Ecuador - Day Ten

Red flower outside a playground near our hotel.

Beautiful mosaic sculpture and pool near our hotel.

My friend, my guide and myself.

Today was the last day of our trip and we knew it would be a long one because our plane left at midnight:thirty.  We had breakfast at the same place.  The same Siamese cat was there.  Our friend from Germany, Jutta, picked up the cat and stroked it.  The cat's eyes were wild.  I told her the cat looked frightened.  She said, "It just needs to know it can trust me."  Then she told us that on  her hike in Peru (just prior to coming to Ecuador) people ate cats.  I told her that kind of talk was not going to get the cat to trust her.   For breakfast we had fruit chunks (papaya, banana, watermelon and apple) covered with granola and yougurt, guava and tree tomato juice, eggs (scrambled or fried), and toast with guava marmalade and butter.  We said goodby to two people on our trip who were staying on for 3 extra days of scuba diving.  They left to scuba dive at Kicker Rock again. We were jealous.  We had the morning to ourselves.  Many people hiked to a beach nearby and did some body surfing before hiking back to shower before we had to meet at 11:30.  I would have liked that but I was having a severe reaction to the sun.  Much as I love the beach and being in the water, I knew I had to stay in the shade.  We went back to the hotel and sat in the hammocks in the shade for a time.  We did a little shopping.  We watch the sea lions at the beach.  One sea lion got into a fight with another one.  The sea lion  closest to us pushed the other one backwards into the ocean.  He pushed the sea lion back about 5 feet. They barked and swung at each other with their necks.  They fight like I saw giraffes fight - by swinging their necks and striking with their heads.  After being shoved back 5 feet, the sea lion closest to the sea had enough.  He bit the pushy sea lion.  I could hear flesh tearing.  The pushy sea lion didn't like being bit and he quickly propelled himself sideways down the beach and into the sea, giving his opponent a wide berth.  I watched a more peaceful scene of a sea lion nursing her pup.  My friend wanted one more of those chocolate ice cream bars she enjoyed and I thought, after my good experience yesterday, that I would have another coke light.  We went through every market and every store we could find.  We could find coke and juice and beer but no coke light.  Funny how you think you might like a coke light but once you start looking, you REALLY want a coke light.  We never found one.  We met at the pier for a group picture.  We were taken to the airport.  Each one of us hugged Pablo goodbye.  He told me, "Continue to be a good example."  Our flight landed in Guayquil.  I bought a coke light at the airport.  It was good but nearly as good as the one I had yesterday.  I guess you have to go a week without one for them to be really good like that.  Then we took the half hour flight to Quito.  The weather here was much different.  Rain fell and the temperature was in the 60's.  A big van took our group to the Sierre Madre hotel.  We had just enough time to change into our Minnesota clothes before going out to dinner as a group. We were walked to a Asian fusion restaurant run by people from New Zealand.  The name of the place was Dr. Ho's.  They sold t-shirts that said I (heart) Ho's.  We had a delicious dinner.  For appetizers we had calamari, breaded meat, egg rolls, and vegetarian spring rolls.  For my entree I ordered from the column called "Traditional Ecuadorian Food."  I had tofu in a sauce with onions, garlic, tomato and coconut.  It was served with rice.  I could eat only half of it.  They encouraged us to order dessert.  I wasn't hungry but wanted to take full advantage of my last meal in Ecuador.  I had chocolate cake and it was good but not nearly as flamboyant as what other people had.  They had breaded, deep fried banana with nutella filling and a waffle coating and doused with amaretto and set aflame.  My friend and I took a taxi to the airport.  When leaving Ecuador, you pay a fee of $40.80.  This must be paid in American cash.  We waited in line.  I saw my friend chatting up a couple handsome young men.  I thought, "Already she has made a friend, isn't she something."  Turns out they weren't friends.  When I got up to them, they turned to me and said they were cops.  I thought he was kidding.  They both wore jeans and t-shirts and had ball caps on.  They certainly didn't look like cops to me.  And what kind of cop says, "I'm a cop?"  Don't they identify themselves as police?  They were both wearing identification tags around their necks so I gave them some credibility.  They said they were looking for drugs.  I answered, "Oh."  One look at me and he must have decided I wasn't a danger and they left.  At customs, I came across my first less than pleasant person in Ecuador.  She spoke to me in one word phrases like, "Completo" (translation - fill out your paperwork) and "Finito" (move on, I'm done with you now).   We got to the gate area.  When they went to inspect my suitcase, a very muddy pair of formerly white socks rolled out onto the floor. These were the socks I wore hiking the volcano and they were nasty.  The inspector didn't dig much further into the suitcase.  I think he had seen enough. He took my steel water canister and shook it.  I told him I had water in it.  He pointed at a big potted palm.  I said, "You want me to dump the water on the plant?"  He indicated yes so I watered the palm tree and came back.  I didn't know the rules at this airport.  Then we had 90 minutes to wait at this gate without water and without a restroom. I was pretty tired by this point. As soon as the plane took off I used the restroom. I was so happy to have an entire row to myself.  I stretched out on the three seats and rested my head on three pillows. The airline staff woke me up to offer beverages and breakfast (at 2 a.m.) but I declined.  I had to be awake enough to drive home from the airport in the morning.  Our trip was over.  It was an AMAZING trip.  Would I go there again?  I am not sure.  Things could never be as exciting as they were on this first trip.  I didn't get to see a red footed booby or a flightless cormorant.  I would love to snorkel those reefs and rocks again.  I loved Ecuador.  I was impressed right when I got off the plane 10 days earlier to see recycling containers for plastic, cans and paper.  Even the Minneapolis airport doesn't have those.  Pablo said the Galapagos Islands were lucky that a small country took ownership of them.  When I questioned him on that, he said smaller countries take more care of the ecology.  He told me about the ecological disasters on the Hawiian Islands.  He said there are no native birds on Guam.  I wondered if that were true but I looked it up and he is right.  So I like Ecuador because as a nation, they appreciate and want to preserve nature.  I think if I were to go back, I would focus on the other end of Ecuador - the beginning of the Amazon basin.