Dan Weinreb’s blog

I just returned from a two-week vacation in Ecuador, visiting the rain forest and the Galapagos.  There’s a lot you can read on the web about visiting Ecuador, so I won’t repeat any of that.  Here are some of my own experiences and hints.

The trip was booked by REI and they did a great job.  They were very helpful and informative, and all of their recommendations were good.

In Quito (the capital of Ecuador, where we spent a few days), we stayed at a hotel called Hotel de la Rabida. We loved it.  It’s small and has pleasant, cozy public spaces.  The rooms are very clean and functional, the food is good, the people are helpful, and the owners are very friendly. In the USA, we often are faced with the choice between a cheap chain motel, and a super-expensive business hotel; this is the kind of place we’re always looking for.

We spent several days at La Selva Jungle Lodge in the rain forest.  It’s as advertised: great!  Our guide has a degree in Ecotourism and has been doing it for nine years.  He was very friendly and helpful.  He spotted all kinds of animals and birds, and explained a lot about all the life in the jungle.  Our best sighting was of an armadillo, which was very exciting.  They’re rarely seen, particularly since they’re usually nocturnal.  We also visited a site where parrots and parakeets come to eat clay (scientists aren’t totally certain why they do that), and it was amazing to see hundreds (perhaps a thousand) of them warily and very gradually come down from the trees to where the clay is.

The rainforest is hot and very, very humid.  (We were there during the dry season.)  I had trouble sleeping.  I also had some sickness that I attribute to a reaction to Malarone, an anti-malaria medicine.  (Although my wife and son did fine on both scores.)  When I was there, I was told that there haven’t been any malaria cases in many years, so the Malarone wasn’t really needed.

Despite the economic problems in Ecuador of the past decade, the capital city of Quito looked to me as if it’s in very good shape.  It’s very clean, the roads are in excellent repair, there’s all kinds of business, and some very nice public sculpture, indicating a good amount of municipal care. We found the Ecuadoran people — not just the tourist-industry people but even those we just ran into — to be pleasant, and forgiving about our ignorance of Spanish. The only troublesome thing was that there were a lot of police and security guards around, with guns and bullet-proof vests. The area we were in didn’t look dangerous, but we were told not to talk around after dark.

Before I left, I heard varying reports about the water temperature around the Galapagos islands, and whether wetsuits were needed for snorkeling.  Most of us turned out to need full wetsuits.  The cruise boat I was on provided these, so it was no problem.  Once a sea lion decided to play with me, swimming straight at me and veering off at the last moment (twice), which was very cool.  A giant sea turtle swam below me, only about a foot down!  We also saw small sharks and, of course, lots of very pretty tropical fish.

We were very happy to see that The Galapagos National Park is being quite careful about taking care of the islands. These days there are a lot of visitors, and it’s important to make sure that they don’t disturb or harm things.  There are lots and lots of good rules: no food, no touching the animals, and so on. Visitors are always in small groups led by official natuarlists, who make sure that the rules are followed. Explicit paths are everywhere, to make sure you don’t trample nests and such.  The Ecuadorans are working hard to be good stewards, eradicate introduced species (every one of which damages the ecology), and do good science to understand the plants and animals better.  (Obviously they have a strong economic motivation here, as tourism is one of their major industries, but thery’re doing well by doing good.)

The cruise operation was run by Ecovertura (also see the very accurate review in the New York Times), and the guides were very helpful, friendly, and experienced.

The only really annoying part of the trip was going home.  Our flight had six legs (takeoff and landings)!  (This is mainly because the international part and the national part are set up separately.)  I’m not able to sleep on redeyes, and at the moment I have been awake for over 36 hours.  But it was worth it.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.