Saturday-Sunday, January 5-6, 2019; Return from the Galapagos

Saturday-Sunday, January 5-6, 2019; Return from the Galapagos   

We awoke to the sounds of Ecuadorian folk music instead of the chirps of Galapagos finches.  

The breakfast routine was modified by bringing out our suitcases to the fan tail for the crew to transport to shore.  We were back in Puerto Ayora, where our Galapagos cruise on the EcoGalaxy Catamaran or Galaxy II had begun.     It was overcast with a temperature in the 80’s.  

Tom had gotten through the worst of his illness during the night, but Erin was still feeling under the weather this morning. Breakfast featured corn biscuits with omelets, papaya and pineapple.  We were swept out of our staterooms so the crew could turn the ship over for the next 16 passengers, due to arrive at lunch time. 

We did our last dry landing of the trip back on the Puerto Ayora dock.  There was still a lazy sea lion on the swim platform of a sagging fiberglass boat that we had seen when we left 8 days ago. There were also sea lions still lounging on the park benches of the dock. John joked that Puerto Ayora had a serious homelessness problem.   

The crew of the Galaxy had transported our luggage and piled it high in the back of a minibus, and we piled in with our back packs.  It was a tight fit that required folding down a few of the center row seats into the aisle to accommodate everyone and everything.  

Nadine provided commentary regarding immigrations into the Galapagos, which had been unhindered until it was discovered as a tourist destination in the 1970’s.  The Ecuadorian government had offered land grants to encourage a permanent Ecuadorian presence in the islands, but limited water resources soon proved to be the main factor in limiting growth to accommodate the tourism industry.  

Now, it is very difficult to immigrate to the Galapagos. You have to either be born in the Galapagos, or marry a Galapagasian to live and work in the Galapagos islands. They don’t need a wall to stop unwanted immigration.  They have a 600 mile wide salt water moat surrounding themselves that has been an effective barrier to immigration for millennia.  Still, they do require the transit control cards, which tracks each visitors’ entry into and departure from the Galapagos. The Ecuadorian government is striving to achieve “Zero irregular status in the Galapagos” and they do end up deporting hundred of people back to the mainland of Ecuador when they are uncovered.

As we headed back into the lush interior highlands, we took a sightseeing detour to a place called the El Chato ranch.  This appears to have started out as a cattle ranch, but has morphed into a good old fashion eco-tourism spin-off with sign posts pointing to El Chato Lava Caves, El Chato Ranch and El Chato Restaurant.  

The lush greenery was about as stark a contrast to the lava fields were were on 24 hours earlier than you can imagine.  We had to don rubber Wellington boots at a nicely done boot shed, before we began our adventure following muddy tortoise trails through the former Guava Tree and Spanish Cedar groves.  Some of the Spanish Cedar was cut up with a portable saw mill on site into nice lumber planks, stacked by the driveway for pick up.  We had learned during our recent Cuba cruise that Spanish Cedar is the preferred material for building or lining humidors for storage of fine Cuban cigars, as well as for construction of furniture and wood products for outdoor exposure because it is inherently insect resistant.

   

The bus took us to the ferry across to Baltra Island.  As we descended from the highlands, the flora returned to bare cacti, scrub brush and naked incense trees with their spooky looking white bark stretching up to the sky.  Since the warm and wet season has begun, more greenery is starting to emerge from the tips of these branches. 

While we loaded up the ferry across the Itabaca Channel between Santa Cruz and Baltra Islands, could see a flock brown noddies feeding on bait driven to the surface by a school of Jacks just off the boat dock.  

We bade Nadine farewell at the airport, and we will sincerely miss her lilting French accent waking us in the early morning hours.  

Our flight had a stop-over in Guayaquil, but this time, only a few people had to swap seats, and Tom had no trouble getting on the flight.     We recovered our luggage in Quito, and learned that we would have to hang on to them until 10:00PM when the international check in counters open for flights.  Most of their check in counters are shared, and not dedicated to any particular airline.  They do have self service kiosks where we could check in for our flights and print out luggage tags, but we had to wait until 10:00PM to actually drop the bags at the counters.     

There is a large food court across the drive from the main terminal.  They had Baskin & Robbins, and even a KFC offering a $4.99 combo meal.  We ended up eating at a place called Cajun Exotic, which seemed to offer more.  You could get a chicken plate with two sides and lemonade for $7.20.  In the main terminal, there was a burger place that offered a burger with fries and shake for $15 for comparison.  Downstairs, there were a few shops, including a small grocery store, but by 8:00PM, most had shuttered their doors for the night. 

Our various parties parted ways as check in times approached, and planes began loading up around midnight.  Almost everyone was boarding planes leaving Quito by 1:30AM, with poor Tom having to stick around until his flight departed at 6:00AM.  We did hear that he did make it back to the US, as did everyone in our party.  

We had a 2 hour layover in Miami, but that was eaten away by a very inefficient and cumbersome customs and immigrations process that delayed those of us without Nexus or Global Entry cards by at least an extra 30 minutes. Then having to collect all check bags, and wait in a huge slow moving line to drop off the bags to agents who worked as slowly as possible to minimize the number of bags they would  have to lift onto the conveyor belts as possible was infuriating.  There was no sorting involved.  The person I handed my bags to took 15 seconds per bag to move it from the rope barrier separating the crowd and the conveyor belt, to the conveyor belt 3 feet from the barrier. They should have simply let passengers put the bags on the conveyor belts directly.  That would have greatly increased the throughput of bags through this particular customs and immigrations bottleneck.  

Ciara and John, who do not have a Nexus card for Global Entry benefits said there were a hundred kiosks to enter your information, but only 4 people to hand the completed receipts to.  This was another huge bottle neck, made more frustrating by the fact that the 4 people at the immigrations and customs exit didn’t bother to even look at the receipts once you handed them to them.  They simply were there to slow the process of passengers getting through to claim their bags.

We made it to our gate after boarding had already begun.  We might have had another 30 minutes to spare if everyone had Global Entry benefits.  Ciara is scheduled for her Nexus card interview next week. We’ll have to encourage John to apply to either the Nexus program or Global entry program for future travel.

We arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in the afternoon, greeted by grey skies,  rain, and a temperature in the 40’s.  We had to get into our luggage to change out of our shorts and into jeans and coats. We managed to get back to Oak Harbor just before sunset.

It will take a couple of days to unpack, do laundry, sort through pictures and get back into the routines of daily life on our own temperate island.  We will be trading marine iguanas for slugs, and boobies for sea gulls.