La Loberia beach

Today we got up early (at Alyssa's insistence, lol) to catch the 7:00am ferry to San Cristobal (the only other one leaves at 2:00pm). Brad was nice enough to grab us some coffee and I got some croissants from the grocery store. The boat ride was about two hours so we made sure to sit in the back to avoid the inevitable sea sickness. Unfortunately, the fumes from the engines got to Alyssa and she decided to sit directly in the boat spray to avoid them. Hahaha, she was in such a good mood.

Once we arrived at San Cristobal we headed straight to our hotel named "Casa Blanca". Brad had booked this place for us and it was luckily right next to the pier on the water. It was very nice and I had my own huge room with balcony to myself.

Since it was early in the day, we decided to take a stroll around town and get a lay of the land. This definitely wasn't a large town and certainly wasn't as tourist focused as Santa Cruz. We thought it was a good idea to book our Kicker Rock day trip as we heard the boats were pretty small and often sold out. We found a place that included snorkel rental and lunch for $80 and signed up.
Brad was desperate to find a surf spot so Alyssa and I decided to accompany him to La Loberia which was supposed to be good for surfing and have a nice beach. We took a cab which was only $1/per person for the short ride. Sadly, once we arrived we figured out it was not a good day for surfing or the beach. It was extremely windy and overcast which is apparently bad for surfing. The beach was also a sea lion hang out so as we lay on the beach they would come hobbling right over to us. It was a little unnerving and I never knew what to do then they approached. But they are SO cute!

We hung out for a few hours reading but we finally got cold and sick of the sand flies and headed back to town. There were no cabs to be found, so we began the walk back with the surf board in tow. To pass the time, we played one of those name recognition games where you name a celebrity and then the next person has to name a different celebrity whose first name starts with the letter of the last celebrities last name. It was actually pretty fun and we were back in town in no time. We continued our walk through town, searching for a grocery store where we could buy some provisions to make dinner. The grocery store was hard to find but after asking a few people, we finally found it. Brad offered to make us dinner and gathered the ingredients for a pasta dish with eggplant. When we returned to the hotel, we went to put our food in the refrigerator but were surprised to learn that the kitchen we had been told earlier that we cold use was actually a part of someone's personal apartment that lived in the hotel. We were clearly upset but unable to communicate everything to the person who lived there, so we just gave up and scrapped the dinner idea.
We read up on some dinner places in Lonely Planet and went out in search is Parrilla San Jose. Sadly, after searching a good 15 minutes for it, we found that it was closed. We resorted to one of the few other open restaurants in town and though the food wasn't great, we were entertained by the 90's music video compilation they were playing on the tv in the restaurant. Alyssa want feeling very well and Brad was exhausted from walking around all day, so they headed to bed at 8:00. I was happy to have my own room so I could stay up as late as I wanted. :)

