09/11/13 - 09/12/13; 09/17/13 - 09/18/13: Quito, Ecuador

We were nervous about going to Quito. It was our first destination on our RTW trip and we’d read horror story after horror story about how we were going to get conned or robbed. One traveler even wrote: “In Quito it is PROBABLE that you WILL be robbed within your first three days.” (Capitalizations supplied by the author). Add in a few tales of false taxis that deliver you to armed muggers, and the warning bells start going off in your head.

9/23/13 - 9/27/13: Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

When you’re suffering from a cold and you wake up at 2:30 in the morning to catch a 3:00am van ride for two hours, only to spend another two hours waiting at an airport before spending several hours flying, landing, and flying again, then add another hour moving like cattle onto a bus so that you can ride a dinghy across rough seas and end up on a small cruise ship that’s slowly rocking back and forth on an incessant ocean… Well, you don’t feel great. That was how our Galapagos journey began.

09/19/13 - 09/23/13: The Secret Garden: Cotopaxi, Ecuador

You may not know it, but the highest mountain in the world is in Ecuador. Well, it depends on how you look at it…The Earth isn’t a perfect sphere. It’s slightly oblong, widening ever so slightly along the equator, meaning the equatorial line sits closest to the sun. Mount Chimborazo is Ecuador’s highest mountain, but Cotopaxi is a close second.

09/15/13: Sacha Lodge, Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest

The previous day was unbeatable, as far as I was concerned. What could top dozens of tropical birds, chatting with tamarin monkeys, and discovering hairy tarantulas? Our experiences seemed impossible to improve upon, and our first activity of the day supported my theory.

09/14/13: Sacha Lodge, Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest

We awoke at 5:00 AM for breakfast at 5:30. Upon waking, Katie and I put on our standard jungle armor: rubber boots, long pants, long sleeve shirts, a hat, and copious amounts of sunblock and bug repellent. Precaution is a healthy person’s best friend!

09/13/13: Sacha Lodge, Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon is one of those mythical places you see in pictures, or replicated in films, but never think you’ll actually visit. Knowing that our first stop would be in a country where we didn’t speak the language, we decided to do a tourist-friendly trip to the Amazon in order to ease our transition. It worked like a charm.