Day 243: Quito – Ecuador – Feb 15th

Today is our last day in the Galapagos. Our flight is scheduled for 10:30am, and because of us everyone on the boat has to get to the airport early even though their flights are all at 12:30pm! Feel sorta bad…

Our last excursion was an easy one, but one that ended our trip marvelously. Taking a 6am dhingy ride out into Black Cove Turtle Bay, our guide made a bold statement: “This is a sea turtle mating ground, if we don’t see any turtles mating then that means mating season is over!”. Sometimes, it’s strange how humans like to witness amazing moments of ‘life creation’ by other animals…. which literally is like watching animal porn, but this is in the name of science!

The cove was full of the usual suspects, but spotting them is always exciting. Golden rays, reef sharks, and of course, sea turtles! There was several coves which had an ‘entrance’ covered by mangroves, but once you get into the cove, it was like hitting the jackpot for spotting turtles! The cove was so quiet, you can hear the turtles coming up to the surface, and taking a deeeeep breathe. And it seems like mating season is still on, as TWO turtles would come up for air at the same time! Haha, it was really interesting!! We are also puzzled at how, two turtles with fins can manage to ‘hold on’ to each other during the process…..

Back to the boat, we ate breakfast, packed our bags and said farewell to the crew members and our home for the past week. We did the reverse commute back into the airport, and before we knew it our flight landed and we were on our way back to Quito! We met many new friends, getting extremely close to wildlife, and had an incredible time on the cruise and were a bit sad to have to go. One thing we didn’t miss though, was actually living on a boat!

Taking an AeroGal, we thought it was the discount airline of the region until we got aboard the plane and were seated in wide, comfy seats and had our own personal TVs. For a 3hr flight, this seemed a bit excessive, but getting to watch episodes of Modern Family, The Office and other shows made time past much faster and we made it into Quito at about 3pm. We were quite familiar with the city now, and there wasn’t much left to see so we spent the afternoon posting our blog…

One downside of living on a small yacht is that… the food quality seems to be lacking and was reminiscent of airplane food. It’s food, it’s edible, but they all taste the same and it gets tiring real quick. Back onto the mainland, we headed for the closest restaurant which happens to be a Vietnamese restaurant! It was well regarded by people, but we not only was it overpriced but also over-rated. In fact, our bowl of pho was cold and the beef was raw, and covered by a handful of rotten-looking beansprouts. Gross. The portions were also soooo small, we had to grab a hot dog a few hrs later to fill up.

Note: Postage in Ecuador is super expensive! It costs $2.00USD for each post card.

Note II: The official currency in Ecuador is the $USD. Question for any economists out there, how does any country manage their economy this way….? They do mint their own coins though, which makes it even more strange.