We awoke today to pouring rain. Pouring.

The rain stopped around 10, about the time we stepped off the most sardine-packed tram I have ever ridden in my life. But that's part of the adventure. We wandered around Mariscal Sucre, also known by some as Gringoland, or the tourist district. Travel agencies abound! We were in search of one, though one in particular that had been recommended. We did inquire at the travel agency located in the hostel, but didn't think the offered deals were really great.

We ended up at the Galasam travel agency, where we booked our Galapagos cruise - 4 days on a first class boat, for $700 USD each. That was a much better deal than others we'd seen, albeit a day shorter than we were hoping for. I think she said regular price for this was $1300. She offered us 8 days, which would have been great, for $2200 each - and that was the last minute deal. Ouch.

So we leave for the Galapagos first thing tomorrow morning, will spend a couple of nights on our own on a couple of the islands (there are local boat ferries between some), then hop on the cruise on Friday morning. Yay! We'll also get one extra night on the island of San Cristobal at the end, and fly out from there.

We've also changed our plan a little bit, in that instead of flying back to Quito afterward, we will instead fly to Guayaquil, then maybe make our way over to Cuenca, which we initially thought we wouldn't have time for. From there we'll head north, making our way slowly back to Quito. There is the possibility of a brief jungle excursion, but we haven't figured that out yet.

Kathy in the Garden
Taken by Neil Carey on January 24, 2009.
A nice change from Canada.

We have successfully arrived in Quito, but the getting here was quite a stressful ordeal. Winter flying is rarely a pleasant experience, and yesterday was no exception. We had a very early flight from Edmonton, so wakeup was at 4am. That means I had to operate on 4 hours of sleep, since we had a symphony concert the night before, followed by me being a bit too wound up to go straight to sleep.

The delays began early. Boarding started as expected, but the lineup quickly stopped moving - the people at the front of line were being stopped at the plane end of the tunnel. The gate people then told everyone to sit back down, boarding was delayed, as the de-icing fluid was frozen...a more concentrated batch of anti-freeze had to be whipped up before we could get underway. That was only about 15 minutes, and then we boarded the flight, still enough time left to get going on time.

Money!
Taken by Tracy O on October 22, 2005.
Pretty self-explanatory. A heap full of money. Yes, I took it myself.

After stressing about it for a couple months, our savings plan is back on track for the trip, so we should be about where we should be come departure time. Which has left me some time to start worrying about another problem - how to get our money out.

Normally, this hasn't been a problem, I just pull out my bank card and get some cash out. But with the favourable exchange rate earlier in the year, I changed about half the trip budget into US dollars, since that's what's used in Ecuador, and this has complicated life a bit. Currently, it's being held in an ING direct account - to earn some interest - which can only be transfered to another Canadian bank, it can't be withdrawn directly. I'd figured that all I'd have to do is open up a USD account with a regular bank, and then I'd be able to withdraw the money from an ATM in Ecuador. Turns out this is not the case...none of the major banks allow ATM access to their USD accounts.

So I've come up with two possibilities. It looks like some of the big international banks - HSBC and Citi - might let me open a regular chequing account denominated in US dollars, and I'm waiting for HSBC to get back to me about whether or not this will come with a debit card. If that doesn't pan out, the last resort is RBC, which allows you to open an account with RBC Centura - their American subsidiary - and transfer money between that and a Canadian account...this seems a little over complicated.

Really, I've done pretty well for having exchanged the money early, all I want to do is not lose out on those savings by having to cycle the money back through a Canadian account in order to actually get cash out in Ecuador. It just seems like this really shouldn't be so hard.

Llama
Taken by Wil Macaulay on February 27, 2008.

We've long been talking of a trip to Ecuador, but I had serious doubts whether it would happen. But as of last Friday, we have tickets. These are probably the messiest set of tickets I've ever had to book. I was buying one ticket with Aeroplan points, and they won't make arrangements for a cash ticket, nor will they sell tickets for any airline outside the Star Alliance. So I had to book a ticket to Bogota, Colombia on points, and then separately booked a flight to Quito, Ecuador through Expedia. Kathy's ticket was booked through Air Canada all the way to Quito. We're on the same flights, though, just possibly not sitting together. And I never before realised how much of a pain online booking can be. I think they go out of their way to make the process complicated.

But it's done now, so its official. January 24 to February 15, 2009, Kathy and I will be in Ecuador. I, for one, am really excited. I've started looking up things I'd like to do and see while we're there. I really want to get off the tourist trail a bit, so that makes it a little more difficult to research. So far, the coolest thing I've found is the Santa Lucia Cloud Forest, which looks like it'll be loads of fun.