LVD | Ecuador 2024

Ecuador 🇪🇨

Ecuador has recently been portrayed as dangerous on the media due to an incident that happened earlier this year. Due to this recent event, lots of places have brought down their prices e.g. flights, lodges, tours, restaurants. Otherwise, it's pretty safe, just like any other city. Going forward, I'm going to travel to all level 3 travel advisory countries. It's like playing stocks - when a company has bad media, stocks tank and then you invest when it tanks (the stocks will eventually shoot back up).

It is not safe to drink tap water. Therefore, avoid fresh fruits, vegetables, and ice cubes. Stick with water bottles.

Ubers are illegal here, but it still works. When we hop in an Uber, one of us sit in the front to make it not look like an Uber ride.

They also accept US dollar bills 💵 since that's their national currency!

Quito

Quito is high in elevation and it is recommended to spend a couple of days to acclimate to the elevation. I felt ill going up a flight of stairs carrying heavy luggages. It's okay to brush your teeth in tap water here. However, we stuck with water bottles for drinking water. Eating fruits and vegetables is fine as well.

The city closes early by dark and things don't open early. Places are usually closed on Sundays.

Day 1 - Quito 🏨

We flew out at ~8am and landed in Ecuador around 5pm. We were able to get an Uber to our hostel, Vibes Aurik. It was a 40 minutes ride for $20. The owner and the staffs here are very friendly. They have a very nice rooftop with another rooftop on top of the rooftop. There is a pool table on the rooftop. Sometimes, there is an event e.g. movies, karaoke night, dance music. Outside of these events, it's a quiet/chilled hostel.

We dined at Cafe San Blas and ordered the San Blas appetizer, wings, and the Primavera pasta.

Cafe San Blas 🍝

Their garlic chili oil is the bomb!

Day 2 - Quito

Walking Tour
We had a complimentary walking tour affiliated with the hostel from morning to afternoon. We traveled through the city and sampled alcohol, ice cream, snacks, and chocolate. I highly recommend the walking tour.

Basílica del Voto Nacional ⛪️

Yumbos 🍫
Chocolate tasting. We enjoyed the coffee dark chocolate and the mint dark chocolate. It only contained 3 ingredients, all healthy and rich.

We befriended Marie during the walking tour. 👱🏽‍♀️💁🏻‍♀️

Minka Chocolate Experience 🍫☕️

Random walk in Quito 🍆

Intanan Museum in Quito 🧭🏤
This museum isn't at the precise location of the equator, slightly off. Even though this isn't the precise location, I think it's more interesting than the Solar Museo.

They say that the magnetic field affects the rotation of the water funneling downwards. In the following 3 videos, examine the rotation of the water when the sink is placed in the center, at the south of the equator, and at the north of the equator respectively.

They say it's harder to balance an egg on a nail at the center of the equator.

Walking in a straight line with your eyes closed is much harder than it looks!

Achioto restaurant 🧑‍🍳
Great food in Quito! We ordered the potato soup, lamb, steak, and stir fried veggies.

Day 3 - Otavalo and multiple places

We booked an all day tour ranging from 7:30AM - 8:00pm. The drive to the mountain side triggered my acrophobia which thwarted our plans. We wanted to go to Banos, Cotopaxi, and Mindo which we heard really great things.

Museo Solar 🧭🏤
The real equator line 0°0′0″.

Use the compass app on your phone to prove the latitude!

Pit stop 🐪

Marketplace in Otavalo 🛍️
We bought 2 amulets which we haggled down to $75 for the both.

Cotacachi Cayapas ⛰️
Beautiful lagoon in the mountains. I wished we spent more time hiking here - my favorite hiking area in Ecuadaor thus far.

Day 4 - Quito

Today, we were supposed to go to Cotopaxi early morning. Instead, we had to pack for the rain forest, clothes shopping for the Galapagos, and book our arrangements. We hopped on the rain forest bus at 11pm and departed at ~11:30pm. This overnight bus ride is very bumpy - Jacki was laying across three seats and almost fell off twice. I caught her with my left leg while sleeping. Be prepared for a super bumpy ride and shit sleep.

