Sunday, March 13: Galapagos to Quito

Today is to be an “in transit” day.  Actually, the next two days will be “in transit” days, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  We had to get breakfast, pack up, and be out of our cabin by 9:00 so the crew could get it ready for the new passengers arriving this afternoon.

One last look out our “window”.  The upper half drops down leaving the window half open.

We would be on one of the last tenders to the island and on to the airport, so we had about three hours to kill this morning.  We did lots of reading, a little photo editing, and some wandering around the boat.   While we were waiting, a fuel barge came alongside and refueled the Flora. 

The barge had the fuel, the boat moved it around.

 It took a couple of hours to refuel the Flora so I checked every half hour or so, and I could see the barge riding higher and higher as the fuel was transferred.  Our time for the tender came about noon, so we climbed aboard one last time and road to the small dock on Beltra Island.  To no one’s surprised, there was a sea lion and two marine Iguana’s taking naps at the corner of the dock.

  The commotion of the people did not bother them at all.

We had to wait at the airport for a couple of hours for our aircraft to arrive and be prepared for the flight to Quito.  We were all put in the “VIP Lounge” where there were some drinks and snacks available, but limited seating. At about 3:00, we boarded the plane and headed back to Quito.  The flight was uneventful, arriving about 5:00.

 As usual, the weather in Quito seemed unsettled.

The original itinerary had us flying on to Lima this day, but apparently the airline schedules had changed and we would have to spend a whole day at the hotel close to the Quito airport.  But there will be more about that in the land tour part of this report.   The ten of us going on the Machu Picchu land tour were transferred to the EB hotel where we had dinner and spent the night.

Now that we have left the islands, here is a map that shows the path our cruise took.  Note that the total distance covered was only 544 nautical miles in the 7 days

Can you follow the Flora’s travels?

Click the “Back” button to return to the primary document/web page and continue to Machu Picchu.