Oct 21rst 2011
Our last day was really nice! It started off with me making banana-blueberry pancakes, then we brought some to Andres at work J and headed off to visit the city.Cuencais really beautiful, it has many churches, plazas and nice little streets. We wandered around really, took some pictures, looked at some stores and then met Andres for lunch when he was done working at 3pm. Then we ran some errands and walked around some more, had some tea and hung out, packed our bags and went to bed early. We had to wake up at3 amto go to the bus station and take a night bus toGuayaquil, where we were flying out from at10am. The ride was about 3h30hs, then we took a cab to the airport and had some breakfast. Next thing we knew we were flying to GALAPAGOS!!!!
The national park andprovinceofEcuadorknown as The Galapagos is a biological reserve of which many species were studied by Charles Darwin and contributed to his theory of evolution by natural selection. There are 18 islands that are bigger than 1 squared kilometre and about 200 islands or small rocks. The islands are volcanic, the oldest being 3.5 million years, and some still have very active craters.
After landing, we had to take a short boat and then an hour bus to get to Puerto Ayora on theSanta Cruz Island, which has the largest population and could be considered the “main island”. We found a place to stay, which had been recommended by a friend, and walked around to check our diving and what we wanted to do. We decided to take a tour the next day toFloreanaIslandand hoped to dive on the Sunday. We also found a better place to stay for the rest of the week, we got a room for 10$, hot water and a kitchen we could use. Everyone had told us the Galapagos had very expensive food, because if it is not cultivated there, then the food is shipped by boat and that takes 5 days to arrive here from Manta. We came prepared with stuff like pasta, rice, lentils, tuna, snacks, oatmeal etc. However nothing organic could be brought but this still helps. We soon realized that everyone was right, food in the supermarket is expensive, and in restaurants even more so! So that was our first afternoon in Galapagos!
La chola 