Minka Chocolate 🍫☕️🍪🍰

We had lunch/dinner at a vegan restaurant called Tandana.

View of Tandana ⛰️

Cafe Mosiaco ⛰️

Day 5 - Cuyabeno

We are spending 4 days and 3 nights at the Bamboo Lodge 🎋🛖 for a total of $750 (2 people). We originally considered the Dolphin Lodge due to its great reviews. However, after talking to a couple back at the hostel, we've changed our mind for the following reasons: Wi-fi access (other lodges have no internet access), great food, and it's recently constructed (2017).

Other great things about the Bamboo Lodge that we've learned after staying here: there is minimal mosquitos (here and the surrounding lodges) due to the low pH level of the the river. The beds have an insect curtain to protect us from insects sleeping with us. I love that this place is very environmentally friendly: 1) the electricity is sourced from the solar panel 2) the filtration system cleans out 90% of the waste before dumping back into the Amazon river. This is a very high number compared to the rest of the surrounding lodges.

At every meal, they always prepare your main dish and a couple of community dishes. If you want more food at any time during the meal, then they will complimentarily cook extra for you. At any time, the following is always available: water (hot & room temperature), coffee, a variety of packaged tea, sugar, milk, and cocoa powder.

We took a 2 hour boat ride to get to our lodge. During the ride, we've encountered some forest/river friends.

🌳 adventure begins 👱🏼‍♂️👱🏽‍♀️

Boat ride 🚤

Wet wolf spider 💧🕷️

Flying Monkey 🪽🐒

Mini bats 🦇
There are 5 bats on the tree trunk. Can you spot them?

Lunch 🍛🌕
Served right after arriving from a 2 hours boat ride.

Night walk 🌚🚶🏻
Night walk is a double-edged sword. It's fun to explore the Amazon at night, where different creatures start their day and hunt for food; "eat or be eaten".On the other hand: it's very hot/humid, sweaty, creepy crawlers everywhere, trudging through the jungle and dodging spiders/webs, mosquitos, ants crawling into your boots/clothes. I had an ant that crawled into my boots up into my pants and continuously biting me. When I got home and took off my clothes, I found an ant on my hip and bit me one last time.

Cricket 🦗

Goliath Spider 🕷️

Tailless Whip Scorpion (spider) 🕷️

Sloth 🦥

Dinner 🍛🌑

Day 6 - Cuyabeno

Lodge 🛖
We are on the top floor 🙂

Lodge 🛖
360 view from our room's balcony

Breakfast 🍳

A hungry furry friend 🐒 in the dining area

Day walk ⛅️🚶🏻
The day walk was similar to the night walk, except, it was raining heavily. I prefer this over the night walk because I can visually detect creepy crawlers 🐜🐛🕷️.

Little toad 🐸

Tree 🌳
The sap from this tree smells like lemongrass

Ants as insect repellent 🐜
These ants are special - when lathering these ants onto your body, it serves as an insect repellent. It smells like vanilla too!

Ants with plant 🪴🐜
This type of ant will carry mud and plant the seed here so that the roots will increase the sturdiness of the ant colony. As a symbiotic relationship, the ants will protect anything from eating the plant.

Message leaf ✍️🍃
You can write messages onto this special leaf, as demonstrated by the best tour guide, Luis.

Lunch 🍛🌕

Carrot soup 🥕🍲
This soup is so darn good!

Selfie canoe 🛶
We saw many birds and bats during our canoe trip. However, I didn't get any good angles of the photos I took 😢. I didn't even get a good angle of us rowing the canoe!

Dinner 🍛🌑

The Bamboo Lodge gang 🎋👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Day 7 - Cuyabeno

Breakfast 🍳
The yogurt tastes amazing; it reminds me of my childhood green/kid yogurt

Today, we visited one of the three indigenous tribes. They showed us starting from harvesting yuca to us eating the processed yuca (there are too many videos, so I didn't upload them).

