Musings

As far as I can recall, I never rode in a panga (by any name) before our trip last month to the Galápagos. Already, I miss those days! This was a penguin-watching expedition…oh, with pelicans and, what was it?…frigate birds…whatever. Note the volcanic cone in the background.

Panga in my Apple-dictionary (very fruity) is a large African machete-knife. I think “panga” is used widely in Latin American, at least on the west coast, for this kind of inflated boat. The Apple-world needs to self-update. IMHO 😎

Posted at 8:15 PM | Comments Off on Panga

Splurged on new footwear. Decided my new sandals should be…prismatic.

Posted at 9:09 PM | Comments Off on Not for dancing

A l-o-n-g time ago I did some work for a potter-carpenter. I worked on a kitchen/bathroom cabinet-and-tile installation job, and got “paid” in pottery. Although I needed cash at the time, I took what was offered…which is why I have lovely serving pieces like this big bowl. Love the juxtaposition of maroon and blue.

Posted at 8:05 PM | Comments Off on Glazed over

Wow. We had some rain come through 5ish and it cooled things off…to a mere 79°F now. Take me back to the equator, please! [Where it’s cooler, at least on the water.]

Posted at 8:00 PM | Comments Off on Liriope makes me dream

When I’m not focused on something, my mind drifts back to the Galápagos, including marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus)…

…and Galápagos land iguanas (Conolophus subcristatus).

Both do lots of thermoregulating and basking.

My body is finally starting to get used to being here. The relatively brief overnight flight Sun/Mon is what messed me up, I’m pretty sure. Last night I was asleep shortly after 8:30pm, and I slept over nine hours.

And tonight—hey, I’m still awake. 😎

Posted at 9:04 PM | Comments Off on Regulating w/o thermal

I’m still adjusting to…not being on a tippy ship; not being at sea level; not being at 9400ft (plus or minus); and, not having a chef and sous chef to cater to my food needs and subsequent clean-up.

Dish processing tip: put the clean, damp dishes—all stacked as they will be on the shelf—in the microwave and dry them that way.

Posted at 7:33 PM | Comments Off on Hominess

Given how many people we were around during our relocation from the southern hemisphere to home over Sun/Mon, we are unofficially in quarantine. During different parts of our trip more and fewer people around us were masked; however, few of the masks were at this 95% level of filtration, so ya gotta consider that germs were out and about. Thus, we have to trust that our well-fitted 95% masks did their job vis-à-vis Covid (and monkeypox, and the common cold…etc.]. We won’t know for a few more days, however. [I prefer the model on the left. The Guru prefers the type on the right.]

Posted at 8:13 PM | Comments Off on Abundance of caution

I’m going to start Monday at dark in Quito “last night.” This is the main entrance to our hotel-home. The wide entry shoots straight past the desk to the pool area at the rear of the property. Off to the left on this side is the restaurant. Opposite to the right is the lobby where we used the hotel wifi for several hours after we checked out at 2pm. Around 5:30 we moved to the restaurant for a simple meal before catching the hotel’s shuttle to the airport at almost 7:15pm.

We people-watched in the main entry area until 9:15, when the Delta employees showed up. Then, we queued to check ourselves in and check our big suitcase. We relocated past security and bureaucratic whatnot to seats by gate A11, and finally got to board about 10:40pm, for departure before 11:30pm. The flight was almost full, three seats on each side of the aisle in the main cabin. We were oh so fortunate to have a row to ourselves, and an exit row to boot, so relative comfort.

Overnight flights are by definition a trial. Short overnight flights are an even more intense trial. Our flight time was 4 hrs 44 mins, and we gained an hour while in the air. I got maybe two hours of sleep.

We landed on schedule, or was it a bit early?, at perhaps 5:20am. We got through the necessary inspections of documents, luggage collection, etc., and queued anew here outside to wait for the airport shuttle to carry us from the international terminal to the main terminal, where the MARTA trains arrive/depart. Considerable energy has been expended complaining about this awkward situation. We waited just to the right of this frame for something like twenty-five minutes for a bus to arrive, in oppressive, humid 75°F. Nevertheless, we were home shortly after 7:30am, having transferred from the MARTA train to a MARTA bus. Sooo glad we’re home.

We found the house fine, and not too large a pile of mail awaiting us. I started some laundry, as that was pretty much the maximum braininess that I could muster. I also took a ninety-minute nap before noon. Two more loads of laundry and some dry mopping, and what else? Somehow the time ticked by, and I predict an early night. Duh.

Posted at 6:38 PM | Comments Off on Waiting, no game

I looked out the window at 6:30am this morning, and saw the thick clouds mostly obscuring the far hillside (it’s hazily visible as the darker area between the white cloud layers) and thought: this isn’t a day for touring the countryside.

Here’s the hotel pool area at 3pm; it’s been rainy and will be again.

We fly out tonight, just before midnight. We checked out of our room at 2pm, and are ensconced in the lobby by big windows facing west, using the hotel internet and enjoying the fact that other people are far from us, although most are masked, as the hotel requests.

You might think this spot in the lobby is rather boring, but we watched three hotel employees wearing suits and dress shoes herd two Holsteins out of the front lawn about an hour ago.

It’s been a extraordinary trip, and we have accomplished what we set out to do. I sit here in a light jacket, and my trusty Apple Watch indicates it’s 54°F here. It will be months before we see the 50s in Atlanta, I think.

Posted at 5:55 PM | Comments Off on There comes a time…

Not long after we got on the (major, national) divided highway this morning, we came upon a construction zone, and got shunted over this side route leaving both travel lanes to the repaving crew.

During this morning’s jaunt, we came across several groups of bicyclists, leading us to conclude that Saturday is for bicycle outings and practices.

We also found this wide load (carga ancha). Not sure what it was, but it looked rather like a reviewing stand, with many streamers.

Just off the highway, we made our turn at this church to take a very local road to the parking area for hiking in the Pasochoa cloud forest, officially Refugio de Vida Silvestre Pasochoa.

For all but perhaps fifty meters of the 5.3 km access road, we bumped along at a very slow speed. Many pickups passed us, despite this being such a narrow, one-and-a-bit lane road.

The land use change is the edge of the park, with farmers pasturing animals right up to the forest.

Here’s the map of the hiking trails, aka senderos. We opted for the medium-length middle one.

The path was okay, not muddy thankfully.

We immediately found bromeliads.

The path was in the selva (jungle), but just in it along the edge of a field. I suspect some of the plants we saw were introduced from agricultural undertakings. Not sure about this, but clover seemed like it was a pasture escapee, as they looked like the versions I’ve seen in fields in North America.

I had one of these, far less vigorous, in my freshman dorm room. I never got to see the new, beige leaflets.

Here is the downside of the path. It went up and up and up, to perhaps 9800 feet (from perhaps 9100 at the parking lot). We took it very slowly, and looked for plants, flowers, and creatures of interest.

I found a slug on a trail marker and heard a very few bird calls. I expected more….

Descending, we found a great valley view. Green green green.

The last feature before the parking lot was a fancy “pic-nic” area. We saw maybe nine of these.

We bumped along that miserable 5.3 km, then took a different route than we came through in the morning, to avoid Sangolquí, which I have nicknamed Traffic Jam Town. This is our turn off the highway to access the route to the hotel. As you can see.

This was a very different day than the previous ones we’ve spent here in the Ecuadorian valleys. Nice to have the diversity. This place is high-altitude for us, and today we really felt it. And survived.

Posted at 8:50 PM | Comments Off on Pasochoa expedition