November 2, 2011
11/2/11 - 11/3/11
78 °F
We can’t tell you how good it feels to wake up in a big soft bed and have a nice hot shower after a trip to the Amazon! After breakfast we decided to head over to the Mitad del Mundo monument of the official equatorial line. As most of you know we are “thrifty” travelers and if there’s a local bus going in the direction “we aint takin no taxi!”. It is fairly easy to get to, just look for the bus marked “Mitad del Mundo and if you’re white then people pretty much know where you’re going. The total cost is around $1 for two people so try not to complain if you have to stand or sit on the floor!



We arrived at the monument, got our passes and started shooting photos like all the other tourists. Take one of me standing over the line, kissing over the line, and pointing at the 0’0’0’ sign, you know the usual stuff. It didn’t take long before Ruby was drawn into a restaurant by the smell of amazing food. We sat at a table and noticed a young girl and her grandmother looking for a seat. Being the kind people we are (and good looking I might add) we decided to offer the two extra seats at our table of 4 to them. We had a very yummy lunch complete with a pitcher of sangria. We made some new friends Juliana and her grandmother Olga who live in Cordoba, Argentina. Ruby loved their Argentinean Spanish accents and had fun trying to practice her own. After lunch they invited us to visit and stay with them in Argentina . . . we warned them not to offer because you never know we might take them up on the offer!




A lot of people don’t know this but the official GPS certified equatorial line is actually a short walk (about 200 meters) up the road at a small museum called the Museo Inti-Nan. It cost around $6 p.p. and included a tour explaining a bit about the location, the different tribes in Ecuador/Peru, how to make a shrunken head, and of course the physical effects of being at the equator. They did lots of experiments but our favorite had to be “the egg on a nail” that we originally saw on Andrew Zimmern’s TV show Bizarre Food. The theory is that there is more of a downward force of gravity at this location that allows you to balance something round on a very small surface, like say an egg on a nail. This is definitely NOT easy . . . we thought that it would be from the TV show. We both gave it a try without any luck and we had to leave before anyone in our group could do it.











Of course, Tony is extremely competitive and he couldn’t even focus for the rest of the tour—all he could talk about was going back and trying one more time! He was determined to be the egg master of the equator. After the tour ended he went back with the determined look of a boxer going back into the ring! He even had an old man cheering him on saying “you can do it” and “be the egg”! After a few tries Tony did balance an egg on a nail, and we have the photos and the Egg Master paperwork to prove it!! Just look at the looks of awe on the faces of the people in the background 





We had a beautiful ride home along a ridgeline, admiring the volcano Cotopaxi looming over the entire city of Quito. It was so beautiful . . . next time we come to Ecuador, we’re definitely going there. We were so distracted by the view that we missed our stop and ended up in Old Town. No big deal, it was during sunset so we enjoy the beautiful walk though the colonial buildings while doing some people watching. Once it got dark we headed back to our hotel, and after a quick shower we headed out to a Cuban restaurant recommended by our Brazilian friends last week. It was ok, originally we had wanted to check out another place—a tapas restaurant from our gastronomy magazine but it was closed. It has been an amazing trip but unfortunately we have to get up painfully early tomorrow to catch a flight back home. . .





Posted by Tony.Ruby
09:58
Archived in Ecuador
November 1, 2011
11/1/11 - 11/2/11
89 °F
We were awakened by the sound of monkeys grunting and moving around in the trees outside our room. We gathered our things and rushed out to see but they had already moved on. We stopped for a moment to watch a parade of leaf cutter ants go by and listened to the sounds of the Amazon. After breakfast we started our long trek back to civilization. Our boat driver Milo is amazing . . . but a little crazy. He took us on a little tour of the large lagoon looking for birds and pink dolphins. It was great because we got to see another Hoatzin up close (stinky turkey) and some heron-type bird take off nearby from a tree! The water level was a little low and we had to “jump” a few logs and sand bars. At one point we even got stuck and had to jump out of the canoe and push.