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Seymour/Gordon Rocks dive

Since Alyssa and Brad do not dive, I signed up for a dive with "Scuba Iguana" that would take me to two sites: North Seymour and Gordon Rocks. I had read in all of the reviews that Gordon Rocks was the best place in the Galápagos to dive and we had planned the dates we were coming so that I could dive that site. I needed to be at the dive shop at 7:30, so I got up early so that I could get packed up, grab something to eat and walk the twenty minutes to the other side of town. Sadly, I had forgotten that it was Sunday and that nothing would be open to grab coffee or a snack. After trying multiple places, I finally gave up and headed to the dive shop. It was a cold, misty day and I could tell that we'd be in for some rain later.
The dive master went over our plan for the dive and strangely enough, we had to take a 45 minute taxi ride to the other side of the island to catch our boat. There was a couple from Australia in my taxi who had been traveling for 2 1/2 years and were very interesting to talk to. The 9 divers and 3 crew members boarded our small boat with all of our gear and headed out to North Seymour first. Before arriving, the crew insisted that we get fully suited up and do a dive test before our initial dive. This included getting water into your mask and then clearing it and losing your regulator and recovering it. I thought it was a bit ridiculous since we were all certified and I'd never had to do this on a dive before. The nice thing though was that they insisted on setting up all of your gear and helping you put it on. Normally this would annoy me but I figured they wanted to haul around my heavy tank, that was just fine! Haha
Once we had completed the dive test, we headed over to North Seymour. The water was much rougher there, so we had to be ready to go. Once in the water, I was once again struck by how cold it was. I was wearing a full wetsuit with boots and hood, but it still took my breath away. The fact that there was no sun to warm you up didn't help either. On this first dive, I was a little disappointed since there was no reef and hardly any fish; really just a sandy bottom. I realized after a while that you just needed to wait for the larger animals to appear- that was the appeal. I saw tons of manta rays, sea lions and sea turtles which was cool. The water is not very clear, there is probably only a 10-15ft visibility which also made it challenging. After the first dive, we headed over to Gordon rocks. During our surface time, we had a lunch of fish ceviche with banana chips and surprisingly, the fish ceviche was very good.
When it was time to get in for our second dive, the water was raging around us so we needed to be completely geared up and positioned on the edges of the boat to all deploy simultaneously so that the boat could get out of there ASAP. The waves were throwing us into the rocks even once we had descended so I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to keep away from the rocks and the other less experienced divers who kept crashing into me. Although this water was also very turbid, the great thing about this location is that it always has hammerhead sharks. I had never seen one before and was excited to see some in person. I got to see three different ones- one of them swam head on right towards me and I started to wonder if I should panick or not. They were harmless though and just carried on with what they were doing. We saw tons of eagle rays and manta rays and watched them swim above us in a group of at least 100- it was like watching birds fly overhead. It was a pretty interesting dive.
After the second dive, we headed back to Santa Cruz. Luckily this time the boat could drop us off right at the dive shop so we didn't need to take a taxi back across town. We congregated in the dive shop to look at the pictures our guide had taken of our dive. They were selling a disk of the pictures for $25 but since I can't upload a disk to my ipad I figured I would just have to get by with my memories.
I headed back to the hotel to meet up with Brad and Alyssa but I was so cold from the dives and it had begun to rain, so I ducked into a coffee shop to try and warm myself up. After the rain stopped, I finished my walk back, took a warm shower and met up with Alyssa and Brad to get dinner. We headed back to the street with all the seafood kiosk and found one that specialized in Caribbean food. The food was good although the people who worked there acted as if they really didn't want to serve us.

After dinner, we headed back to "The Rock" to get some drinks. There were a lot more people there than there were the night before. The price of things like Whiskey or Baileys on the islands is astronomical (a bottle of Jack Daniels is $82 and a bottle of Baileys is $59) so our drinks were a little extravagant and one was enough. We grabbed some gelato at the local deli and headed back to the hotel.

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Santa Isabella

Alyssa and I woke up at 6:30am and got our stuff together for the day. Luckily the grocery store was open and we were able to grab some yogurt and croissants for the journey. I had taken some Dramamine before leaving the hotel but having a full stomach always helps with my sea sickness. Every time you enter or leave the island, your bags have to be checked for produce and tagged. I think they do a pretty half ass job of checking, but that's just me.

We boarded a water taxi which took us over to the boat we would be taking to the island, the "Invicta II".

They asked who got sea sick and my hand shot up first. This meant Alyssa and I got to ride in the back of the boat where there was a breeze instead of in the enclosed, small, sweltering cabin with everyone else. I watched as they handed out sea sickness bags inside and was so thankful that I was not inside puking with everyone else. I would rather be cold and wet any day than sea sick.

We landed on Santa Isabella and had a few minutes to use the restroom before the tour began. Alyssa and I were immediately surprised by the amount of animals right in front of us! They were all trying to warm up on the sand since there was no sun out and they were not at all afraid of people- they would let you come right up to them.

Our group divided into two so that each group would have less people and a greater chance of seeing animals. Our group started with a boat tour of the area to see some blue footed boobies. The name cracks me up, but they really do have blue feet!

We then headed to "Islote Tintoreras" which is the volcanic rock area where the sea iguanas live. It was crazy to see all of the sea iguanas. They are very good swimmers and feed on the algae growing on the rocks in the ocean. They spend a lot of their time up on the hot black rocks, basking in the sun. Since they have no sweat glands, they get rid of the build up of salt in their bodies from the ocean by constantly spitting out sea water- it's kind of gross!

