After a week in the Galapagos with no luggage, we were pretty sunburned (except for Anna) and ready for more underwear choices. We left Isabela for an overnight in Santa Cruz where we hit the tourist shops and watched iguanas lounging by a hotel pool. The grasshoppers in Santa Cruz are mighty robust-looking and liked to hang out in our hotel hallway. They were harmless, but they would suddenly hop on your shoulder while walking to buy a Galapagos tchotchke. So we were happy to get to Quito, a place where the grasshoppers stayed in the grass.

Tucked in the Andes sits Ecuador’s cultural and historical hub, Quito, and its estimated two million residents. Quito rests 9,300 feet above sea level making it the second-highest capital city in the world. (First place went to La Paz in neighboring Bolivia.) It’s a city in the clouds, so it’s the perfect place to take a break from the equatorial sun.

Quito is vulnerable to earthquakes, yet the centuries-old monasteries, cathedrals, and plazas have held firm and survived time’s storms and quivers. This is a view of Plaza de la Independencia, the city center and its colonial heart.

Walking around Quito was a joy–not too hot, not too cold, my sunburn could heal and there were no bugs freaking out Anna or annoying me and Mike. Old Town Quito feels like many European cities, but what was surprising to us was that it was filled with locals. We barely saw any gringos or tourists wandering around looking lost or awestruck–just Ecuadorians going about their business.

All that walking made us hungry. There were tasty options everywhere, and, as always, places to enjoy cafe con leche to wash it down.

Ecuador is flower country; roses and orchids are two of its biggest major exports. When we arrived in Quito prior to flying out to the Galapagos, we stayed at the Swiss Hotel because we knew that five-star treatment would feel awesome after a long day of cross-hemisphere travel with a three-year-old. The hotel lobby was in full bloom–diaphonous arrangements of long-stemmed roses about three to four feet wide stood on every counter or tabletop. The roses were statuesque. They looked more like sculpted velvet than plants and I had to touch them to be sure they were real. Here’s a door to a flower shop in downtown Quito:

We encountered murals and other forms of art and outdoor sculpture when visiting the Museo de Banco Central, which is a museum, not a bank, although the museum does house an impressive amount of gold.

I can’t write about Quito and not mention Hotel Antinea, our hotel where we spent two nights coming back from the Galapagos. The Swiss Hotel was lovely, but it’s your standard business class hotel and served as a 12-hour pitstop from our arrival in South America to our flight to the Galapagos. Hotel Antinea was our opportunity to sit and soak up Quito and Quito-ness. Hotel Antinea is located in Quito’s funky, artsy neighborhood–perhaps the Quito equivalent of Greenwich Village. But the hotel is gated, so you get the convenience of being so close to said funk without the noise. For $65 a night, we got this glorious room plus our own private garden and patio. That’s just crazy!!!

Our kid is a picky eater in Estados Unidos, so I was pretty sure Ecuador would prove no different. We managed to sneak some lentils into her by hiding them under the rice, and occasionally Anna would wolf down a plate of salchipapas (sausage or hot dogs and fries). Those were her culinary limits. By the end of the trip, we were ready to cave. During our walk back from El Museo de Banco Central, we passed a McDonald’s and ordered the classic Happy Meal hoping it would bring happiness. It did. We unpacked our late lunch back at our private patio, and Anna burned off her high-caloric, high trans fat lunch by chasing after a red McDonald’s balloon. That seemed to be a proper way to transition back into American culture. We left South America the following morning, both sad to say goodbye to a wonderful vacation, and also happy to come back home.

Epilogue

The Martinez-Woznicki family experienced sticker shock when they paid $41 for brunch in Hoboken, New Jersey the day after getting back. Kate and Mike determined that they missed the laid back ambience of South America coupled with its incredibly cheap prices. Kate is already plotting to build a nest egg so large that she, Mike, and Anna can afford to chuck the New York City rat race for a quiet life in Quito spent stopping and smelling the roses and drinking lots of coffee.