Indigenous fruits 🍊🍌🍯
They also served us freshly harvested organic yuca and fruits from their farm. All of it was very delicious!

Lunch 🍛🌕

Shrimp ceviche 🍤😋

Day & Night walk 🌞🌚🚶🏻
We did a to see how the rain forest transitions from light to dark. Special thanks to Justin for lending me a long sock (to tuck my pants in) to avoid ants in the pants 🐜👖.

Army Ants 🪖🐜

Dove Eggs 🕊️🪺

Catapult Spider 🚀🕷
Part 1 - Did you see the spider shooting itself towards the web?

Part 2 - Let's see it from a different angle in slow motion

Toad on a leaf 🐸🍃

Poisonous toad 🐸🍂 Can you find it?

Leaf cutter ants 🍃✂️🐜

Locust 🦗
This bad boy is a couple of inches long

White fungus ⚪🍄

Bamboo lodge toast 🥂

Day 8 - Cuyabeno

We went bird watching in the morning and then started our long journey home. We stopped Lago Agrio for lunch and then hopped onto a different bus to Quito.

Owl monkey 🦉🐒
This is a monkey that looks like an owl. How many do you see?

Squirrel monkey 🐿️🐒
They are the smallest monkeys that jump like Donkey and Diddy Kong (boing! boing!)

Snake bird 🐍🪿
It is drying its wing (in order to to fly) after taking a dive into the river .

Anaconda 🐍

Day 9 - Galapagos - Santa Cruz Island

We woke up early for a flight to the Galapagos. Cash is king in the Galapagos. We stayed at someone's bedroom in the Puerto Baquerizo Moreno area, the prime area of the island.

Galapagos Requirement
At the airport, you need to get a Galapagos visa by standing in line for the Galapagos booth at the airport. It is required to have a round trip flight booked. The cost is $20/person. You also need to run your luggages through the inspection. Once you arrive to the Galapagos, you will need to pay $100/person entrance fee. After that, you have to pay a few bucks at the booth for a shuttle to the dock. You'll need to pay $1/person for the ferry to the main island. Once there, you have 2 options to get to the main area: 1) take a taxi (up to $25) 2) take the bus for $5/person and then take a taxi for $1.50. We opted for #2 and it worked for us.

Their ATM only allows you to withdraw $200 per transaction ($4.60 transaction fee) up to $600/day. Our ATM card didn't work on most banks likely since it wasn't a debit card. I highly recommend that you bring sufficient cash with you before arriving here. Another hurdle we faced is that our credit card doesn't work with a specific credit card processors (orange colored credit card processor).

Working ATM: Banco Bolivariano (middle ATM) 🏧

Hostel 🏨
We booked a night at Morning Glory hostel in the Puerto Ayora area, prime area of Santa Cruz Island. The owner is super cool and helpful. Our room had a bathroom and an AC unit. The hostel came with free drinking water. We cannot drink or brush our teeth with tap water here 🚫💧.

After spending a couple of hours searching for a cruise (that included Isabella island, the best island to explore), our hostel gave a better price than the touring agencies. Apparently, most cruises start on a Tuesday/Wednesday and ends on a Sunday. We arrived on a Friday and there weren't any available cruises that would take off on the weekend. We had to change our flights so that we can hop on a cruise 😢.

Brown Galapagos Pelican 🦢

Santa Cruz Brewery
We dined here, but the food was okay but the view is great. We walked around town a bit and dined at Midori. It had really good reviews but the food overall wasn't great.

My beautiful wife with a beautiful view 👱🏽‍♀️

Day 10 - Galapagos - Santa Cruz Island/San Cristóbal Island

1835 Restaurant & Coffee Shop 🍍🍉🍳☕️🧃
We had the americano and cold brew coffee which both sucked. The acai bowl and breakfast plate was decent.

We walked 15 minutes from our hostel and checked out the Charles Darwin Museum (which most related buildings close on a Saturday).

We booked a ferry through our hostel for $30/person (there was a 7am and a 3pm option). We traveled to San Cristóbal island in the afternoon.

