Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

Today we completed a long-distance mission that we accepted while in the Galapagos in March. There was a place on the island of Floreana called “Post Office Bay” that has a barrel that holds postcards written by people visiting the Galapagos, addressed to others all around the world. The idea is that other visitors rifle […]

The activities at Sacha Lodge were almost all during the day but we had two nighttime excursions. The first night we were there, we went out on the lake in the dark. Our guide scanned the water with a large flashlight while we rode behind him in the canoe. When we got to the other […]

I mentioned in the previous post that we saw a lot of wildlife on our walks and boat rides at Sacha Lodge. Although you can see several examples in our gallery of Ecuador pictures, those have no descriptions so I thought it would be interesting to show more of them with some context. Many of […]

For the last leg of our trip in Ecuador, we went to Sacha Lodge, a lodge in the Amazon Basin of Ecuador. That last description is a bit misleading. The t-shirts all say “Amazon – Ecuador” but the Amazon doesn’t actually flow through Ecuador. The lodge is really on the Napo River which is a […]

Meredith has already mentioned the shopping and crazy good deals we saw on things like leather and wool. I thought I’d throw in some pictures of the markets plus a few other things we saw around Quito. It turns out that Ecuador has many volcanoes – over 25 – and quite a few are still […]

A lot of the trip in South America, we’ve been around English-speaking guides, but in Ecuador we’ve had some opportunities to use the Spanish we learned from reading the Lonely Planet Spanish Phrasebook we picked up at the airport on the way here (Dave took German in school, I took Latin, and I’ve had a […]

I’m really glad we’ve spent some time in the highlands – we’re getting a good sense of the culture of the Ecuadorian people, the local history, and some beautiful scenery. We’ve been to several markets and towns where local crafts are produced. I may have bought a few things. My favorite town was called Cotacachi, […]

When people talk about the Galapagos, the animals they usually discuss are ones on land such as giant tortoises and iguanas. But we snorkeled every day with good reason: there are many more species underwater. On our first full day in the Islands (our first snorkel), we swam in Darwin Bay at Tower Island. Our […]

It’s probably not a surprise to you to learn that I am interested in wildlife conservation. On March 13, we got to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station, which is in the town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. It is part of the Charles Darwin Foundation, which is committed to the conservation of […]

I cannot get enough of iguanas. They are amazing. Before the trip, I was really looking forward to seeing both the Land Iguana and Marine Iguana of the Galapagos Islands. Imagine how happy I was to discover that the iguanas are different on the various islands!!! Different colors, different features! Here are pictures of Marine […]