We then headed to a part of the island where you can see tons of white-tipped sharks. Apparently the sharks swim into the little channel during high tide and then once the tide goes down, they are trapped until it rises again. It was really amazing to see so many of them swimming around.

We re-boarded our boat and went off in search of penguins. We weren't sure that we would find any since there are apparently only 1,200 in the whole Galapagos archipelago but luckily, we found three swimming around together! They were very small but adorable.

After this, we headed back to the island for lunch. For a starter, they served us a carrot soup which you were supposed to put popcorn into. It sounds bizarre but it was actually good!

After lunch, we headed to the Giant Tortoise breeding center on the island. It was cool to see so many different tortoises, ranging from babies to once that were over 100 years old. They have to breed the tortoises in captivity and collect the eggs that are laid on the beaches because so many predators have been introduced by humans (rats, cats, goats, etc) that they baby tortoises don't stand a chance in the wild. The have a thin leathery shell until they are two years old. There are breeding centers on each island focusing on repopulating the 12 different subspecies of giant tortoise that are left.

After seeing all of the tortoises, we headed to a local lagoon to check out the flamingos. Alyssa and I were very excited to see the flamingos in the wild.

After seeing the flamingos, we headed to head back to the boat since the coast guard wouldn't let our boat leave any later than 4:00. We got to sit in the back of the at again although this time the water was really rough and I got very wet and cold. The tour was great though; we got to see so much!
Once we got back to the hotel, Brad informed Alyssa that he had planned a fancy dinner out to celebrate her birthday which had been a few days earlier. I decided that this was an event better suited for just the two of them and took myself out for my own dinner date. I went to "The Rock" for dinner which was a local bar/gastropub that had gotten good reviews online. I had an awesome "Blue Booby Margarita" and a burger.

After dinner, I went to a little cafe nearby to enjoy some delicious coffee and read for a while. I had to be up early for my dive in the morning so I headed to bed before 11:00pm.

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Galapagos!

We woke up at 6:30am since we would need to leave at 7:10am for the airport. Our breakfast was included in the price of our stay so we had some coffee and eggs before leaving. The airport in Quito was small but modern and we were on our flight before we knew it. We had to fly to Guayaquil, Ecuador first, which was less than an hour from Quito and then we headed to the island of Santa Cruz. Before we descended, the flight attendants went through the cabin and spayed all of the overhead compartments with insecticide that was supposed to protect the islands from invading insects. While I understood the reason for it, I was appalled that they were spraying this in an enclosed environment filled with oxygen breathing people.

As we descended, I was absolutely shocked to see what the Galapagos looked like. I think I have always pictured the Galapagos as a mix between Hawaii and the Amazon; some tropical island location where Darwin discovered this amazing mix of animals. Instead, it was a barren wasteland with far less foliage than you find in Southern Arizon and more akin to the moon. It was so strange to see this amazing turquoise water next to this hideous desert, lol. After I got over my shock, we deplaned into a small local airport.

The customs process was very easy although it was painful to have to pay the $100 entrance fee. We all got aboard a small bus that would take us to the ferry. The ferry seemed highly unnecessary to me since the other side of the channel was maybe 75 feet away...couldn't they build a bridge? Apparently not, so we piled into the boat only to get out 3 minutes later.

Once off the boat, we had to find a taxi. Lonely Planet had said there were also buses that would take you into town for $1.80 but we figured with Brad's surf boards, a taxi wold be easier. We agreed to a $20 taxi (which I thought was too expensive but Brad insisted that he would just pay for it) but once our luggage was in the back, 7 other people jumped in and piled their baggage on top of ours. I was not in the mood for this- my bag has a tons of stuff I don't need getting broken and why should we pay $20 so that they can all ride for free? I got out of the taxi, removed my bag from the cab and told the driver I was not comfortable with the situation. We argued back and forth but finally Brad insisted I just put my bag in the car with us and we ride into town with the locals in the back. I guess it must seem heartless to someone who is here on vacation but literally everyone wants a free ride. Some of the people in the back of the truck had been on our airplane with us and had paid $500 for a ticket to the Galapagos- I'm pretty sure they can afford their own cab. Alyssa and Brad were convinced that there was no local bus that day and no more cabs but I speak much better Spanish than they do (don't tell Alyssa but it's true) and knew this wasn't the case. I just went along with the situation in an attempt to avoid a scene in front of Alyssa's boyfriend who I've known for less than 24 hours.
It was a 40 minute drive to the town of Santa Cruz. The entire drive (as I attempted to calm down) I stared at the bizarre landscape in confusion. When we arrived at the hotel Alyssa had booked, we realized that it was extremely far from the water and would be too inconvenient not to mention, it looked a little sketchy. We hailed another cab and went back into town of find something close to the main part of town. Luckily, the first place we tried, "Sir Francis Drake", had availability so we took it.

