of the coolest things for the boys was their collection of skeletons.

We also rented a pedal boat in their man-made moat. Features of the park we did not get to do were an outdoor animatronic sea monster exhibit, a botanical garden, a cultural centre, and the many street food vendors. It was a wonderful afternoon.

We finished off our day with dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant and then we hand washed some laundry and hung it up to dry on our makeshift clothesline strung across the kitchen. Tomorrow we head to Otavalo, a huge open air textile market.

After a number of technical difficulties, we finally have our blog up and running. It will be difficult to upload pictures right now from Ecuador, but we will post the text. Also, our last week here, we will not have access to wifi. I have been posting a few pictures on Facebook, so you can look them up if you like. I will edit the posts and add pictures once we get home. All posts have been written jointly by both Aubrey and Koren. one of us usually starts and the other finishes and or edits.  We are about two weeks behind, but we will start at the beginning…