Sunday 5.10.14 – Bye, bye Galapagos. Puerto Ayora, Baltra, Quito.

Wake up call at 5.30 after a poor night’s sleep for me – lots of rocking and rolling as we motored to Puerto Ayora, which continued as we were anchored in the bay.

Up and packed the last minute things, so our luggage could be taken ashore while we all breakfasted at 6.00. Departed the ship around 6.30 for a Zodiac ride into Puerto Ayora followed by a 40 minute bus trip across the Island to the 5 minute ferry trip across to Baltra then another 10 minute bus ride to the airport by about 7.45. Not much was open, we awaited luggage collection and boarding passes. It seems the flight is a bit of a mess, we all have the same flight AV1633 on boarding passes, but different departure times and destinations. It seems we are flying direct to Quito and not via Guayaquil, which is good. At this stage no one is sure whats going on and we have to wait 2.5hours to take off at 10.25. Weirdly, we are on board by by 8.25 local time, 9.25 mainland time, which is what we told on board ship – ahhh South American Airlines, seem to be consistently inconsistent.

our boarding passes, with lot of differing info.
Luckily we all ended up on the same flight.
©Suzie Sloan.

Our plane. ©Suzie Sloan.

There's us, with our plane in the background.
©Suzie Sloan.

Baltra airport - goodbye.

The Galapagos coast - Baltra Island
really!

More of the coastline. Sad to leave.

Flying over Quito.

The amazing patchwork farmlands, that
hardworking families work on.

Arrived Quito at 11.30. with quite a long wait for luggage to reach the carousel, then we find there is NO BUS or NO Roberto, to take us into the city. So Santiago shouted lunch at TGIF.

Here we are enjoying our TGIF. L-R: me,
Ann, Bob, Cherie. ©Suzie Sloan.

We waited till about 1.45 for the bus and headed into Quito again. Javier was driving again and no sign of Roberto. 

Javier, saying hello/goodbye to all.

Once in the city, about an hour later, we learn that our new hotel is not accessible by a bus this size, so Javier got us within 50 or so metres and the hotel staff came and assisted with baggage.

The new hotel – La Casona de la Ronda – is in the oldest part of the old Colonial part of Quito, a lovely room and a lovely hotel on an interesting street.

There was a custom car show, in
the street of our hotel when we
arrived. View from our balcony.

Our pretty impressive room. Bathroom was around
the corner to the left.

The passageway.

Our door.

Here we are giving Bob and
Cherie the royal wave from our
balcony © Bob Durant.

We took off to pick up some goods that Suzie had purchased near our old hotel and had a look around, enjoyed some Helado (icecream?) that we saw being made from our balcony, it was a bit weird it was like marshmallow in a cone. 

Me with the Helado, stuck like a moustache.

We wandered the street near the hotel, then came back to get ready for dinner. Got a day of the blog uploaded.

Out to a restaurant at the Casa Gangotena, about 6 blocks away, for dinner. It was a pretty nice meal, but there did seem to be some really nice restaurants closer to the hotel that would be nice to try. Roberto was back and organising everything.

Tomorrows ‘official program’ sees us doing a walking tour of Old Town, then a bus to the Middle of the Earth and lunch. We are going to skip it, and make our own way to Centre of the earth we think.

Some artwork for sale around the
La Casona de La Ronda Hotel.

A church lit up on way to dinner. Can't
recall which one.