Not from around here

Life is too short to go in order, so I’m skipping a bit of the mainland (don’t worry, I’ll return to it later) of Ecuador and going to the Galapagos.

This is the reason we went to Ecuador.  I took a list of the top 50 honeymoon spots and decided we could go to none of them.  Ryan wanted to see giant tortoises and mountains; I wanted Spanish and water.  Hence the decision to go to Ecuador and the Galapagos.

Getting to the Galapagos is a bit of an adventure itself.  From Quito, we flew to Guayaquil, the second largest city in the country and very far south.  We then flew from Guayaquil to Baltraz, which was a U.S. air base during the cold war and is now the official airport of the Galapagos.  From Baltraz, a tiny island, we took a bus for 5 minutes to a canal, took a large dingy across the canal, got into another bus for 45 minutes, and then arrived at Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz island.  Then we had to take a very small dingy to the wet dock of the Finch Bay Hotel, which was absolutely stunning.

On this first day adventure our first stop was at a gigantic crater.  The Galapagos are a lot like Hawaii in the sense that they too were formed by ancient volcanoes; when they erupt, their large, but when they become inactive over thousands of years the domes of these volcanoes eventually collapse, leaving these craters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me at the crater on Santa Cruz Island, our first official stop in the Galapagos.

Our second stop immediately fufilled Ryan’s dream of seeing giant tortoises.  This is a free farm, where the animals are happy and free to pursue the area as they’d like, hence why they were hanging out in the streets as pictured below. They are so big! And peacefu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got VERY close at the actual farm, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soooo peaceful.

I have power, do you? The power in our neighborhood is hilarious – by Dixie Highway they had power, but further back where we live no one did.  Now, my side of the street has power but the houses across the road are pitch black.  The irony of the whole thing is that the street light, which is across the street, is on, but the houses next to it are still without power.

 Gotta love it. Back to Ecuador info tomorrow.

Edit: Eight (yes, 8!) DTE trucks have gone down my 1/2 dark street.  This is a positive sign for my powerless neighbors, I hope…as long as they keep my power on!

One thing I have always loved about other countries is their older cities and the character they have; Ecuador is no exception.  So many of their cathedrals are hundreds of years old and always works in progress.  The feel of older cities – or even older areas of cities – always seems so warm and inviting.  I love how people congregate in the plazas and the openness of them in compact cities. 

This is the Plaza de San Francisco, which was absolutely stunning.  The last day we revisited it and there was a protest, kids chasing pigeons, and tons of people cooling off in the shade of the San Francisco church.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The churches are great throughout South America and Europe, too, because they have such fantastic character and are so welcoming to everyone.  I’ve always found them peaceful, even if they aren’t my particular place of worship or beliefs.  I love the candles you can light, too – in Europe you’re trusted to place money in the bin if you desire to light a candle, but in Ecuador we found that we had to buy candles prior to entering the church.  It was worth it for the peacefulness of the experience.  This is the front of the San Francisco church, part of the same plaza from the previous picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another cool thing about this particular church is that beneath it, they have a non-profit indigenous craft shop that runs through these amazing stone tunnels. The store is amazingly fun and the fact that the profits all actually go to the indigenous works is great, of course.

I mean, doesn’t that just have the coolest feel?