THE MEANDERWALKER

Last Thursday, I flew with 20 other student from UNC’s School of Journalism to Quito, Ecuador. Our flight from Atlanta ended up being delayed several hours, so we didn’t actually get into Quito until 3am local time. And to add to the discomfort, they made us wear surgical masks all through customs until we were screened for swine flu.

The next morning, after getting oriented at Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), our guides took us around the city for some photo opps. We swarmed town centers and tourists stops with SLRs.

They also took us up to the top of a monument of Mary that sits on a mountain (El Panecillo) right in the middle of the city and you could see everything:

Quito is probably one of the biggest cities I’ve ever seen (step aside, NYC) — it just sprawls forever into the mountains.

Saturday, we headed to the Galapagos in separate groups. My group of 8 students and 2 coaches flew directly to San Cristobal. The other group flew earlier in the morning to the island Baltra and took boats to Santa Cruz and Isabela. They’ll be coming over to San Cristobal (where the USFQ facility is) after a couple of weeks.

We were met at the airport in San Cristobal (which is pretty much a large cabana) by one of our guides, and after some confusion about National Park Fees and waiting in a long line to get out of the small gate at the front of the airport, we headed to the hotel. We were supposed to be staying at a hostel called Hotel Mar Azul, but found out as we were passing Hotel Mar Azul that were were actually now staying at a place called Hotel Casa de Alicia. It’s own by a woman from Brooklyn, NY of all places, and she is amazing (I’ll post photos of the place tomorrow).

After getting settled, we wandered around the city a bit. Here are some photos of San Cristobal:

A street that may or may not have a name.

We found out yesterday that the town pretty much shuts down on Sundays.

Sunset with kids and, yes, a sea lion. Sea lions are literally everywhere on the beaches (which are small in terms of sand), and they make the most ridiculous barking noises. Also, we have 12-hour days here: the sun is completely risen by 6:30am and it sets at pretty much exactly 6:30pm — it’s weird.

This statue of a fisherman looks like The Incredible Hulk. People aren’t really green here, but they do eat a lot of seafood. So far, not including breakfast, 3 of 4 meals have been seafood. I’ve mostly been eating rice and steamed vegetables — as I expected I would. Last night I had beans for the first time since leaving home, and it was incredible.

I’ll hopefully update here fairly often with photos and stuff. But also check out my flickr photo set with some lo-res selects (the internet here is slow). Also, some good news is that I’ve not yet bee burned by the equatorial sun, but I am going to the beach today, so we’ll see how that turns out!