The Amazon wouldn’t let us leave without a great goodbye and this came in the form of a huge spectacled owl that sat down on a branch right at the water’s edge! Owls aren’t even supposed to be out at this time of the day, so that was pretty terrific. After that we tried to capture some shots of the elusive river turtles. . these little guys are hilarious. One second they’ll be relaxing and sunning on some branches but at the first sound of trouble they stand up, look left, then right and then jump in the water! It’s very hard to get a picture from close because they’ll jump in before you even have a chance to push the button. We made a very quiet approach and were finally able to get a picture!


As we made our way upriver we stopped helped a local guy get his canoe untangled from a mess of downed branches—he was quite appreciative. Overhead we heard some familiar sounds and found a pair of blue and yellow macaws perched on some branches high up in the trees. A little further upriver Diego spotted some chicks with a mama duck—hadn’t seen one of those before!




Finally a few hours later we knew we had arrived when we saw children playing in the river and the bridge covered in murals of the different tribe shamans. This was the first road we’d seen in days. We were picked up by a truck and driven 2 hours into town to catch our flight. After checking in and sitting around for a few hours the airline, VIP, told us that they were sorry but there would be no flight today. There was a plane “malfunction”
They told us that we could stay in town on them and fly out first thing the next day or take a 5-10 hour minivan ride to Quito now. We decided that our hotel was paid for so we should just take the van, on one condition: A comfortable, non-crowded van!





We started our drive with 5 people in a 10 passenger van: Tony, myself, our old friend from the Galapagos (Sylvan), a girl from Melbourne and an Ecuadorian lady. The lady who was sitting in front told the driver that she would like to pickup her husband and two kids. We drove into town and pulled up at a house and this is where things started getting crazy.

Out came the husband carrying a baby and lots of bags, then a teenage girl, and then a young boy! We were not happy about this but we all squeezed into the van and started on our way (total 9/10 passengers). After two blocks we stopped to pick up one last person. . . and that was the final straw for Tony. He started telling the driver to take us back to the airport and fly us out tomorrow. The lady knew that if we went back to the airport they would get in trouble for trying to sneak her whole family to Quito on the airline’s dime . . . so after a short argument they told the driver to drop them at the bus station. It was a crazy situation and it did get a little ugly but now only 5 of us remained in the van and maybe we would be able to get some sleep on the long ride.
We alternated between sleep and holding on tight while speeding around mountain passes in the dark and foggy night. We finally arrived in Quito about 6 hours later and lucky for us; our driver dropped us just around the corner from our hotel. We said good luck to our two friends and quickly went in and dropped our things in the room. It was about midnight at this time so we walked around the corner to one of the hippest spots to hang out on a Saturday night. . . Burger King! Yes, that’s correct, the locals were all dolled up and apparently it’s a real expensive and novel place to go. We hadn’t eaten there in years but quickly scarfed some food down (yes the quality is the same as in the US) and headed back to our room. . it had been quite a day!

Posted by Tony.Ruby
13:52
Archived in Ecuador
October 31, 2011
10/31/11 - 11/1/11
90 °F
Ruby was up bright and early today recording the sounds of the Amazon and taking a few pics around the lodge. One of the large trees around the lodge had several long Oropendola bird nests hanging off of it. You can easily identify them because they’re blackbirds with yellow tail feathers. They make the coolest sounds and I hope you can hear them on one of Ruby’s recordings. After breakfast Ruby went back to the room to pick up some things before we left for the day. . .from across the lodge Tony hears “Babe!. . . I think there’s a tarantula in our room!!”. Ruby thought she had seen something big and black crawl just next to the bathroom door when she walked in. Not wanting to take a closer look she had stepped outside to call the boys over. Of course, Tony grabbed Diego and they came running back to our room with a flashlight. Diego turned our room inside out and upside down looking for the spider, but since Ruby had stepped out. . it disappeared! Diego said that she probably imagined it because they would have found it by now, besides that, there was a dark spot on the floor where the fibers on the mat were fraying. . . which could have been mistaken for a hairy spider in the dark. So we all chalked it up to Ruby’s overactive imagination 





