Today's trip to Isla de la Plata was definitely not a waste of time. We took a 1.5 hour motor boat trip to the island and hiked around for some hours seeing a lot of birds, mostly the blue-footed boobies which are very common at Galapagos also.

As we were having lunch on the boat dozens of sea turtles surrounded the boat and later on manta rays were spotted when snorkling. I'm slightly regretting I didn't bother to go snorkling as we thought it would be boring in a group and without proper fins and other gear as we are anyway going diving tomorrow. Some of the guys managed to follow the huge five-meter mantas for long time.

On the way back a group of humpback whales arranged a good performance for us. The whales were jumping in the air and swimming around the boat and under it. So, a good day, let's see how is the diving tomorrow in the same area.

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No much photos today, as the entire day was spent driving from Mindo to the Pacific coast, to a small ugly town called Puerto Lopez.

Driving was actually much easier than I had expected it to be, there was basically no traffic outside Quito and the roads were in decent condition with no larger holes. Police checked our papers once as they have checkpoints around the country on roads, but that also went smoothly. The car tires could be better though, squealing on every turn on the curvy mountain roads even when dry..

Renting a car was probably a good decision, allowing us to see the country outside big cities and not just through a dirty side window of a bus. It was fun to see how much the landscape changes on the way to the coast: From the high altitudes and sunshine of Quito to the lush rainforests and then to the coastal area which at least today was foggy but dry.

Now we have a basic but nice apartment in this coastal town and tomorrow morning we should visit Isla de la Plata island for the first time. The island is some 1.5 hours by boat from the mainland and we will be going there twice, first today to tour the island on the land and on Saturday to dive near it. It's also whale season here, so let's see if we manage to see some humpback whales.

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We found Mindo to actually be a nice city with a lot of interesting things to do, so we decided to stay here for another night and spend the day exploring the area.

The morning was started with a hike through jungle to a waterfall. Nothing spectacular in that, the waterfall was relatively small and all the animals in the jungle where nowhere to be seen. The beginning of the hiking trail was accessed in a funny way though: We crossed a valley on a cable car, which was obviously self-made and powered by a car engine with transmission, brakes and all. There was a guy running the engine with regular car pedals, and the cable car was actually fast running around 50km/h some 50 meters above the valley.

Later on we stopped on a small guesthouse to have a cup of local coffee and observe the hummingbirds which they had flying around in countless numbers. Then followed a tour to the local chocolate factory and learning how they create hand made chocolate from the cacao beans using very simple tools.

After dinner we signed up to a night walking tour in the jungle, having a very enthusiastic guy as our guide into the world of nocturnal animals like insects, spiders, frogs and bats. That was actually extremely interesting to see the animals in the wild, especially as the guide was very knowledgeable about them. Obviously they organize longer reptile spotting tours around Ecuador also.

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Even though we woke up early most of the day was wasted in random hassle. In the morning we finally managed to activate our local SIM cards, had breakfast in the bakery and tried to decide what we should do in Ecuador.

Like usual we didn't do much preplanning or book anything, and it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to do now. Especially considering we only have about ten days in the country. Galapagos we already ruled out due to costs and complexity, and diving Isla de la Plata would only be possible on Saturday. We planned a trip to the Amazon jungle, but that couldn't be fit into the schedule either as the tours start on certain days and take four days at minimum.

Finally we ended up renting a car and driving to the nearby town of Mindo for a visit to the cloud rainforest. From here we should continue our journey onwards to the coast by car, do the diving there and return to the edge of the Amazonas for some jungle.

We just arrived to Mindo after a slightly stressful drive in the darkness, clouds and rain and checked into a nice house on the edge of the jungle. It's very different here than Quito as we are back at one kilometer altitude and surrounded by forest. It's humid, warm and the jungle is very noisy due to all the animals and insects.

During the day while waiting for the car we visited The Basilica of the National Vow and climbed up to the tower, through a scary outside route. Steep ladders in strong wind were not exactly comfortable, especially when looking down..

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Today the altitude sickness was already going away, so we decided to go even higher and take a cable car to the volcano Pichincha. Up there at four kilometers you could really feel the effect of the altitude: Even a small climb really required effort. It was possible to rent horses on the top, so we took a small ride around before getting back down to the city.

The rest of the day was spent just walking around, through an artesanal market ( I got a sombrero ) and in the old city. We also moved to an another hostel closer to the old city. The jetlag is still strong, so not really feeling like writing longer posts.

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One more flight and we had landed to Quito, and surprisingly so did our baggies. We completed the fast and easy immigration process, bought SIM cards and continued to the downtown and checked into our nice small hotel in an old house.

It's surprisingly warm in Quito at daytime, much warmer than the forecasts made us assume. The nights are chilly though, after sunset a sweater was definitely needed. It was already sunset time when we finally managed to move from the hotel room after a short nap, so we just walked around the area a bit and had a street food dinner.

I didn't remember how strong the effect of the high altitude is on your body, even if we already experienced it once in Cusco and La Paz. Quito is the second highest capital in the world (after La Paz) at three kilometers altitude and that can be felt. The air even feels different on skin and the lack of oxygen causes dizziness, lack of breath, strong feeling of being dead tired and so on. Well, that should be better already tomorrow when the body gets used to it.

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The tickets to Ecuador were booked already half a year ago, thanks to Iberia accidentally selling their decent Premium Economy class there for just a couple of hundred euros. The downside is that the route is difficult, from Oslo to Quito via Madrid and Lima. For Iryna there was even more flights, first from Kyiv to Turku via Riga and then from Helsinki to Oslo.

At the moment we are spending early morning hours at Lima airport, pretty exhausted from all the traveling but it's just one more short flight to the destination and we even managed to sleep the night. Not much to complain about Iberia's premium class especially for this price, the seats were good even if not flat-folding and the service was smooth.

The layover in Madrid was long at some five hours, so we departed the airport to the downtown and had some excellent Spanish tapas for dinner at Mercado San Miguel.

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