Short entry today, since we spent most of the day travelling from the Galapagos to Quito.

We really didn’t have much idea of when our flight would be, everything has been handled by the travel agency. We were hoping for a later flight so we’d have more time in the Galapagos, but it was a mid-morning flight.

So after breakfast, we caught a water taxi to cross the bay to Peurto Ayora, took a 45 minute taxi ride across Santa Cruz island, took the ferry across the channel to Balta island, took the bus to the airport, flew to Guayaquil, waited 45 minutes on the plane for Guayaquil bound passengers to disembark and for Quito bound passengers to embark, and then we met at the airport by travel agency personnel and driven into Quito. No particular leg of the journey was very long, but add up enough of them and you’ve killed a day.

First impressions are very favourable: it’s a city of 2.5 million built on the side of several volcanoes, so it has some spetacular views. The airport was a good ways out of the city; it was a 45 minute drive or so to the hotel. The airport used to be right in the middle of the city, but it had no room to expand, and the city’s traffic was choked by trucks carrying roses to the airport for export.

Our hotel room is very nice – the bed is massive, but it does not dominate the room, there’s a nice sitting area too. Hopefully we sleep well to help us adjust to the altitude, we’re at 2850 meters!