Ecuador | Scott and Han

So the main highlight of Ecuador was obviously Galapagos, but before we went there we spent two nights in Cuenca. We stayed at La Casa Cuencana which we both highly recommend (just make sure you don’t stay on the bottom level – quite noisy). The room was lovely, and the hostel was central. We didn’t do a lot, half because we were knackered from two long travel days, and half because there isn’t a heap to do. But we were just around the corner from an awesome cafe called Windhorse run by an American couple. It served delicious meals, coffee, kombucha, and freshly baked cinnamon scrolls. The town was cool, with cobblestone roads and some nice cafes and museums.

The bulk of our time in Ecuador however, apart from Galapagos was spent in Banos and a fantastic little place called Black Sheep Inn.

Banos

I went to Banos with Brooke and Tamsin after Galapagos while Scott made the annoying but necessary journey to London to pick up his visa. We were in Banos for three nights, which I think is definitely enough time. I wasn’t overly fussed on it, but it was nice and quiet and let us chill out for a bit. If you are into things like canyoning, mountain biking, abseiling and white water rafting, there is a lot for you here. Having just spent a lot of money on Galapagos, we weren’t keen to spend too much so just hired bikes and rode the 15km to Diablo waterfalls. On the way we did what was touted as the fastest and longest zipline in Ecuador. It was about 1km long and really fast, buuuuuut we also saw an extremely dilapidated restaurant that said ‘best service in the world’ soooo pretty sure you can say whatever you want *an advertiser’s dream. The waterfalls were awesome. You can stand literally right under them which puts you about a metre away from a seriously powerful and mesmerising beast.

Other than that, we just ate a lot, went to the public hot springs, and visited the insta-famous Banos swing (see below). Yes, the picture looks cool but i’ll be honest and tell you it’s not really that cool in real life. Gotta be done though right? Get them likes.

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The Black Sheep Inn

From Banos we went to a very small town called Chucchilan. Very small meaning a population under 100. There is nothing to do in this area but go for hikes, and the hikes are beautiful. Our main reason for coming here however was to stay at The Black Sheep Inn. Look it up if you have a sec. It has been voted in the top eco lodges for a while now, and on arrival it was easy to see why.

You are greeted and hosted by Edmundo who gives you a sandwich using the local Swiss cheese factory’s cheese. Swiss cheese factory in the middle of nowhere in Ecuador? Why not.

There are single, double and four person rooms, but we were staying in the bunkhouse. There are 9 beds on three levels and I picked the very top (it was as close to fort as I could get). Every night I went to sleep with moonlight on the wall, and every morning I was woken by stunning sunrises over the mountains. The beds were so comfortable and the place was silent – bliss 🙂 We only ever had about one other person in the whole house so it was perfect.
To stay in the bunkhouse it costs $35USD a day, but that includes an awesome breakfast, lunch, and insane vegetarian dinners. Also there is an unlimited supply of brownie, cookies, banana bread, tea, and coffee. The grounds are so beautiful, with a yoga studio overlooking the valley, lots of little places to sit in the sun, and an overall eco-vibe. That pic of me below is the reflection of the outdoor bathroom’s mirror.

We ended up staying here for 6 days, one of which was my birthday. On that day we did the 5 hour hike up to the Quilotoa volcano which is filled with sparkling azure water, and after I had an awesome massage, cheese platter, and red wine. Not bad.

Quito

From there we took two buses to Quito, the nation’s capital, where we spent two nights before heading into Colombia. Scott and I had gifted Brooke a voucher for high tea in Ecuador at a beautiful place called Casa Gengotana, so me Brooke, Tamsin and Scott got dressed as fancy as we could (without an iron, or anything other than jandals) and headed there. We were given coffee and hot chocolate and an array of sweet treats and delicious savoury morsels. It was so cool to do something a little different and a bit luxurious. And it was pretty cheap! So cheap in fact that we needed to pad out Brooke’s Christmas present a bit. After high tea we went to an awesome little local brewery/bar called Banditos where we had a few beers before heading to Shibumi. Shibumi is rated the number one restaurant in Quito on Trip Advisor and serves insanely fresh and delicious Japanese food.

