La Mitad del Mundo

Ecuador, the middle of the world, and the first country we really hadn’t planned. Costa Rica had been researched pretty thoroughly, and we knew what we were doing in Canada and the US, but we arrived in Ecuador with only the first night booked and not having looked at a guidebook until we boarded the plane from Costa Rica to Miami.

And what a journey THAT was. To fly from San Jose in Costa Rica to Quito in Ecuador takes 2 hours and 10 minutes direct, but alas TACA, the only South American airline to do that route, is not a member of the One World Alliance that provided our round the world tickets. Perhaps they’re not quite up there with BA and Quantas, then? Anyway, our route took us 3 hours back to the USA, and then over 3 hours down again to Ecuador. With a 5 hour layover in between, oh joy. All of which would have been OK(ish) were it not for the delights of Miami airport. Even the Americans we met freely admit that it’s a complete dump. Now, we’ve done a fair bit of flying between us, but never have we found an airport like this. Thousands of passengers pass through this major hub each day, but there is a total of one cruddy snack bar and about 2 shops. Total. In the greatest nation in terms of capitalism in the world. What a waste of retail opportunity! Even worse than the mindless tedium though was transit procedure. In order to spend your luscious 5 hours in the terminal, you have to get a visa for the States, go through customs, pick up your luggage … even though its checked through to another country … haul it around the airport, go BACK through security and customs. Well at least it uses up some time!

We arrived in Quito late, to the second highest city in the world at 2850 metres above sea level. Its busy, mad and sprawling – over 2 million people, all seemingly with a driving death wish. It’s a city of enormous contrast: hectic and cosmopolitan, but with UNESCO status for its old town. Rainy and often cold, though only 22km south of the equator. Cold, but with palms, orange trees and hummingbirds. To acclimatise to the altitude, and because Jenna had another of her days being sick in the morning, then OK almost immediately, we took it very easy. There’s not a lot to report, except that we succeeded in doing loads of admin and laundry, and succumbed to the demon McDonalds for the first time on our trip! We did redeem ourselves after a couple of days by eating in some very nice little restaurants, though, ahem, most of them were Italian!

You almost have to do the tourist thing and visit La Mitad del Mundo, the equator itself. We weren’t expecting much to be honest, but actually it was great fun! Our cab driver certainly got the adrenaline flowing with a 100kph hair-raising ride through built up areas. We gratefully crawled out of the cab, onto solid ground. Rowan crossed the equator at least thirty seven times, jumping from one side of the line to the other, and yes – she licked it. Just mooching around the shops and the monument, the museum and the line itself was an hour well spent.

After a few days however we were getting itchy feet, and so we had a quick look in the local tour operators. Maybe Cotapaxi, a spectacularly high volcano? Or maybe not, what with my dubious history with altitude. Hmmm … why else do people come to Ecuador? Yes, there are many reasons, jungle, highlands, Indian markets and the coast, but there’s one screaming attraction – Galapagos.

Galapagos had been high on our paradise wish-list, but we also knew it was prohibitively expensive and had pretty much ruled it out. They price it high for good reason: they really want to limit man’s impact on these incredible, unique islands and their wildlife, and so price it accordingly. You have to pay about $375 in air fares to get to Baltra, then $100 per person to enter the national park, and the only way to do Galapagos justice is by boat, and they cost a lot. It certainly does limit visitor numbers and even Lonely Planet admit there is no way to do it on a budget. But still, we looked in a couple of places and ended up in Sangay Tours late in the afternoon. There were no places on the smaller boats (must admit this was a relief for me, as the seas can be rough and I didn’t fancy pitching around in a 12 person yacht), but they offered us a pretty special rate on the most luxurious cruise ship serving the islands, as long as we could leave two days later. We stood outside in the rain for about 5 minutes debated the wisdom of doing this or not, but then – how often would we be in Ecuador? How much would it cost to organise from the UK? Could we really come here and NOT do Galapagos? And so, the Visa card was about to get hit very hard. We were going, and on the Galapagos Legend. We couldn’t quite believe we were spending all this money, but hey. It’s all good, man.