We boarded the boat and said goodbye to our new German friends and took off up river to do a little canoeing, fishing and bird watching. After about an hour on the motorized canoe we were dropped off at a small river and started paddling in our 3 person canoe. The water levels were much lower because it’s the dry season so the only way to get to the little lagoon was to paddle, push, and pull our canoe down this beautiful narrow stream. We could hardly see into forest beyond one to two rows of trees because the canopy is so thick. It was amazing to see (but hard to photograph) all the birds flying over head. Some of our favorites were a beautiful woodpecker and an Amazon kingfisher that was flying tantalizingly just out of reach of our camera. At one point Diego told us to stop paddling and said “shh, listen, the macaws are coming”. We sat quietly staring up at the sky. . . sure enough about 30 seconds later we saw three gorgeous blue and yellow macaws flying overhead making their characteristic calls.



As we got further down the little river we decided to stop in a narrow channel to try give piranha fishing a try. Found a nice spot in the shade to park our little canoe and Diego left us alone with a cup full of raw meat and two sticks with lines and hooks on them and told us to catch something! Both of us were pretty scared to actually catch a piranha for fear of their sharp teeth taking a chunk out of one of our fingers! Once we put some raw meat on the line it was only seconds before Tony had his first catch. A BIG piranha. We took this opportunity to take a closer look at its teeth before letting him go back in the water. Meanwhile, Ruby was basically feeding the piranhas for at least the first 5 tries. You have to be quick and pull up the line as soon as you feel them chomping because they’ll take the meat off in a matter of seconds. Once she got the hang of it, she caught one and nearly took Tony’s eye out trying to pull it out of the water! Of course, everything is sustainable here so we did catch and release. We hadn’t seen another soul since we left our lodge this morning it was a little eerie being out alone.






After this little adventure we finally paddled our way into the little lagoon and there was still not another person in sight. We could see lots of different birds resting on the branches of the trees in this sunken forest. The trees themselves were gorgeous, covered with gnarly branches, orchids, and bromeliads. Diego said that this is the perfect time of the year to find a giant anaconda curled up in the tree branches but Ruby is really glad that we didn’t! Which means that the anacondas were all swimming in the water below us! Diego loves to fish and actually caught 2 peacock bass at the same time, hooked on the same lure! Pretty cool!




The sun was really high overhead so we found a deserted little islet where Diego set up a hammock. We took a nap for a couple of hours and ate some lunch before getting back on the water. We were just lazily paddling along the center of the lagoon when we felt something large underneath our canoe; it rattled the bottom of the boat and made some big splashes in the water. We looked back and saw three or four large muddy brown bubbles in the water behind us. We’d like to think it was one of the Amazonian manatees which are very rare to see because they’re black in color but we’ll never know for sure. . .



As we paddled closer to the shore we could hear Hoatzin aka stinky turkey birds making their distinctive calls and we were finally able to take a picture of this silly bird with its Mohawk and blue face. BTW, you wouldn’t want to eat these for Thanksgiving, apparently they taste as disgusting as they smell! Diego stopped the boat near the shore to see if we could find some Caimans in the shallow water . . . we didn’t see any of those but did find some large animal droppings on the water’s edge. Diego wasn’t sure what animal it was from but he said we could go look for the animal. It was eerie as we followed him into the uncut rainforest, it got darker right away without the sunlight and there was no trail to follow. We went in deeper about 10 minutes with Diego marking our path using his machete to carve a small mark into the tree bark. We did not have any luck finding the animal but we did find fresh tracks in the mud. It was a tapir! This is a really large animal that kind of looks like a pig and has 3 toes. Ruby had really wanted to see a tapir but it seems we missed it by just minutes and this would be as close as we would get on this trip.