We had actually turned up at lunchtime but they were only doing dinner so we made a reservation. This was very lucky as the place is literally run out of a converted single-car garage and seats about 10 people. Us four were lined up along the ‘bar’ where we were mesmerised watching the chef’s amazing knife skills and flavour combinations.

We got the equivalent of a chef’s menu and you can choose how much you want to spend. For just $15 each we got to try plates of nigiri, sashimi and sushi that were among the best I’ve ever tried. My personal favourite were a salmon and coffee nib nigiri, and a sushi roll using salmon, cacao, walnuts, cucumber, avocado and sesame leaf. SO GOOD. The food, combined with the service and unique environment made Shibumi the number three food experience Scott and I have had on this whole trip (after Tegui and Gran Dabbang.)

We spent our last full day walking around the town visiting really beautiful churches and finished it by seeing a movie – ‘Youth’ – and eating gelato. I implore you to go and see Youth, at the movies. I haven’t been that emotionally affected by a movie since Mufasa died. And the soundtrack is epic.

The next day we took a bus from Ecuador to the border and crossed over into Colombia, (do this in the day time to avoid danger.) I loved watching the town of Quito go by, seeing the community vibe that South America does so well. It was Sunday, everything was closed, and outside the churches big groups of families were chatting and buying food and coffee from the local vendors. I think we stay in our own little worlds a lot in NZ. I love seeing the South American locals just hanging out on the street together, watching the world go by, saying hello to strangers just to say hello. I would love to make Sunday more of a family day, like it used to be when my parents were younger.

I know people will disagree with this, but Ecuador overall wasn’t that amazing for me. The people are friendly, and getting out into the country was great, but I don’t know – if I wasn’t doing Galapagos I don’t know if I would come. That’s the problem with growing up in paradise; your expectations tend to be quite high. To be fair, we only did a tiny bit of it and I have heard Montanita is very cool. Plus, if you are going to come to one place, Ecuador does have beaches, mountains and the Amazon, so it’s good for that.

On to Colombia – our last country in South America!

We just finished one of the best weeks of our lives.

Diving the Galapagos was always one of the things we were most excited about for this whole trip. It was also (by far) the most expensive thing we booked.

Having just finished the week, I can tell you it was worth every penny and more.

The Galapagos are a bunch of volcanic islands sitting right on the equator. Due to its location it gets a number of different winds and currents which result in a unique ecological site and a mecca for divers.

After meeting up with Scott’s sister Brooke and Brooke’s friend Tamsin, we all flew from Guayaquil to The Galapagos and stayed a night on Santa Cruz island. (Great sandwiches at the Galapagos Deli by the way). The next morning we were greeted by Jimmy and taken to get all our gear and board the boat.

We were on board the Nortada and had two dive gides – both called Jimmy – and six other crew for eight guests.
We were on the boat for 8 days but the first day was just the check dive and the last we visited the Darwin centre on land. So overall there were 20 dives over 6 days.

Day 1 we boarded, did a check dive to make sure our gear was all good, were welcomed that evening by the crew and some pina coladas, and settled into our cabins.
I won’t go into mega detail about the dives themselves but more on the animals we saw – ‘give the people what they want’ and all that.
The days generally went like this:

6am wake up
Dive #1
8:30am Breakfast
Dive #2
Snack
Dive #3
1pm Lunch
Dive #4
But on day 2 we just had two dives and the second to last day we had three.

Day 2 we did a couple of dives at the Northern end of Santa Cruz where we saw reef sharks, turtles, sting rays, moray eels, parrotfish (which are hilarious and look like absolute goobers), and after the dives we saw mantarays jumping out of the water to catch their fish.

That night we sailed 15 hours through the night to get to Wolf and Darwin Islands which have the very best diving. During the months of August – October this stretch of sea can be extremely rough so we/I was very lucky we weren’t there then. We spent two days at Wolf and one at Darwin and the diving was insane.

Day 3 was at Wolf, and we had four dives. We saw over 30 hammerheads, Galapagos sharks, Eagle Rays, massive schools of all different kinds of fish, morays, stonefish, and lots of swimming turtles. The dives were all about 30 metres and about 50 minutes long. They were so fun and interesting I recorded in my dive log as ‘the best dives I have done to date.’ That night I did my first ever night dive. It was a bit more chilly and we didn’t see as much but it was a cool experience and is pretty crazy looking at everyone suspended in what looks like mid air. The stars when we surfaced were some of the best I have ever seen. Very magical.

