Quito - Ecuador - All you can eat all you can drink.. are you sure!!!

We have had a strange time in Quito as we have been running around (with difficulty as we are back at altitude) trying to sort out a Galapagos trip (my brother-in-law Matthew talked me into it, thanks mate) and trying to get enough money out of the bank which took two days, but we have just this morning sorted it all out, yippee.

We are booked on the 2-hour flight tomorrow where we hope to sort out a few dives, we hope to dive with hammerhead sharks which would be amazing, before meeting the rest of the group in the airport on Sunday. The boat is called the Guantanamera (anyone know the song) and is a tourist class (hot shower) that will take us around the south and north islands for 8 days, we also have a level 2 naturalist guide who is supposed to give us the low down on the crazy life on the islands, including among other things the red boobies, fantastic I can't wait to see them.

One eye reporter says he saw these red boobies on the island - survival of the fittest maybe!


The islands are famed for their vast number of endemic species and the studies by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle that contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. The group consists of 13 main islands, 6 smaller islands, and 107 rocks and islets. The islands are located at the Galapagos hotspot, a place where the earth's crust is being melted from below by a mantle plume, creating volcanoes. The oldest island is thought to have formed between 5 and 10 million years ago. The youngest islands, Isabela and Fernandina, are still being formed, with the most recent volcanic eruption in 2007. Extract from wikipedia!

To celebrate we went out to the gringo land part of the city and a sign caught my eye for a fondue restaurant, "all you can eat and all you can drink"... oh yes that sounds good. I think the waiter got a bit annoyed having to come back to our table time and time again to fill up our glasses, so then he poured more and more wine into our glasses each time... El was feeling a bit delicate today.

We will be out of contact for nearly ten days, but we will check our email when we can as Sophie should be having her baby any time now and El can't wait to be an auntie for the second time.