We flew from Cusco to Quito, Ecuador with a short layover in Lima. Quito is another city high in the Andes. In Quito we visited a school, toured the old colonial part of the city, sampled fruit at a market, interviewed a street prostitute, and played a short soccer game in the street. As usual, the women won the game.
We stopped for lunch at Casa Gangotena. Very elegant.
The highpoint, literally, of our visit to Quinto was the cable car that overlooks the city.
The scientific highpoint was at the equator museum. Here is the experiment. With a basin of water directly on the equator, the water does not circulate. Move a mere ten feet south of the equator, and here is what happens.
Here is what happens when the basin is moved ten feet north of the equator. Now we know the answer to the question, “Do toilets flush in the other direction in the southern hemisphere?”
We flew from Quito to the Galapagos and took a short bus ride. Our first encounter with wildlife was a walk among giant tortices in the wild.
The next four nights were on the Achipel I. There were eight cabins for passengers and quarters for the crew below deck. The food was exceptional. A generator ran constantly to provide electricity and engines ran at night as we moved from location to location. I slept like a rock.
Our transportation to land and to snorkeling was by panda. Here we are looking for wildlife and fish.
Yes, we saw wildlife. One of the more interesting sights was an encounter between a pair of penguins and a sea lion, which was blocking their route to a nest.
Sea lions were everywhere, including park benches. There were several close encounters while we were snorkeling. As with other animals in the Galapagos, they pretty much just ignore people.
No trip to the Galapagos would be complete without a blue-footed boobie.
And here is my best picture of our orca whale sighting.
We saw flamingos several places.
Some years the landscape is green. At other times there are very few green leaves. In what should have been the rainy season, most of the islands were dry and barren.
Can’t end a trip like this without a sunset picture.
It truly was a trip of a lifetime.