The circuit board in our apartment is busted so our thermostat and heater are having communication problems. Which is why I am blogging at my kitchen table wearing my winter coat, scarf, and hat. Bitter cold days in New Jersey would inspire anyone to reminisce about warmer times. Today is a gray, almost sunless sky day. Since I can’t escape physically, I’ll escape mentally. I invite you into my head–here’s what I’m thinking about now: warm sandy beaches, warm circling currents, and walks under a warm, smiling sun.

Snorkelin’…

Wavin’…

Chillin’…

Surfin’…

Popsicle lickin’…

More popsicle lickin’…

The island of Isabela is as pretty as it sounds. Shaped like a seahorse, Isabela is the largest of the Galapagos archipelago. Across its 4,558 square kilometers lies six sleeping volcanoes. Much of this island is rough and cracked, but at the southeast end below the gaze of the Sierra Negra volcano rests a smalltown called Puerto Villamil. This is where we spent days five and six of our trip.

No where have I ever seen such a pristine beach. The beach I saw in Cuba was clean and beautiful, but still choked with people. This Pacifc-kissed beach was God’s little secret–untouched by hungry realtors. It’s what I imagine Hawaii must’ve looked like a century ago. Even though Mike and I missed Starbucks and the whole concept of walking with coffee (which they don’t appear to do in Ecuador), we were relieved to see it hadn’t found its way here.

Swirls of black volcanic rock circle the beach, and it was here that we found a blue-footed booby with a broken wing. Back in November, to prepare Anna for this trip, we had purchased a BBC documentary DVD about the islands, and the film featured a blue-footed booby dying from a broken wing. This bird was still standing, but as we walked by, I wondered how much longer it had to live, and Anna held out hope that the booby would “feel better soon.”

Blue-footed boobies were there at our arrival to Isabela. As our boat pulled up to the dock, we discovered we were parking in the midst of dinner. About two thousand boobies circled overhead while thousands of fish huddled below the pier probably freaking out. It was exactly as we had seen in the BBC documentary–the boobies start to circle, and then circle slower, and slower, until suddenly they nose-dive into the water to feed. Thousands of them just plummet simultaneously–thousands of bird bullets pelting the water.

While the blue-footed boobies dined, we made our way to our hotel to find our own food. We stayed at Hotel San Vicente. I’d tell you that you could find this hotel because it’s the one on the street made of sand, but all the dozen or so streets criss-crossing through Puerto Villamil are made of sand. A lot of families in the Galapagos raised chickens in their backyards, and occasionally we would see a lonely, but bold chicken crossing the sandy road. It’s also the only road I didn’t mind Anna standing in because there was no threat of traffic.

We also found Nemo at Isabela. Anna was happy to see something she recognized. Here she is wearing her brand new bathing suit that features cutesy flowers and a caption in Chinese we have yet to decipher. Hopefully the caption doesn’t say something like “America sucks.” We bought it in San Cristobal for $10 when we realized our luggage wouldn’t be enjoying the trip with us. In the end, it proved easier because we didn’t have to lug six bags on and off boats, and Anna got to live in a blue bikini for a week.

You can’t visit the Galapagos and not see animals, painted or live. They’re everywhere. This mural appeared inside a church in Puerto Villamil. Sadly, the flamingoes weren’t in town when we were there, so we can only claim to have seen flamingoes at the zoo and on this mural. Crabs were everywhere along the shore.

I met these two guys while heading out to snorkel at what’s called Las Islas de los Tiburones or Islands of the Sharks, a handful of jagged pitch-black lava grottoes that were a 15-minute dinghy ride from the pier where we saw the kamikaze blue-footed boobies. Iguanas were everywhere on these rocks. We even saw two fighting igunanas–again, animals reinacting what we had seen on the nature documentary. (It’s all true, guys!)

I have never snorkeled before. Mike snorkeled at Montego Bay, reported back that he didn’t see anything, so I didn’t bother going in. But marine life was teeming beneath the water’s calm surface here, so I waded into a very shallow mangrove that was being stirred by both icy cold and tropical warm currents.