Day 4 was Darwin, named obviously after Charles Darwin who came up with his theory of evolution after visiting and studying species that live in The Galapagos. Again we had four dives at the Darwin Arch. On our first dive we descended straight into a school of large silver fish which was really cool. During the four dives we saw lots of hammerheads, tropical fish, and morays. We had a sea lion dive for fish right infront of us which was awesome.

…Oh, and we saw a WHALE SHARK. Yep, dreams do come true people. It was our third dive of the day and we hadn’t even got to our meeting point at the bottom when YOURS TRULY spotted the spotted legend. I turned to my right and honestly didn’t know if I was seeing things. It was like ‘ís it real if no one else sees it?’ So i powered over to Scotty pretty much whacked him on the arm and pointed. We both gunned for the big fella. Well actually it was a wee fella in Whale Shark terms but big for us. We all spent the next 15 minutes (!!) swimming with it, watching it get cleaned by other little fishies and generally just looking at each other and shaking our heads in disbelief. This is not the season for whale sharks, and even when it is you’re lucky to see one. To have stumbled upon a baby (which again we were told it’s very rare to see babies) and have it stay with us for 15 minutes was an experience I will never forget. Needless to say we were buzzing…kind of still are.

Day 5 was back at Wolf and over the four dives there we had lots of Hammerheads swim close to us, a school of Galapagos sharks, and red lipped batfish which look like characters from that TV show Real Monsters. Also I had a moment with a very cute little fish who was chasing its own tail and then it looked at me and swam away – very cute. One of the dives also had a few caves and swim-throughs which were fun.

Day 6 was Puerto Vicente and over the three dives here we had sea lions playing with us while we descended, bullhead sharks, and lots of fish. We also had two other highlights. The first dive we went looking for the Sunfish, which we were told was quite rare. Not even 10 minutes into our first dive, and there it was! One time one of them came right through the middle of our group. The Sunfish was something I really wanted to see – I like how it looks unfinished – so I was stoked. The second highlight was dive three, which was all about Marine Iguanas. These are one of the attractions of Galapagos as they are native to the area and are quite frankly just so weird. We spent 45 minutes watching them swim, dive, and eat algae underwater. It was also quite funny watching them get swept off their little rocks by the surges… The last dive of that day was supposed to be looking for Sunfish again but since we had seen them we asked if instead it could be a snorkelling trip with the seal lions. We also had a Panga (a runabout) ride around and saw the Blue-footed Boobies, Iguanas, Penguins, and a bunch of other cool birds. Seriously, I don’t really like birds but Galapagos has some goodies.

Day 7 was two dives, both of which I skipped because of infections in both my ears. Classic me. Quietly relieved though because the group saw absolutely nothing. The goal was to look for Mantarays but they didn’t find any. Scott did see some White Tip Reef Sharks sleeping under a rock. After the dive though they went snorkelling with a baby sea lion which everyone raved about 🙂

Day 8 was a visit to the Darwin Centre which was ok. Massive tortoises. Often having sex with each other. Standard.

So yeh, an insane week. The boat itself was perfect for 8 people; clean, spacious, with a deck on top and loungers out the front. The food was fantastic and plentiful (nearly had to chuck an extra weight on the weight belt) and the service was pretty faultless. It is expensive, but if you can do it, do it. And we highly recommend Nortada. On a persoanl note I am very proud of myself as boats and their tendency to rock isn’t really my jam, also I had a touch of anxiety on the first couple of dives but pushed through and I can comfortably say it was one of the best things i’ve ever done and I will never forget it.

The day after the dive charter ended we took a two hour ride to Isabela Island where we spent two nights. Isabela is a very relaxed beachy little town. One of the days we did a hike up a volcano whose crater has the second largest diameter in the world. It wasn’t overly spectacular but was satisfying and felt good to do some exercise. That arvo and the next day we swam at the beach and chilled with the roaming iguanas.

From Isabela we went back to Santa Cruz for one more night and then boated to the island of San Cristobal where we had breakfast, went to the airport, and left the Galapagos as very satisfied customers.

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DCIM102GOPRO