Galapagos/Ecuador

 
I was looking through some photo albums the other day and spent a quite a bit of time reminiscing about our 2004 trip to Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands.
Our friend Wendy, a single mom, called me to see if we would be interested in traveling to the Galapagos /Ecuador with her and her daughter, Amber. Seems that 11-year old Amber had just studied the Galapagos and was dying to go – the only problem was she didn’t want to go if it was just the two of them, just in case something happened to mom.

There are very few places on MY “don’t want to go there” list, so I asked Tobey what he thought of the idea. He hadn’t retired yet and it wasn’t high on HIS “want to go there” list, so he really put the idea down. I told Wendy we weren’t going. They were disappointed and decided not to go, either. WELL, a couple weeks went by when Tobey asked me how the plans for the Ecuador trip were coming so he could get the dates into his calendar. You could have knocked me over with a feather I was so surprised!  He said that his lack of interest had never stopped me before, why did it this time?! I made haste & called Wendy to tell her the good news. I could actually hear Amber’s happy dance in the background!

Once we decided to go, the planning stages began. We had several things to consider.

1. Did our son, Tyler, want to go? He would be graduating from high school that spring and wouldn’t that be a cool graduation trip? He wasn’t interested in going! He said he needed to work & save money for college. (Could it have been that he was really weighing 3 weeks in Ecuador with Mom & Dad vs. 3 weeks at home with his girlfriend?)

2. Tour operator. Wendy had already selected an REI Adventures trip that was a 7-night cruise through the Galapagos on a very small boat (20 passengers & crew). We added pre-and post-nights in Quito (our destination airport), and 2 nights in Otavalo.

3. Tobey & I then decided to add on a post-tour to the rainforest in the Amazon Basin – 4 nights at La Selva Eco-Lodge. What a blast!

4. Tobey also wanted to add an extra week to really experience Ecuador by riding the “chicken” buses and staying in $10/night hostels.

Okay – so now the trip he didn’t want to go on is now 3 weeks long!

After checking with the Health Department for vaccinations/medications that we would need (malaria, yellow fever, updating hepatitis & tetanus shots) we were ready to go!

Stay tuned for the highlights!