This will go down as one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I swam with white-tipped sharks, countless fish, marine iguanas, and even a sea lion. I slipped into a whole new world and now I can’t wa
it to go back.

I’m not the only one. Geoff, our Galapagan guide and now our cousin-in-law, explained to us that in less than five years, Isabela would change. Its secret is out. Maybe the roads won’t be sandy anymore, but paved. The beachfront will become bogged down with condos and hotels. More tours and tourists will arrive and demand more luxurious lodgings. Our hotel room was four beds, a TV, and a shower. Breakfast was always included, and always featured the standard scrambled eggs, rolls, and pink jams we had come to love. Instead of steaming cafe con leche, most places around Isabela served instant coffee which sat on the tables of most restaurants. Two nights at Hotel San Vicente cost our family a grand total of $64. It was rustic and wrinkly–a place that had yet to be smoothed over by 21st century whims and demands. I want to return and visit Puerto Villamil again. Will it be as beautiful or will its beauty simply have changed? I hope to see the answer.

I’ve been back in the Northern Hemisphere for almost 24 hours now. Yesterday began with a ride over sleepy clouds circling the Andes and then ended with a heated cab ride under the stars and over the Hudson. Our time in Quito and Las Islas Galapagos was hard to say goodbye to. There’s a snow storm hitting the Northeast later tonight and all I can think about is how the water felt on my skin as I snorkeled past a sea lion and how the colors of the Pacific would change from turquoise during the afternoon sun to the color of the dolphins’ skin later in the day.

Snoozing sea lions never cared about the color of the water. These charming, lazy creatures napped anywhere and everywhere, from the bellies of boats to the steps at the pier.

The Galapagos Islands was never a place I thought I would ever see. I wasn’t even quite sure where they were–just somewhere in the Pacific off the northern coast of South America. I’ll begin with the island of San Cristobal, where we spent the first four nights.

I landed in San Cristobal because about three years ago, Mike’s cousin was trying to find work in Spain and saw an ad for a Spanish/English teacher in the Galapagos. Fresh out of college and willing to let the world take her anywhere, Mike’s cousin took the job, settled into the small town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the capital seat of the Galapagos, fell in love with an island native who was getting a scuba diving business off the ground, and a year later on a beach, the guy is slipping a diamond on her finger and popping the question. We’ll go anywhere for free food, so once Courtney and Geoff picked a date, we began planning our trip, and on January 5, a bunch of gringos stood on a rock overlooking the Pacific and watched a girl from Kingston, New York exchange vows in Spanish with a guy from down the road. Anna was a flower girl and was required to wear pink, which is never a problem.

The beauty of traveling to another country for a wedding–not a destination wedding, but a place the bride or groom calls home–is that you get an intimate portrait of that culture. This wasn’t the tourist path in the Galapagos. This was enjoying Ecuador with Ecuadorians the Ecuadorian way. That meant loud “reggaeton” music pretty much 24/7, lots of “sailor rice,” wine bottles getting passed around shuttle buses in the highlands, and getting to know “Galapagan time,” which means things will happen when they happen and not a moment sooner. That required letting go of our New York minute mentality, and accepting the fact that there are no schedules on the Galapagos except sunrise and sunset. So when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or as they did at this wedding, put a hot pink hibiscus flower in your hair and get your drink on.

It wasn’t all drinking and dancing (and I’m not a big drinker anyway). Much of the trip was spent on a boat, getting off a boat, swimming to or from a boat, or asking what time the boat was leaving the dock. One day 11 years ago while hiking in upstate New York, I told Mike “I don’t do boats.” The reason was that unless the water was as smooth as glass, I would get terribly seasick. Island hopping means boat hopping, so I bought acupressure wristbands and dramamine for the trip. I am proud to report that not only did I not get seasick, I enjoyed every boat trip I was on (which probably adds up to about a dozen within a week). Mike got to relax because I wasn’t barfing up a storm, and even Anna enjoyed boating and proved that she had fortunately inherited her father’s steely constitution.

