Galapagos

Try going to the Galapagos for a week, having one the most memorable weeks travelling you've done to date, and then picking through the several hundred pictures you took bring it down to a reasonable number.  Not and easy job... we'll start with a few diving pictures.  The sad thing is I missed a lot of pictures because our camera (or marine pack even) acted up a few times.  But at least we've got something... 

To start though, I'll just have to say never in any of the diving we've done have we seen so many sharks.  The waters in the Galapagos are just teaming with them!

 

Sea floor littered with sea snakes...

Huge schools of Barricuda...

We saw hammer heads on 1 of our 4 dives, but we saw about 20-30 of them... and they were/are big!

Jillene; pretty happy with how the dive is going.

Eagle Rays...

And more turtles than you can count...

Can you guess what this is?  :)

And this was one of Jillene's highlights... our last day we went snorkelling and was visited by this guy ~ sea lion.  Super curious, and ended up playing/swimming with us for 30mins!  Was pretty fun.  Sad thing is, my marine pack fogged up for some reason, so when I got out the pictures were like this (or worse).  This SHOULD be crystal clear, visibility was fine and this guy was right in front of me.  Luckily, we have some amazing videos of him smimming with us before the marine pack fogged up.

Tortuga Bay on Santa Cruz... A beautiful beach, and if you're bored you can just run in the shallow water chasing little reef sharks that come in in the morning to feed ~ we did!  :)  I swam here, but the current is pretty strong, so it isn't highly recommended.  You can surf though...

Lots of giant turtes... If this guy wasn't a vegatarian, I think he could probably eat Jillene.

2 ladies fight over some cactus...

An iguana

Another trip to tortuga bay, I'm sure you can see why we liked it.

Another type of land iguana, there are millions of these guys everywhere...

Including the beach!

Las Grietas, and very pretty swimming hole with crystal clear water.  We visited on the weekend which is good and bad.  Bad because if we waited a day we'd have it to ourselves.  Good because on the weekend the locals come here to swim and the young kids put on quite a show with death defying leaps from the top of the cliffs.  If you look closely you can see a kid flying in the air on his way down.

More turtles...

Turtle yawn...

'What exactly are you looking at here...."

Halfway in we changed islands and headed to Isabella, a great island, much more layed back, and some beautiful sunset over a volcanoe...

Turtle porn...

Sea Lions everywhere on Isabella... sleeping on boats as soon as they're left docked on the port.  And this guy showed up on the beach right in front of where we stayed.

Penguins...

And this birds existence has made some Galapagos t-shirt manufacturer rich...  The illustrious Blue Footed Boobie.

This is just a small taste of what was a great week in the Galapagos.  So many 'don't see that everyday moments', and so many creatures everywhere all considered a part of everyday life to the locals.  Not only is the Galapagos a jem for their wildlife, and great diving, but it's a really beautiful place with beautiful beachs, and great people.  A geat holiday destination.  Most people tend to see it on a tour, but we're glad we didn't ~ a common missconception that you have to.  I wouldn't have done it any other way; except maybe a little more time.

 And that's it for our trip.  Another winters backpacking season is gone, with another season of work just around the corner.  It was a great trip this year, and a great introduction to Latin America.  The spanish is coming along nicely, and thus we know we'll be back again shortly.  I'm super keen to keep leanring until hopefuly one day will be able to speak it at a respectable level.  We'll see how it goes.  Hope everyone following has enjoyed the pics, we'll see most of you when we get home!

Cotopaxi - Cuenca - Guayaquil

Well at this point we're definitely on the home stretch now... after Mindo we were back to Qutio again and just had to knock a few quick things before heading to the Galapagos to finish off our trip.  First was to go hike up to 'base camp' of Cotopaxi, which is just outside Quito.  We were lucky enough to hit it on a nice clear day.  This would be our 'high altitude' hike for the year topping out at 4800m.  Not the 5000m + we're used to doing in Nepal, but still pretty high!