It was getting later in the day when we finally started to paddle back to where Milo our boat driver would pick us up. It was quite a long ways since we spent most of the day getting all the way out here and still. . no other people! We paddled quickly because we didn’t want to be alone out here when the sun went down. Along the way a troop of at least 30 squirrel monkeys (third species we saw here) crossing us overhead in the trees so we took a few quick pictures before paddling along. We finally made it to the meeting point where we hopped into the motorized canoe.... thank goodness! Our arms were sore from all that paddling! When we approached the big lagoon Diego and Milo asked us if we wanted to paddle in the big lagoon alone. We don’t know what we were thinking . . . we were tired, didn’t have life vests on and had hardly any experience with paddling outside of today but we said—SURE! Let’s just say it was creepy being all alone out there as the sun was setting. We just tried to enjoy the gorgeous view and put all the thoughts of the 15 foot caimans and other creatures in the water below us out of our mind 







Just as the sun finally went down, they came to pick us up and we transferred back into the other motorized canoe to head back to the lodge. Once we got to the dock, Ruby immediately noticed a big purple tarantula with orange foot pads crawling on the post to her right. She said “see, I can tell you what a spider looks like” . . . this did not bode well what was to come. We went back to our room and as Tony walked in he said “yeah, I see how you could have thought that spot on the floor was a spider this morning” . . . and then he turned on the light and sure enough, there was a very large spider in the exact spot that Ruby said it was this morning. Ruby ran outside and called out for Diego to come and this time Tony didn’t take his eyes off of that thing! Diego came in and said it was a Wolf Spider which can give a poisonous and really painful bite. Diego surprised us by taking off his shoe and killing the spider. We thought he was just going to carry it outside but he said he’s been bitten a few times and didn’t want to risk it.



After dinner we decided to go on another night walk . . . as if we hadn’t had enough! It felt like we were in a scary movie as we walked with our flashlights to the forest behind the lodge. It was very dark and foggy outside and it must have been our day to see spiders because we saw another tarantula on a banana tree in the back of the lodge. Diego told us that female tarantulas find a place to live and just stay there their whole lives. So it’s easy for the guides to point them out because they are always in the same place. We walked for about 15 minutes checking out different insects and listening for the sounds of animals rustling in the trees before we deciding to call it a night. On our way back to the room Ruby spotted the coolest bug on the walkway. It's a bush cricket (cyclopetra speculata) that looks EXACTLY like a leaf---veins with brown spots and all! We went back to our spider-free room and tucked the mosquito net tight before feeling safe enough to fall asleep that night.


Posted by Tony.Ruby
14:22
Archived in Ecuador
October 30, 2011
10/30/11 - 10/31/11
90 °F
Buzzing, humming, screeching, and whistling were just some of the sounds that we awoke to in the morning. Ruby liked it so much she recorded the sounds to take home with her on her iPhone! We had a yummy breakfast and relaxed on a hammock before our group of four headed out further down the river. About an hour down the river we stopped when Diego spotted the tiniest monkeys in the Amazon—pygmy marmosets. We have no idea how he found them because they are smaller than the palm of our hand and the trees are so thick. We could see them climbing up and down liana vines, they were just adorable to watch.



Afterwards we stopped at a clearing and Diego looked back and asked if we’d like to hike or take the canoe to the nearest village . . . of course we decided to hike. Little did we know that we were signing up for a 3+ hour hike through the primary rainforest guided by just a tiny cereal box compass! Upon entering the jungle Diego picked some garlic plant leaves and told us to stuff them in our pockets—we all smelled like a bad Italian restaurant but at least it warded off bugs! It was extremely hot and humid . . . Ruby was ever so grateful when Diego made her and Heidi fans out of palm leaves. The hike was great, and along the way Diego pointed out multiple plants and insects. We saw the most pretty mushrooms and flowers as we walked along.









Every time Diego cut a stick we knew he was about to coax a large insect out of its hidey hole. The largest and one of our favorites was a large hairy maroon and black tarantula. We also got to try lemon ants—which, yes, really do taste like lemon and yes, we really did eat them (don’t get any ideas today is definitely not getting a FOODIE ALERT and this is one dish we’re not making back home). They live inside pods of a plant that kills off other plants/trees in the surrounding area. You can find these trees with the ant pods by looking for a clearing in the trees. Some other highlights included a species of plant with leaves that have very fine hairs on the underside that stick to you like glue, Diego decided to make a creative bathing suit out of his. We also saw lots of caterpillars crawling around on trees and leaves.








