We enjoyed both Ecuador & Peru very much. The Galapagos Islands were awesome. To see that much wildlife so closeup since they have no fear of humans was amazing.
Highlights were seeing a Galapagos hawk so close that you could reach out and touch him, being careful not to step on iguanas and sea lions, watching the mating dance and courtship of the Blue Footed Booby, the baby marine turtle making his earnest trip from the nest on land to the ocean, the giant tortoises, hearing the baby sea lions nursing, seeing penguins near the equator, the snorkeling with the sea lions and our one lone Albatross.
Ecuador and Peru had warm wonderful people. Climbing Hyuna
Picchu at Machu Picchu was a thrill. We enjoyed just watching the locals going about
their daily lives at the markets. It was exciting to witness the most sacred
event of Holy Monday with the thousands of locals crowded into Plaza de Armas
in Cusco.
We enjoy trying local dishes and had 2 kinds of tamales for
breakfast (wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves), many different fruits,
guinea pig (Cuy), alpaca, cow’s hoove stew, local pizza, the different types of
potatoes and corn, Inka cola (made by Coke and tastes a bit like bubble gum),
plantains, empanadas and much more.
We had no trouble with the altitude and drank quite a bit of
the coca tea (made with the leaves of the coca plant).
Our favorite laugh out-loud moment was at our last hotel in
Cuzco. Greg crawls into bed and promptly jumps out. He says to me “there is
something in the bed, it’s warm & furry.”
We see 2 lumps but nothing is moving. If we would have had a baseball
bat, we probably would have beaten it to death. He gets dressed and goes to the
front desk. They managed to not laugh, at least to his face as they explained
that they put hot water bottles at the foot of the bed for warmth. We are
laughing hysterically as we pull back the covers and see the hot water bottles
in furry covers. We still laugh out loud about that.
We booked the 11-day cruise tour with Celebrity and we added
another night in Quito to tour on our own. The Cruise tour was all inclusive.
All meals, tips, drinks (alcoholic and soft), excursions on the ship and off.
Unless you had laundry done or used the spa there were no extra charges. We
booked our Peru portion with South America Vacations. While we managed to see
and do most of the things planned, we didn’t enjoy their touring style of more
talking than exploring the sites.
Celebrity Expedition was a 90 person mega-yacht. I say was as I see it now only takes 48 people and I see they have added suites and some better cabins. It was a first class experience then and I'm sure it has only improved.
We left on 31 March for Quito, Ecuador. We were to arrive in
Quito at 5:10p, but our day started by getting up at 4:00a to catch our flight
when we got an email saying our flight was canceled. Greg called and got us rebooked
on a later flight. With time to kill we went to Panera for a breakfast pastry
and then came home and loaded the suitcases in the car. We headed to the
airport and due to bad weather here in Orlando (tornado warnings and
lightening) all flights were grounded for most of the day and night.
We had lunch at the airport after each new flight time got changed later and later. Then we had dinner at the airport. We finally got a go ahead on a flight around 9:00p at night. In Miami we were given a gate number for our connecting flight to Quito. We got there and the plane was long gone, so we called to see what could get us to where we needed to be. We had the option to wait until the next day to fly out or take a flight that went to Lima, Peru and then connected to Quito. We opted for the latter.
We arrived in
Lima around 4:00 in the morning and departed for Quito around 6:00a. I had a
private tour scheduled to tour Otavalo Market and countryside with Alex Lomax
who was meeting us at the JW Marriott at 8:00a. We arrived in Quito at 9:00a
Friday. Our luggage was vacationing elsewhere and who knows where it was at
that point. We called our guide and asked if he could pick us up at the airport
and could we still tour? He said no problem and he arrived quickly and with
only our carryon luggage and no shower and not much sleep we did our tour. (we
did get a bit of sleep on the various planes) What a great guide!
I'll start a separate post for our day with Alex.
No comments:
Post a Comment