I loved the meditative quality of being out in the open Pacific listening to the drone of the motors cut through the quiet of the sea. During one of our excursions off San Cristobal, we boated past what appeared to be a pod of pilot whales. About two dozen flirtacious pilot whales skirted around our boat, playing in the waves. Several of them jumped alongside the boat, keeping up with our speed, at only about five to six feet away. We weren’t on a whale-watching trip. We were simply boating from San Cristobal to Santa Cruz and happen to run into a pod of pilot whales. It was one of the most beautiful, impromptu experiences I have ever had. Sadly, I don’t have any photos.

I do, however, have a photo of Kicker Rock. We boated out to these remains of a lava cone that were eroded by the sea. Known as Leon Dormido, or Sleeping Lion, these two vertical rocks rise 500 feet from the ocean and form this small channel that is very popular among snorkelers. Mike braved the brisk ocean current and snorkeled through Kicker Rock in nothing but a pair of snowmen boxers covered by some Old Navy shorts. That’s because our luggage didn’t get to Quito in time, and because we were island hopping, never made it to the Galapagos in time. So we weathered eight days in the Galapagos surviving on three pairs of underwear each (more about that l
ater). But it didn’t slow us down. Mike saw plenty of sharks and fishes, and I’m sure that for the marine life looking up at the surface, this wasn’t the first gringo to go swimming by without a bathing suit.

The time spent on land was as fascinating as the time spent in the water. Puerto Baquerizo Moreno isn’t what most Americans would picture as a capital city (we learned the night before the wedding that the groom’s mother had briefly served as interim governor). The “capital” is no more than a few thousand people etching out a living in a drowsy seaside village. But it is charming, and while getting around can be physically demanding–you pretty much walk or swim to where you need to go–the island is easy on the brain and lulls your mind. Suddenly, you don’t mind that you’ve been waiting almost an hour and a half for your dinner because you can just stare at the beach and forget about whatever was annoying you.

We arrived shortly after the New Year’s Eve parties had ended and the hangovers had finally abated, so there was plenty of Christmas decor still dangling from every window and rooftop. South America is fiercely Catholic. No matter how poor people are, they will always find the means to create elaborate nativity scenes and advertise their faith to neighbors and passersby. We saw countless dilapidated shanties along dirt roads and in the front yards, large, lovely nativities. Often, the mangers looked nicer than homes they stood in front of. I sometimes wondered if the Galapagans thought it was ironic to have so many depictions of Christ plastered around the birthplace of modern evolution theory. It was also odd seeing smiling Santa Clauses in a place that endures such head-on intensity from the sun.

Visiting San Cristobal means eating lots of “sailor rice,” which is fantastically-seasoned rice mixed with a hodgepodge of whatever got caught in the net that day. It also means drinking cervezas (the local brew called Pilsner) and plenty of walking. Should you ever stay in San Cristobal, I highly, highly, highly recommend crashing at Pimampiro, a bed-and-breakfast made of a group of white cabins about a half mile walk from downtown. This hotel opened in fall 2007, and it was one of the most pristine (and organized) hotels in town. Named after the proprietor’s hometown, the place boasts a swimming pool and the best fresh-squeezed juices, jams, and scrambled eggs around. The proprietor’s wife stands about ten feet from a long table whipping them up while the proprietor, who also spent the previous two years hand-building his hotel from the ground up, serves us coffee. Plantains are plentiful, and were on the breakfast table every morning.

When Fernando wasn’t keeping the joe flowing for his gringo guests, he could be spotted manning his store on the boardwalk facing the sea. Unfortunately, Fernando doesn’t have a web site, so I can’t pass that along, but I have an email address if anyone is interested. We had a lovely view of a blue-footed booby strangled with Christmas lights. There was also a dog always hanging out on the rooftop.

San Cristobal was followed by two days in Isabela, almost two days in Santa Cruz, and another almost two days in Quito. More on those trips later.