Alyssa and Brad took a room upstairs but since it is more expensive to get a room by myself, I took one of the downstairs rooms which were only $15. There is a reason they are so cheap. It was basically a cold dungeon that had no internet and a shower that didn't work. I knew what I was getting into though and since it it was saving me $30, I didn't care. Luckily, I could use Alyssa and Brad's shower.
We put our stuff in our rooms and headed into town in search of a drink. We stopped at a little restaurant on the beach, hoping to get some mojitos and lunch. Unfortunately, their chef was gone for the time being and although it was happy hour and mojitos seemed like a good idea, they made them with some other plant that was not mint and did not taste good. Alyssa laughed at me once again for expecting them to make things like we assume they should be made but I maintain that you can't call it a mojito if it doesn't have mint.
Brad went off to try to surf with the locals so Alyssa and I finished our drinks and walked around town to find my dive shop and talk to some travel agencies about what day trips they had available. After asking tons of people and being led all around town, we finally found my dive shop at the very end of town. The woman I had been organizing the dive with via email had been completely unresponsive so I needed to know what time I had to come in the following day to try on my equipment. After speaking with them, we compared day trips to the different islands with a few travel companies before heading back to the hotel to meet up with Brad. We decided that Santa Isabella Island sounded like the best bang for our buck and signed up for that day trip the following morning. Brad decided he wasn't going to come with us but was going to try to surf with the locals instead. We got showered and ready and headed out for a drink before dinner.

We decided that we were going to head to the local row of seafood kiosks that line one street of the city to get some cheap, fresh seafood. Brad ordered an entire fish, I had garlic fish and Alyssa had grilled fish- they were all delicious!

We hung out in this area, drinking beer and watching the locals before heading back to the hotel early to get some sleep since we had to get up at 6:30 the following morning.

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A tough day of arguing

It's clearly a dramatic title but today was very trying to say the least. We woke up in our smaller room, happy that we had not been disturbed by the construction going on next door. We went downstairs, had our breakfast and lounged around the hostel for a while since we didn't have to check out until 12:00. Before we needed to check out, we headed to the laundry place down the street to inquire about Alyssa's missing jacket. The lady who worked there said that she knew who had it and that she would call them and get the jacket back. When we asked what would happen if she couldn't get in touch with them, she avoided the subject saying that it was no problem and that she would bring the jacket to our hostel since we were planning to be gone for the afternoon. This seemed suspect to us, but what choice did we have? I had some laundry I needed to do as well but I wasn't about to leave it at this same place so I brought it to another laundromat down the street.
We headed back to the hostel to finish packing and check out. I went downstairs to pay for our stay and the lady told me that we would have to pay $38 for last night instead of the $30 because we changed rooms to one with a bathroom due to the noise disturbance. I very politely reminded her that she was the one who said we could move rooms and said that it would be the same price. She tried to backpedal and say that it would have been the same price for the room with a bathroom on the first floor but not the one on the second floor. By this point I'm pissed and am telling her in broken Spanish (since she speaks no English) that I am absolutely not paying more than $60 for both nights. I took out exactly $60, put it on the counter and put my wallet away. At this point, Alyssa came into the room and after learning what the situation was, she was just as angry and adamant that we would not be paying more. We now had an issue though. We were supposed to leave our bags at the hostel while we went out for the day but now we didn't feel like they would be safe there. We grabbed our stuff and left, deciding that we would just have to figure it out.
We then headed back to the laundromat to see if the lady had found the jacket. She was surprised to see us again and with our backpacks. We said that we had to leave now and that we needed the jacket. She said that she had called the hotel of the other person that had the jacket but that they were on a trek and wouldn't be back for four days. We said that we were leaving that afternoon and that obviously four days was not going to work. What would have happened if we had not come back to check on things? She would have brought nothing to our hostel and the laundromat would have closed at 5:00, leaving us screwed. This was exactly what she had hoped would happen. Instead, we told her that she would have to pay for the jacket. Alyssa said the jacket cost at least $40, so we asked for $30. The lady pleaded with us asking us at first not to charge her and then for her only to pay $20. Knowing that we would have to buy Alyssa a new rain jacket since it rains here everyday and it is a complete necessity and that we would likely have to go searching for it and it would be a major inconvenience AND that you cannot buy a rain jacket for $20, we held our ground firmly at $30. We argued for at least 30 minutes (in Spanish) before Alyssa and I had enough. We had said it as many ways as possible but she still would not yield. We told her it was her fault not ours, that she would be held responsible and there would be no discussion. She finally gave in and gave us the $30. Now, to everyone who thinks we were mean for making the poor Ecuadorian woman pay us- they use the US dollar here and things are just as expensive as in the states. They have money, they just try to con Americans into believing they don't to get what they want. I'm over it.
Now that we had our money, we needed to find a place for our bags. We headed to another hostel that we knew had good reviews to see if they could hold them for us. The girl there was very nice and agreed to hold them for $1 each. Once we had the bags secured, we headed out to "Mitad del Mundo" which is the monument to the equator outside of Quito.