A great view of Cotopaxi, and the old beater of a Ford Econoline Van we hired with a driver to get us to the start of the hike.  Was helpful to have such huge vehicle, as we ended up giving 7 young students a ride, as we found them on the road trying to walk there as they couldn't afford to hire a truck to get to the start of the hike...

Heading up into the snow... fog starting to set in as it does every afternoon.

We were sucking wind,  not being fully acclimitized to the altitude, but we got there...

Looking down...

 

And now a quick stop over in Cuenca on the way to Guayaquil where we would catch our flight to the Galapagos.  The entire city center of Cuenca has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and  you get a good idea why from some of the pictures.   A really pretty town...

We're in Guayaquil now... but really only had one night and an afternoon here.  We hadn't heard great things about this city, but we enjoyed our time here.  It was our first time back in 30+ degree temperatures, so we had a nice afternoon visiting a few parks, and the really nice waterfront (we're on the coast now), and drinking super cold beer that always seems to taste twice as good when you're in the heat!

One of the parks here was quite cool.  It was absolutely teaming with iguanas... right in the middle of downtown, and they are so used to humans that you can pet them and walk amongst them without any issue...

Or you can do this... I have a video that is a little better, but this young kid (no more than 2 years old) decided to grab a plastic bottle and go around beating the Iguanas.  Surprisingly enough the inguanas cared as little as this little guys parents whom sat on the park bench watching.  Was pretty hilarious at the time!

But now it's time for the Galapagos... Only 10 days left on the trip.  Can hardly believe it...

Mindo

Next town in the north we visited is just outside Quito, Mindo.  Again we found ourselves in a town that seems to get a lot of rainfall, and is surrounded by mountains covered in lush jungles.  Again, lots of hiking to do... This particular hike we did involved crossing a valley on a 1km long cable car.  This is what opperate the cable car.  A full car engine and tranmission, complete with it's gear shift!  

View from the cable car, we're about 1/2 way accorss and can still barely make out where we're going...

We're definitely upa good height...

And a few pictures from the hike... this was a particularily nice bridge.

Best staircase ever (part of the hike) carved into a huge log that was washed downstream and used to get up and past this particular waterfall!

Yup, more waterfalls!  Had to go for a swim in this one.

And finally, we broke down and did a canopy tour ~ zip lining.  4km of zip lines over 13 lines.  This one below is one of the longer ones.  If you can see the little black sqare in the middle of the picture, that is where we were headed on this line!

Jillene coming in on one of the shorter lines...

 Jillene coming in on a longer one... was a good fun way to spend the afternoon.

Otavalo

 After a quick stop in some great hotsprings, and an overnight in Quito we headed off to Otavalo north of Quito, known for its weekend market and an endless number of hikes.  We vistited small towns in the surrounding area that specialize in hand made leather items.  Everything from shoes and jackets, to horse saddles.  Some pretty nice stuff if you're into leather...

Then we did our first hike, and can you guess the destination; yup another waterfall!  This country has more waterfalls than people I think...

 

Then we climbed up close to the 4000m mark again to a crater lake.  It is so amazing how one day you can be in the amazon jungle, and then the next day you're at altitude up in the mountains in a landscape remeniscent of the Tibetan Plateau

And then another crater lake outside Otavolo... this one not up quite so high.

And then the weekend market.  The big market is for handmade woven items made in (and exported) by the aboriginals in the area.  Mostly made from the fur/wool of llama's and/or alpaca.  I won't bore you with pictures from that market; as I personally had more fun getting up early in the morning and visiting the animal market that starts the day.  Here you can buy nearly any animal they have for offer in the country, and for some pretty decent prices to.  A puppy (which they don't eat!) goes for $3-$6, and a guinnea pig just a few dollars (but the guinnea pig is to eat though!).

Not sure what this is called, but I'll just call it 'scary stew'.  You'd call it the same if you could see what was in it!

Ate lots of pork here in Ecuador, or at least I did... Lunchs carved right off the back of roasted pigs are readily available everywhere!