Thursday, May 3 and Friday, May 4, 2001 -- Flying, flying, flying.

I left on a redeye after work on Thursday, and tried to sleep on the plane (with only limited success). Landed at Dulles early in the morning on Friday, where Dobbin was kind enough to meet me and take me to breakfast at IHOP. It has been a long time since I have eaten at IHOP, and it recalled the halcyon days when the basketball team required blueberry pancakes prior to every single game.

Maybe "halcyon" isn't exactly the word I wanted there….

At about the time my plane was supposed to leave, Dobbin figured he probably ought to go to work that day; my plane actually left about an hour later. A little stressful for a while, since they were talking as if the plane wasn't going to leave at all...but all was well. Mom managed to track me down in the Miami airport, which was very impressive! We had thought about going to the hotel she would stay in after the trip, but it turns out there is a hotel right in the airport. Since time was shorter than expected, we decided just to eat there, and it turned out to be quite good.

That night, we landed in Guayaquil and were taken by bus to the very classy Hotel Hilton Colon, where we were met with cool minted towels (they were both cool in temperature and cool in the sense of "neato") and juice of many odd flavors.

Saturday, May 5, 2001 -- Guayaquil and San Cristobol Island

Up very early (like 4 a.m.) for a breakfast buffet in the hotel, and then off to the airport. Mom was so impressed with my ability to read a newspaper in Spanish (although repetition of the word "Luv" was a bit confusing until I realized that the cops had acquired a whole fleet of Chevy Luvs to help them patrol in the provinces. Chevy Luvs turn out to be a very popular vehicle in Ecuador) that she decided she needed a picture.

Me, reading about Chevy Luvs or Dengue fever

At the airport, we ended up having another delay, this time due to fog in the Galapagos. Later, we found out that some of the folks from the previous trip never made it off the island. There isn't much on San Cristobol in the way of accommodations, but at least Lindblad managed to find them rooms (a lot of people ended up on benches in the airport) and fed them dinner aboard the ship. I've never done this kind of group travel before, but I can see there are definitely perks to it.

Of course, there are also other people. I was sort of surprised by the other passengers. The age range was wider and skewed older than I had expected. All the other travelers were also American (which, for the purposes of this note, refers to US citizens, but it is just too annoying to say "US citizens", and most Ecuadorians and others I met called us "American" anyhow). I had been hoping that our fellow passengers would be from a variety of countries. At least the staff was Ecuadorian.

The boat picked us up via zodiac, or panga, from the dock at San Cristobol. We were very excited about the sea lions and pelicans that were right near the dock, and there was a blue-footed booby on a rock about 100 yards away. I wondered if I should walk down the sidewalk to get a picture of it. This was pretty typical of our photo-taking behavior in the Galapagos: we'd think we had better take a picture right away, because we might not get closer, but then we'd always get closer. Anyhow, I didn't get the booby photo that day.

Building on San Cristobol

We boarded the Polaris and found our room, and then decided to spend the rest of the afternoon just relaxing and exploring the ship. Some people went ashore in the rain to start their vacation shopping already, which to mom and me is just silly. Lindblad had upgraded us to a Class 2 cabin, which was quite pleasant. I didn't expect that we'd enjoy the room that much, but we ended up liking it a lot and relaxing there relatively often.

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last modified: January 30, 2002