The next country I visited was Ecuador, where I also went to the Galapagos Islands. This trip was so eventful, I will have to break it up into two parts: my time on the mainland of Ecuador and my time in the Galapagos Islands. I went there with my family this past summer, and it was by far the most chaotic vacation we have gone on yet.

This trip was a little over two weeks, but it was only about 10 days of vacation, as it took about a total of 4 days to travel there and back. We first arrived in Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. We stayed in an old hotel right by the main plaza where the palace is located. The hotel had lots of character with giant oil paintings and hand-carved wooden mantels and furniture. 

The next morning we walked around the city and went in and out of several shops to look for cute souvenirs. We found several t-shirts, and I also found a hand-made Alpaca. Back in the US I had seen them for almost one hundred dollars. The one in Peru was only twenty dollars, so obviously I got it. 

The next morning, we had to get up super early and drive to the Bellavista Cloud Forest. The road there was unpaved and super bumpy; my apple watch said I burned six-hundred calories on the ride there even though I was just sitting in my seat trying to sleep. Once we arrived, it felt like we were in a private jungle. We were so high up we were above the clouds and could overlook them. The coolest part about Bellavista though was probably all the birds. Since this place was extremely remote and well-preserved, we saw tons and tons of different types of birds. My favorite were probably the Toucans we got to see up close. 

In Bellavista, we also got to see an animal that was so newly discovered it did not even have a name yet. It kind of looked like a ferret and would come down from the trees every evening around dinner time for the people living there to feed it. That was also a very cool and unique experience I had there. 

After two nights in Bellavista, it was time to return to Quito. However, while we were up in Bellavista, protests in Quito had turned into riots targeting the president that resided in the palace less than a block from our hotel. For the president’s and the city’s safety, most of the roads had been blocked off near the palace, as it was not safe to be there with all the violence. The people in Bellavista were telling us about this and warned us to not go back to Quito, but our travel agency told us that it was safe to go back to our hotel despite the riots. We had to take a very long detour due to the closed roads, and once we got to the hotel we could not leave for our safety. Throughout the night we heard several gunshots, some of them louder than others. The next morning, we went straight to the airport to go to the Galapagos, a much safer place at that moment. I will discuss my time in the Galapagos in my next blog.