As a gift for the village, Diego worked hard to make two “graters” out of the Grater palm tree roots; these were fierce looking weapons with spikes all over them. Tony decided to test his out right away on another tree trunk—only to remove many of the spikes to Diego’s dismay. As we continued our walk we passed multiple Kapok trees which are the giant trees of the Amazon. They are so big that the roots can be as long as 3km in order to reach a river?! In one of the much smaller trees we saw a bird's nest with two tiny eggs but the mommy bird flew away. We started to worry about getting lost when Diego showed us how to make a “map” using a leaf. He showed us how to fold the leaf and bite in a certain pattern to create the map. As you can tell by the pictures---NONE of us were any good at following his directions since our maps all looked completely different! I don’t think the maps would be very useful!








Towards the end of the hike we could hear dogs and knew that we were getting closer to the village of Puerto Bolivar. Upon arriving we were greeted with a yummy lunch before they put Tony to work in the fields. We followed one of the villagers to the garden to collect yucca for making bread. Thankfully Tony’s been working out because he helped pull a huge yucca root out of the ground with his bare hands. We went to an outdoor stove where we watched our host painstakingly clean, grind, and pack this into a bamboo strainer with Ruby’s help to squeeze all the water out. Well, it looks like if this doctor thing doesn’t work out. . . she’s got a backup plan squeezing water out of yucca mush in the Amazon! Our host then sifted and baked the yucca flour into bread. It was really tasty and with a little guava marmalade it was the perfect afternoon snack.









We then walked across town to meet the local Siona tribe shaman. He was adorned in everything from an elaborate crown made of colorful toucan feathers and necklaces made from the teeth of a wild boar. The local medicine man told us about how he learned the art and taught us about the medicinal and psychoactive drink called “ayahuasca/yahe” they make out of liana vines to induce a trance like state---no we didn’t try it!
The shaman asked for a volunteer to do a cleansing and diagnosis ritual and of course Ruby volunteered Tony for the job! She’s always trying to look after his health
After a few minutes of chanting and hitting Tony on the back with a bush the shaman told Tony that he was healthy and clean. Luckily the shaman didn’t use the Ortega plant like they often do, otherwise Tony might be covered in urticaria aka hives. Tony told Ruby that she better not tell her friend Christel about this because she is so into alternative medicines that she may start a practice of hitting her friends with a plant and chanting in San Francisco! We thanked the shaman for allowing us to learn more about his culture and went to check out more of the village. Tony took this opportunity to take a little dip in the Amazonian waters—it was the perfect temperature and yes there are piranhas and other creatures in the water but we didn’t want to go back home without trying it out!








Soon, we were on a relaxing boat ride home watching the sunset while heading back upriver. By the time we got back it was dark, we shared a beer while Ruby caught up on some reading. The darkness turned out to be the perfect time to go exploring for nocturnal creatures. We found some beautiful tree frogs and moths around the lodge. We were careful to avoid shining bright lights directly at them because it would irritate their sensitive eyes. Afterwards, we had a delicious dinner of baked tilapia, vegetables and you guessed it . . . yucca fries! In our room we both literally fell into bed face-forward from exhaustion and the long day.





