Ecuador: The Galapagos Islands, Andean Highland and Amazonia

On September 26 we left for Quito to begin almost 4 weeks in Ecuador to visit the Galapagos and Amazon basin.   Because of the exact tours we wanted, it was necessary to spend an extra week with no itinerary between the Galapagos and Amazon portions.  That extra week was the connection that made our trip to Ecuador complete.  It's an amazing country that we knew little about before we left.  In that one tiny country you can find virtually every climate on the planet.  Quito, the capital, is almost 10,000 feet high and the highlands are even higher.  (For comparison, Lhasa is about 12,000 feet).  The altitude is noticeable and we were often out of breath walking up the jetway unless we had prepared with Diamox pills before our flight.  We compromised by taking our time and not doing any difficult hiking in the highlands.

We began our trip in Quito for a few days and explored the old town section.  We stayed at a delightfully elegant boutique hotel, Plaza Sucre Hotel.  During our first morning walk to the town square after breakfast we saw President and Mrs. Correa.

[NOTE: This post was abandoned and not finished. It turned out that the sighting of the President was fortuitous because within a day or so he was deposed by a police overthrow but regained power before we were aware of the problems. We had already flown into Baltros on the Galapagos and started our cruise aboard the May Anne.]

I won't complete this but just know that it was a wonderful vacation from the Galapagos, Guayaquil, Quito, Otavalo, Cotopaxi, El Provenir and Amazonia aboard the Manatee Amazon Explorer.

Fall giving way to Winter, 2010

It's early November and the weather in DC has finally turned cool.  We were in Ecuador for most of October but the weather when we returned was beautiful.

Traveling from DC to SF in December 2010

It was not our best planning. 

We thought we could take the shortest route, DC to SF, which was listed on Google Maps as 1 day 21 hours.  The shortest route is, unfortunately, the NORTHERN route and we were getting further and further into December.  Checking the weather maps it appeared we 'might' be able to sneak through between two cold fronts.  Another problem was that the route was already snow-covered (though with cleared roads) through the area we couldn't alter once we committed, across the upper Rockies from Nebraska to Wyoming and Utah.  We couldn't just drop south to get out of it if we missed our windows.

We started off taking the most northern of two northern routes and got almost to Cleveland the first night.  It was obvious as we slid on black ice in WV that we might have chosen poorly.  When we also were slipping on ice in the parking lot of the motel, we realized we needed to rethink.  Because of the original route we had taken ourselves way up north and had essentially just wasted the first day's drive as we made a beeline diagonally from Ohio to St Louis, to Jopin, MO, and then Oklahoma City.  Day three took us to Albuquerque; day four was to Albuquerque and our last night was near 29 Palms.  Hopefully we can do the northern route in March when we return to DC.  We haven't been that route in a long time and are anxious to see that part of the country again.

We didn't get to do a lot on the trip...mostly driving.  We were able to visit my cousin Norma Jo Goodwin and her daughter Jane and her husband Chris for pizza in Alburquerque.  We also went a little out of the way to visit the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert for just a few hours.  Other than that, we were just driving.  Unfortunatel we were driving on interstates the whole time.  Oh, we did divert on Oklahoma City to hit a bit of the old Route 66 and have lunch at a real old diner.