Day X- January 11th, 2oo7
Another early morning, we checked our, had breakfast and hiked back down to the water taxis.

My last Galápagos sunrise, ¡Que triste!

At the port we all got on a bus that brought us to the opposite side of the island (which was absolutely beautiful) where we transferred to a ferry which brought us to Baltra, a military base/airport.

So beautiful!



Tiffany and Darian on the ferry, so sad to be leaving

Outside the "airport" there were stands where we could go shopping. I bought a cute "I ♥ Boobies" patch (Blue-footed Boobies, that is!). We sat around the airport for awhile, played cards, ate some empanadas and had some mango gatorade (only in Ecuador! - and it was delicious) We moved to a large crowded room which had absolutely no air conditioning. After ten minutes (five minutes before our plane was scheduled to take off) they changed our flight from a connection at Guayaquil to a direct flight to Quito. All the people who were going to Guayaquil got on the first flight while the rest of us waited around, sweating and packed until they finally called our flight. At this point, it became a free-for-all with no seat assignments and people were running across the tarmac to get a good seat. About an hour later, we made it back to Quito where we had a free day to explore the city.
We wanted to get $2 haircuts, but only Ashley knew where they were located and she was doing a group project. We waited around for awhile, hung out in Matt and Darian's "bank error in your favor" penthouse suite with a wrap around balcony, king size bed, digital cable (half of our group got luxury accomodations because they lost our reservations...of course I got the room with the view of the air conditioning system below, crickets in the bedroom, a crooked bed, broken light in the bathroom, etc...) We wandered around for a bit and went to an Artisan Store next to the hotel, finally found Ashley and decided to head out for dinner. We went by a little bar that served 2x1 canelazos and Matt had been wanting to try it since we had arrived. However, the place was far too crowded, so we decided to just go for dinner.
We all went back to my favorite place, La Chacha, and ordered ridiculous amounts of food, once again- crema de aguacate soup, garlic bread (3ocents an order!) pizza, pasta, empanadas, crepes- six of us ate for $25.

Darian posing in his Ecuadorian cowboy hat at La Chacha

With a luxury suite waiting for us back at the hotel, we had no need to find a party- we could make our own! It was on the way back to the hotel, however, when I realized I was out of money, but also, that my PIN was not working for my ATM card. I was going to have to be very careful of how I spent my money for the rest of the trip, because I was going to have to rely on Matt for funds.
We headed back to the room for some intense games of cards and were eventually invited to the suite across the hall- they were having their own private get together. After intense amounts of American culture (save for the CLUB cerveza, of course), we exhausted ourselves and called it a night.