Posted by Tony.Ruby
01:29
Archived in Ecuador
October 29, 2011
10/29/11 - 10/30/11
88 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
00:51
Archived in Ecuador
Tagged sunsets_and_sunrises
October 28, 2011
10/28/11 - 10/29/11
88 °F
We woke up at 5:30am and hit snooze more than a few times, because we couldn’t believe it was already time to get up! We had a long day starting with a tour of the Charles Darwin Center and ending in Quito. The Charles Darwin Center is a breeding center much like the one we visited on Isabela but with much larger and older tortoises. That’s saying a lot because a tortoise can live to be over 170 years old! The main attraction is a one of a kind practically extinct tortoise named Lonesome George. He has been called the rarest creature in the world since he’s the last known of the Pinta Island Tortoises and they haven’t had any luck breeding him. It’s amazing being able to see him; this must be what it was like to look at the last Dodo bird. It was amazing but don’t feel bad if you can’t spot him in the photos, our guide even confused him with another tortoise for a minute but to be fair it was a long night and we were all a little hung over! You can recognize him because he’s the one that looks so lonesome.
One of the many amazing things about these islands and the plants and animals that live on them is that you really can see the adaptations from island to island. If you look at the shapes of the tortoises shells you can see what islands they are from. The open front and long legs allows the Saddleback Tortoise to eat higher vegetation, they are also a little smaller because the islands they live on have less vegetation. In the rich humid highlands lives the Galapagos Giant Tortoise, the largest species of tortoise that can grow up to 880 pounds and more than 5’ long! They have larger domed shells with short necks.
Our flight out was not for a few more hours so we decided that with this extra time we would rather stay in town, have some lunch and maybe make it up to the highlands. We said our sad goodbyes to the rest of the group and our guides but using our power of persuasion we talked a few of our friends including Mario and Estuardo into staying and sharing a taxi with us. Unfortunately we spent a little too much time walking around town and stopped to eat our favorite-- “ceviche de camarones” so we didn’t have time to go to the highlands. We’ll just have to leave that for next time! We all piled into one odd little taxi/pickup truck and took the hour long ride to the airport listening to cheesy love songs. For the next few days I think we were singing “I’m never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm”
It was great to meet everyone and I hope we get to hang out with some of them in New York!
We were very sad to leave this magical place but we’re sure that we'll be back. We boarded our flight and watched the islands disappear below us. Luckily we had more things to look forward to. The highlight of our flight to Quito was getting to see one of the most famous volcanoes in South America from the air: Cotopaxi. It’s pretty hard to miss with its beautiful snow-capped peak poking out above the clouds. We arrived into Quito and grabbed a taxi to Hotel Eugenia and immediately started planning our dinner in the city. Our hotel was perfect, it was beautiful and located in the Mariscal (hip, cool part of town) but just far enough away to avoid the noise of the clubs. We contacted Estuardo and Mario at their hotel and invited them to come have dinner with us at La Boca del Lobo. We had seen this place last year and Ruby had just read an article about it in a gastronomy magazine.
We met up with the “Mario Brothers” who had met up with “The Brazilians”: Fabio & Dayana by coincidence in La Mariscal. It was great! The restaurant was beautiful with glass walls so we could watch the craziness of “Dia de los Muertos” aka Halloween going on outside. We enjoyed a nice dinner, relaxing with a glass of wine, yummy stuffed mushrooms, and a fancy dessert that tasted a lot like Trix cereal! We all headed out to another bar for round 2 before calling it a night around 1:30am. We have another long day of travel tomorrow and it was the “Mario Bros” last night so we’re sure they partied it up well into the wee hours!





















