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We checked out several toury agencies in Quito, found one with real cheap fares advertised on hand-printed signs in the window, and altho’ cognisant of the old maxim, “more is better”, went in.
Nancy, ah Nancy, odd name for an Ecuadoriana but she was pretty (and) helpful, full of info and this was the only place in town with a vacancy at all.
At the airline office they had no seats to Galapagos for a week or more, altho’ I suspect the toury agencies book everything in sight then on-sell!.

Lava, Lava, come back to me...

Bill Shum
2006-08-21 17:35:45

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We checked out several toury agencies in Quito, found one with real cheap fares advertised on hand-printed signs in the window, and altho’ cognisant of the old maxim, “more is better”, went in.
Nancy, ah Nancy, odd name for an Ecuadoriana but she was pretty (and) helpful, full of info and this was the only place in town with a vacancy at all.
At the airline office they had no seats to Galapagos for a week or more, altho’ I suspect the toury agencies book everything in sight then on-sell!.

We settled on an 8 day tour on a 20 person boat, leaving the next morning. Some trepidation as all the other tour boats had glossy photos, ours a gritty old pic…hmmm, but looked OK.

The tour….up at 5.30 am for a 6am airport check-in!..still raining and cold in Quito, hour and a half to kill at the airport, I’d planned on getting a couple of books and basic supplies, cigs, grog, chocolate etc but this airport is like a little rural retro-port, nada!!

Usual boring flight, cardboard food, duty free rum, then we’re here! At the airport I’m met by a bunch of Darwin’s finches, the ones that started it all, fantastic! and I’ve got time to rewrite the whole Origin of Species as we’re stuck here for 4 hours.

Then our guide(?) well, the first of several, he recognized my sticky label that said “Free Enter rice” and then he disappeared, we stumbled onto gold, a bar, and had a couple of celebratory cervezas, then another guide told us we were going and led us outside, stinking hot so I dug out the shorts, we then sat outside the string of little toury stores, all with identical Chinese artisana crapola and waited another 2 hours. Finally our new guy rounded up a twin cab ute and off we went into the hills to the turtle farm where we met up with the rest of our group.

Ah, the amazing bonding of characters as everyone gets to know the others, the rest of the group knew each ...