At the ferry, we had to pay $1/person and then scanned our bags. Then, we had to pay $1/person for the boat fee which transports you to an actual ferry. I recommend sitting in the very far back of this ferry since it's very hot inside the ferry (enclosed ferry with no air circulation). Once you arrived to the island, you'll have to pay another $1/person to get transported from the ferry to the dock.

Sea lions 🦭🦁
They are scattered everywhere

Iguana 🦎
A brave iguana hanging out at the fisherman's market!

Muyu Galapagos 🧑‍🍳
We had fine dining at Muyu Galapagos and the food was amazing. I highly recommend the tacos and the Maracuya dessert.

The vegetarian tacos is the best dish of Ecuador/Galapagos! 🌮😋

Catch of the day 🐠 - The grouper is cooked to perfection: tender, juicy, flavorful

Best dessert of Ecuador/Galapagos! This is passion fruit ice cream with something that tastes like rich chocolate truffle but it is not chocolate! 🍫🍅🍨😋

Day 11 - Galapagos - San Cristóbal Island

Our day begins with the 360 day tour from 7AM - 4PM.

Turtle nesting 🐢🥚
The round crater is where the turtles laid their eggs.

Beach 🏝️

Black Tipped Sharks 🦈🪸

Boobies 🦆🔵
Upon coming home, we went looking for boobies. Yes, they are called boobies and they have sky-blue-colored feet.

Sea lion pup feeding on milk 🦭🥛

This sea lion had too many beers last night 🦭😴

Homeless sea lions sleeping 🦭🦭😴

Playa Punta Carola 🌅
We watched sunset and it set at 5:59 PM. Video is time lapsed.

The Pier 🇵🇲
Dinner was decent. I think I'd rather try a different restaurant.

Pina Colada 🍍🥥🍹

I had the shrimp in coconut sauce 🍤 - it needed more salt and the shrimps are a bit overcooked. Otherwise, the sauce was creamy delicious!

Wifey had the vegetarian spaghetti and maracuya cocktail 🍝🍅🍹

Day 12 - Santa Cruz Island

We took a ferry in the morning. Again, we had to pay $1/person for the transport to the ferry, once arrived another $1/person to the dock, and then $1/person to leave the dock of Santa Cruz.

The Good Wife and me returning back to Santa Cruz on the transport boat. 👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏻🛶

Bowl Acai Bar ☕️🍍🍓🥣
We grabbed a late breakfast at . Coffee and the acai bowl was great! I don't recommend the Yuca chips - it is stale.

Galapagos Deli 🥪🍕🍦
We had ice cream at the Galapagos Deli. The pizza and sandwich was so-so, but the passion fruit juice and ice cream is delicious! Wifey excited for ice cream (coconut and passion fruit)! 🧇🟡⚪️🍨

Agave Studio 👨🏻‍🍳
We ordered the 5 tacos (smoked sausage, chicken, fish, eggplant, cauliflower), vegan ceviche, and lemonade coconut. The smoked sausage and eggplant tacos are good. Overall, the food wasn't bad but the expectations didn't line up with the great reviews on Trip Advisor. 🌮 🍲🍋🥥🧃

However, the Maracuya Mousse is a TO DIE FOR dessert! 🍅🍮😋

Day 13-18 - Santa Cruz Island/Cruise

Today, we start our 6 days cruise. The tour ends with landing on the Baltra Island, where the airport is at.

Cruise 🚢
The cruise we boarded on is called the Aida Maria. Our tour guide Ivan and the entire crew is decent; the other 14 passengers meshed very well. The food is excellent - every meal is a buffet style and it is delicious (for both vegetarians and carnivores). After coming back from each day tour, there would be refreshments. We stayed at the bottom floor and it's extremely cold down there.

Also, they charged us for ($20/person) for the snorkeling gears and $10/day for wet suit. They didn't have a small size for Jacki 😢. There is also a $10/person charge for hanging out at the beach.

Cruise Crew 👪
A gang of 16 who bonded over the course of 6 days 💙