Posted by Tony.Ruby
06:40
Archived in Ecuador
October 27, 2011
10/27/11 - 10/28/11
86 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
00:48
Archived in Ecuador
October 26, 2011
10/26/11 - 10/27/11
85 °F
Today we awoke to the Island of Espanola and the beautiful Gardner Bay outside our window. From the boat we could see that there were tons of sea lions on the beach! It was our first wet landing, meaning they get a few feet from the beach and everyone hops off the side of our inflatable raft. The water was clear and warm and the sand white and amazingly soft. We brought all our snorkeling gear but started with a walk on the beach.
As most of you know Ruby loves baby animals and for some reason every time she stopped to take a photo with/of a baby sea lion it would start waddling along after her on the beach. It was so funny to watch all the baby sea lions follow her like she was their mom. We kept exploring and just a few more steps down the beach we had the opportunity to watch the prettiest marine iguana munching on the grass on the rocks. It was like watching the Discovery Channel; iguana in the surf eating grass on a rock with sea lions playing in the background and sea turtles swimming by!
We walked back down the beach to the rest of our group. Before we got back to the rest of the group we enjoyed watching the “beachmaster” patrol his territory. This is the largest male sea lion who has a harem of females on his section of the beach. We watched him swim up and down the beach barking out commands for all other males to stay away
After that we started snorkeling around but you can see Ruby was nervous about the beachmaster. You definitely want to steer clear of him when you get in the water.
The visibility was not great in the shallow water but we did manage to see several sea turtles and sea lions. After being in the water for a few Tony decided to take a “shortcut” back to shore. It worked out perfect for him but for some reason Ruby kept stepping on every rock in the ocean! Tony was laughing so hard as he stood on soft sand and watched her stumble over the rocks. Needless to say, Ruby is the better navigator!
Back at the boat we had a quick snack and loaded up again to do some deep water snorkeling. They dropped us off next to a large rock with water around 15’-25’. The visibility was amazing and we got to see our first white tip shark, tons of fish, and of course more sea lions (the girls said Tony looked like a sea lion with all his playful moves and deep dives).
After lunch and a nice hot shower we sailed over to the other side of Espanola and arrived at Punta Saurez. It was a dry landing and as we climbed out on the rocks we were greeted by tons of sea lions and a few marine iguanas swimming back to shore! We stood on the beach watching them in amazement as the rest of our group started walking down the beach. When we caught back up with our group we were greeted by a few blue footed boobies and Nazca boobies nesting on the path. We also got to see an all-out “bar room brawl” between a pair of Nazca boobies and their mates. They were honking at each other and sticking their beaks down each other’s throats. It looked a bit painful too. I think we have video of this—we’ll post it on the website if we can find it
This must have been the island that the Bishop of Panama was talking about in 1535 when he wrote “birds so silly that they do not know how to flee, and many were caught in the hand”. It’s a good thing that it only had silly birds and not gold or King Carlos V may have destroyed it before we got to see it! This island is a major breading island for the waved albatross (large white birds with yellow beaks) and because of its steep cliffs one of the best places to see them takeoff. The waved albatross chicks are some of silliest looking baby birds around, they’re large with wispy brown feathers but Ruby still thought they were adorable.
Standing on the cliffs with a huge blowhole in the background we got to see them run off the cliff and float gracefully though the air. We also watched mocking birds and Galapagos hawks soaring high over head. Once again we got distracted by beautiful brown eyes of baby sea lions and noticed our group leaving us behind. Eventually Tony was able to pull Ruby away from the babies and catch back up with the group just as we were loading back on the boat.
When we arrived back to the boat there was a hitchhiker on the back resting—a sea lion sunning. As we started sailing off into the sunset (yes, literally) dolphins appeared at the front of the boat, jumping and doing tricks. This paired with a gorgeous sunset and cocktails with friends is a great way to leave the island. At night we could see a trail of sparkling green lights in the wake behind our boat—it turns out this was bioluminescent algae activated by the movement of our boat! We lay on chairs on the deck and watched the sky with our new friends Estuardo and Mario. The sky was absolutely like nothing we have ever seen before--you could hardly see black because we could see sooooo many stars! It was confusing to look for constellations because on the equator you can see both the Northern and Southern hemisphere stars. We were all lying watching the sky when Angel, our guide, came out and shined a flashlight in the water. Just then a dolphin came flipping out of the water. We got to see a few more dolphins around midnight before heading to bed! What an amazing day and night!








































Posted by Tony.Ruby
00:19
Archived in Ecuador
October 25, 2011
10/25/11 - 10/26/11
89 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
00:30
Archived in Ecuador
October 24, 2011
10/24/11 - 10/25/11
87 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
06:49
Archived in Ecuador
October 23, 2011
10/23/11 - 10/24/11
88 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
09:16
Archived in Ecuador
October 22, 2011
10/22/11 - 10/23/11
85 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
08:11
Archived in Ecuador
November 14, 2010
11/14/10 - 11/15/10
78 °F
Posted by Tony.Ruby
18:54
Archived in Ecuador
November 13, 2010
11/13/10 - 11/14/10
60 °F
View
Around the World #1
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Posted by Tony.Ruby
18:50
Archived in Ecuador
November 12th, 2010
11/12/10 - 11/13/10
68 °F
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Posted by Tony.Ruby
15:15
Archived in Ecuador
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