1-31-20 - Stopover in Quito
/Yes!!!!! We don’t have to leave for the airport until 9:20 a.m. when two trucks will pick us up and drive us across Santa Cruz island to the boat to Balta to an eco-friendly bus to the airport. It all goes quite smoothly as the tour agency pays a guy to get us through this whole process.
When we get to airport, we learn our Tame flight is cancelled, but we are rebooked onto Avianca. The Balta Airport is Leed Gold Certification for being so ecological. Huge ceiling fans are propelled by the solar panels and the sides of the airport are open slats which add light. Here it is in the middle of the day and not a single indoor light is required due to the buildings design. Galápagos takes sustainability and protecting its biodiversity seriously.
When we arrive at the airport in Quito, four nurses are standing there shouting something in Spanish and putting hand sanitizer on everyone’s hands. Clearly the Coronavirus is causing a major scare throughout the world’s airports. We are so thankful that we have already completed the China part of our trip as it would have completely blown up our schedule if we were supposed to go to China now.
We arrive in Quito at 5pm and leave tomorrow at 9am for the Amazon so we just have a short stopover in Quito as there was no way to get from Galapagos to Amazon in one day. The Amazon tour company knows this includes the hotel in Quito as part of the package so not surprisingly, it’s an airport hotel. Quito is actually quite large with the city center being over an hour from the airport so the airport hotel is more inconvenient being only 10 mins away. So, yes expectations are relatively low as it’s an airport hotel serving a purpose. But when we arrive it’s a beautifully-restored hacienda with antique furniture, a sprawling garden and a spa. Hello Airport Hotel!
It took many years to restore what was going to be opened as a retirement home but the prospective elderly customers earmarked for the retirement home passed away before it was ready because it took so long to renovate. Whoops need to go to plan B so the owners pivoted making it a convention center / hotel and it’s now a Choice International Hotel in Puembo on the outskirts of Quito. And for one night we have a blast feeling a true Spanish colonial vibe while hearing every 747 above us!
At dinner, the kids are having a field day joking about the Grammy winners. They are joking about Billy Eyelash winning a bunch of Grammys. Man, Leanne and Kyle have obviously not kept up with the current music scene during this trip as they have no idea who the kids are talking about but do agree with the kids that Billy Eyelash is a strange name. They only can tell it’s a girl’s name because the kids are using the pronoun she where referring to the singer. Note to self: have the kids download some more current, hip music on our iPhones.