It was an hour bus ride on their metro-like buses followed by 45 minutes on the local bus. Luckily, that only cost $0.40 in total. I had read reviews of the monument and people said that it was very touristy and wasn't at the actual equator line. The equator was about a block down the street where there was another museum called "The Museo de Sitio Intinan". We decided to head to that museum instead. There was a $4 entrance fee but happily that included our own English speaking guide. We did lots of little experiments at the equator like trying to balance an egg on a nail (you can do it due to the lack of forces at the equator) and watching water empty from a tub and seeing it spin different directions on either side of the line. It was really interesting.

After our time at the museum, we made the two hour journey back to Quito. It began to rain as we walked from the bus station, which was sad since Alyssa no longer had a rain jacket. We stopped at tons of stores as we walked, looking for a new jacket but they were all well over $100. We stopped at a Juan Valdez to get coffee and wait out some of the rain. I ordered a cappuccino with Baileys which was a little more expensive but we had been talking about Baileys and coffee for days and I was really excited to get it. I took one sip and realized that it was not Baileys but Amaretto which I do not like. I took it back the counter and told the barista. I watched the four baristas go over and discuss all of the bottles they had, none of which were Baileys. They made another cappuccino with Cacao syrup which tasted terrible. I was a little annoyed since the coffee cost so much more and they didn't even have Baileys. On the last try, they mixed a bunch of different liquors together and I just gave up and took it. Why offer it on the menu if you don't have it?
We walked up the grocery store to buy cheese, bread, fruit and wine since Brad (Alyssa's boyfriend) was getting into town that night and there wouldn't be any restaurants or stores around where we were staying. Apparently there are two airports in Quito and the new one (that Brad was flying into and we were flying out of the next morning) is an hour and a half outside of Quito. We made a reservation at a hotel next to the airport so that it would be more convenient.
We picked up my laundry (luckily there were no issues and it only cost $2.50 for 4lbs!) and got our bags out of storage. The cab ride out there took a while but luckily traffic wasn't too bad and we had a normal sized car so we weren't crammed in there with our luggage. We arrived at Hosteria San Carlos Tababela with a few hours before Brad's arrival. We had planned to take showers but sadly the water was freezing! You could get it to be warm if you kept it at a slow trickle so it took an hour or us both to shower. The hotel had a shuttle that would pick Brad up from the airport so I let Alyssa go surprise him by herself and I prepared our dinner spread.

Once they got back from the airport, we hung out for a while and then I headed to my dorm to give them some alone time. It was only 11:00pm but someone had been asleep in the dorm since 10:00pm and had turned off the lights and barricaded the door. I was trying to be as quiet as possible getting ready for bed but its practically impossible when everything you own is in a full bag covered in zippers. On top of that, the bunk beds made a ton of noise when you got in them and for some reason the bunks were connected to one another so when one swayed, all the other bunks did as well. This made getting into bed very awkward and once I was in, I didn't want to move at all. I didn't sleep very much as it was cold and drafty and I felt a bit uncomfortable trying to accommodate to so many other sleeping people's needs.

