This day marked the end of our time in the Galapagos. We finished packing and had our suitcases outside our cabin door by 6:30 a.m. I later managed to catch when the flat bottom boat handling our luggage pulled up next to the ship and all the luggage was lowered from deck five in a net down to the boat. It went to the airport ahead of us.
The sunrise was beautiful this morning.
We had to be out of our cabin by 7:30 a.m. so before going to breakfast, we found our own little corner of the Discovery Lounge to leave our carry-on items. After breakfast, this is where we would spend our time until disembarkation.
On this seven night cruise, we traveled 471 nautical miles. Including the island we flew into, we visited 8 different islands and had excursions at 12 different sites. We kayaked, hiked, snorkeled, and enjoyed zodiac rides. It was an exhausting but incredibly memorable and exhilarating trip!
We had one last breakfast in Darwin's Restaurant. They had my favorite again, Huevos Ranchero's (an egg over beans and tortillas with pico de Gallo on top) plus I saw they had avocado toast with cream cheese so I asked Juan, one of our favorite servers if he could get me some without the cream cheese and he delivered!
After breakfast, they played a Charles Darwin documentary. I will admit I only half-watched/listened as I did some work on my photos and blog. Paul enjoyed it, it is sad how he had to sit on his theories (because the general public was not open to any positions that challenged religion) for 2-3 decades which negatively impacted his health until he was able to finally publish his work.
They then played a PowerPoint of photos and videos the naturalists had taken all week of us passengers as well as the wildlife we had seen. It was really well done and our musician played background music while it was running. They gave us all a thumb drive with a copy of the PowerPoint on it.
Then it was time to distribute boarding passes, bus tickets, and assign zodiac groups so we could start heading to the airport.
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| One last look at our ship |
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| The Baltra airport is open air and quite small (four gates) |
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| The walkway to the tarmac. |
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| Just as when we arrived, there was a Land Iguana waiting along the path. |
At the Quito airport, we separated into groups - those going back to the JW Marriott (like us), those going to the EB Hotel who had very early flights the next morning, and those going on to Machu Picchu who had a flight to catch.
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| The Quito Airport |
After a 45 minute ride to the JW Marriott, we were greeted with warm towels again and keys to our rooms. Paul wanted to ask about getting a room on the 9th floor where the Executive Lounge was but I encouraged him to wait and see what our room looked like first and am glad I did.
We walked over to the receptionist desk so that we could ask about late checkout the next day. For a fee, they would let us keep our room until 7:00 p.m. the next day. And then we went up to our room and discovered we had been given quite the suite!
Our loyalty level got us an amenity. This time we chose mixed nuts and are glad we did! In these jars we found peanuts, walnuts, raisins, and fresh grapes.
Dinner that night was included with our package at the Botanica Restaurant. It was a three course meal and very good.
I got one last look at the beautiful roses in the lobby. These are all real.
And then it was time to go to bed as we had a 4:30 a.m. excursion the next morning.
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