Day 1- the beginning

            First night in Quito was weird. Everyone spoke a different language. Doy… it was foreign, but still weird. The airport was nice, until once outside the airport the city was worn down and trashed it seemed. The guide said we were going to the newer city but it looked the same, and if you died, no one would know. There are a lot of cops. And when we stopped at the hotel we were surrounded by Mexicans- not really but like two thugs came up to the car and the guide told us to stay in the car. He got out, yelled at them and opened the ironed barred gate on the side of the road. It looked from the outside like every other run down street. But once past the gate and into the hotel, it was like heaven. The hotel was like an ancient Greek palace. It was old, but nice and the people here brought us tea and carry our bags. Oh and yeah the traffic here is bad. The street-sides are different and the cars too. Everything is different. There’s a lot of beeping.

            Grandma’s great. Good to talk to.

Day 2- Survivor

             We explored the city some more, took like a ski-lift to the top of a mountain to look about the city. Huge city and then we went to old Quito which is old and has a lot of people. I thought I would get mugged or robbed, it seems unsafe. The juices are amazing, there are all types of juices- very good. They make juices out of everything they can squeeze. Ok, I’m logging out. Hope I’m still alive tomorrow.

Day 3

            Off to the Galapagos, early morning. I survived last night, but had to keep a gun close by. I’m in Galapagos now and looking back Quito was actually very interesting and neat. We got to the air port and these little girls- like hundred of them- with a school program were all going to Galapagos. I knew they were up to no good. In the plane, they would take turns being in the cockpit and they brought cameras with them. They must have been taking pictures of the cockpit to memorize it and take over it. In the air ports people were all always asking for my papers… something’s up. We might have to go hide in an attic or a boat for a week to hide from these people. We landed on Galapagos and it looked like heaven from the air; light blue water, waves mashing up against rocks, it was nice. And once on land it was heaven. Small air port which was open to the wind. From the air port we meet up with the group and took a little bus all over the island. We first went to see giant land tortoises in the wild; see saw some and even two of them getting jiggy with it. Then we got back on the bus and over to the boat. We were in the small bus for a combined time of about 2 hours or more. In the bus we saw all types of neat things. Locals actually had houses scattered, horses ran everywhere, didn’t really run… at the port and by the port were shops, massive boats, lots of tourist, locals playing a weird volley ball game, where they like carry the ball instead of hit it. We went to the boat to put our suitcases in and just to see around. We pasted lots of nice boats on the way to ours, I was hoping one of them was our boat, but none of them were. We arrived at ours, via the dingy (our boat had two, and they ran wild at each island everywhere, because they took people from the big boats to shore). And it looked like a run down boat. It has three stories and looked moldy from the outside. I was discouraged but once inside, polished wood shone like diamonds, and on the coffee table, candy awaited me. It just goes to show a boat can only really be judged from the inside. Can’t judge a boat by its cover.  It had a nice dinning lounge area, nice bar, on the third story had a lay out area open to the sun, nice if u wanted to get a tan, below that on the second story was me and grandma’s cabin, and three others, there was also another lay out area open to the air but covered by a balcony- therefore shaded by the sun. the first story had the lounge, dinning area, bar, and four more cabins. After maybe a quick 30 minutes on the boat we went back to the town, population our guide said was 18,000, the island with the most population. We road to the Darwin Institute to see more and variety and quantity of the land tortoise and we did, it was amazing. They are HUGE. We got to see little baby ones; newborns to ones that were five years of age. We also saw some old grandpas that were about a hundred years old, and we got to walk right next to them, as close as we desired. Oh and the little school girls were there. After seeing the turtles, we saw 3 land iguanas in captivity and everyone stopped for about an hour to take pictures. Then we walked back to port to get on the dinghy and back to the boat. As we were walking, everyone sort of did there own thing because we had extra time, me and grandma were just walking slowly back. I was kind of tired and just mindlessly walking next to grandma, however with that said I walked right into a cactus and it hurt! It seemed like I ran right into it. For about 10 minutes I was trying to get the prickles out of my forehead. And they were in there, and sometimes when I would to pick them out some would break in two and the little part would still be stuck in my head. Walking back, we also saw little stores and locals playing- their house were not that nice looking, but had amazing wooden doors and gates. But I guess I wouldn’t need much either if I was living in paradise. We also saw two sea lions and pelicans around the locals when they were cutting open there catches and people would be like a couple feet away from them and the animals didn’t mind. All the tourist stopped in amazement to take pictures. Once back on board we ate and the food is nice, better then average. It is weird sitting with people I don’t know. I guess cause I’m shy, but I didn’t like sitting with all these different people, in part because same didn’t even speak English, but all were extremely nice. We sat with a French couple- married about 50 years. The women could speak some English which was nice, but not much. It’s awkward just sitting and not talking, when people are a foot in front of my face. When people didn’t understand something because of the language barrier people just laughed if off. Therefore there was a lot of laughing. I didn’t talk much, but that’s just me, grandma is quite the chatter bug, and tried to talk to everyone, which was nice and weird. Mostly nice because she would get into a conversation and I would just listen and not say much. We went to bed and the motor started and we started moving. All night the boat would rock, but I didn’t get sick.