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Double decker bus

This morning we woke up to a lovely surprise! Our hostel had prepared a breakfast for us which was included in the price of our room. We had coffee, juice, scrambled eggs and a croissant. It was nice to have our coffee and breakfast already there; we felt very fancy.

After breakfast, we decided to go on a double decker bus tour around town. I normally think those are a ridiculous tourist attraction but Quito is really large and the sights we wanted to see were very spread out. With the bus, we could take the three hour tour around town and get off and on whenever we wanted to at the different sights.

We began our tour in La Mariscal, which was the area of town we were staying in, at Plaza Foch. There were tons of bars, restaurants and cafes in this plaza and I was glad it was so close to our hostal.

Then the bus headed down towards the Centro Commercial Amador which had many different churches and museums. The churches each had an entrance fee so we didn't venture inside but they weren't as ornate as I had hoped they would be.

We walked down "La Ronda" which is one of the most emblematic streets in Quito. It is an area that has recently been renovated and contains restaurants, cafes and craft stores. It is located in the popular neighborhood known as Avenida 24 de Mayo which has permanent photography and sculpture exhibits on display.

We went up to the top of the mountain overlooking the town to visit "El Panecillo" which is a sculpture of the Virgin of Panecillo. It is apparently a replica and there was a lot of fallout when it was first placed on the hill since it was regarded as a holy area for religious ceremonies and the idea of a replica placed there was unappealable to the locals.

The Basilica del Voto Nacional was an amazing neo-gothic church that I really wanted to visit. Unfortunately if the bus dropped us off there wouldn't be another bus to pick us up for two hours, so we didn't get to go inside.

After we returned from our tour, we were happy tofind that the laundry Alyssa had dropped off in the morning had in fact been delivered tomour hotel. Unfortunately, they had swaped her rain jacket for a large, mens Nike jacket. We went to the laundromat to let them know their mistake, but it had closed at 5:00 so we would need to return in the morning to sort it out. We then headed to the grocery store to buy some salad and vegetables that we could eat with our leftover pizza. This is the first place we have found bagged salad, so we purchased an "American blend" salad that came with balsamic dressing and got some tomatoes and avocado to have with it. We made ourselves dinner at the hostel and afterwards we just hung out in our room reading. Another couple had come home from their day out and were apparently staying directly above us. Since we had been the only ones in the hostel the night before, we didn't realize how paper thin the walls and ceiling were. Every time the couple above us walked around it was like an earthquake above us and we could hear every word in their conversation like they were in the room with us. Once they started watching the Ecuadorian version of American Idol and singing in the shower, we decided we'd had enough. We went downstairs and asked the lady if it would be alright for us to switch rooms due to the noise (every other room in the 3 story place was open except the one directly above us). She brought us to a room down on the first floor which had its own bathroom, but the lady said it was fine and it would be the same price. We went up and got our stuff packed up and brought it downstairs. As we were about to go into the room, the lady stopped us and said there was only one problem. There was construction going on next door and she said that we would be woken up by the hammering at 7:00am if we stayed in that room. Since that wasn't much of a solution, we asked if we could stay in the room across from our current room. She said yes, that was no problem. We headed back upstairs and unpacked in the much smaller room (our first room had three beds and this one had one bed with a bathroom) hoping that noise would no longer be an issue.
We decided since it was our last night in Quito that we would walk to the nearby Zona Rosa to get a drink. We found a table outside at a restaurant in the main square and noticed that we were the only unaccompanied females in sight. There was a happy hour special of 3x2 but you had to get the same drinks, so we decided against that and I got a passionfruit margarita and Alyssa got a mojito. They hadn't quite mastered either of those drinks so we looked around to see what the locals were drinking. It looked like caparinas or micheladas were the drinks of choice, so we each ordered a caparina which meant that we got a third caparina free. Nothing eventful happened although we did get to watch some poor guy get a DUI in front of everyone in the square. After the 2 1/2 drinks, we headed home to get some sleep.

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