Escaped Quito before the president

Hola amigos!

It has been an adventerous week here in Quito. As I told you last time there are political problems here in Quito but I have not seen any of it at all.

It started with us receiving bad news about the equipment, it was delayed for at least one more week so we decided to leave Quito for a while. We planned to leave on Wednesday because a huge strike was planned on Tuesday and we were worried it would cause us problems. They were nice enough to change the day of the strike to Wednesday though. Since strikers normally get up later we took an early flight out of Quito to Galapagos.

So, when the strike shut down Quito we were shutting our eyes by a white beach smelling the warm cerise ocean. When the president introduced martial law (sw. undantagstilsstand) we were introduced to 2-month old sea lions. When the police were shooting tear gas at demonstrators we were shooting pictures of dolphins jumping around the boat and when the the president fled from the mob by helicopter from the presidential palace we left on a 8 day cruise in the paradise islands of Galapagos. No reason to be worried for us that is.

We started our trip with two days on the biggest island with scuba diving and relaxing on beaches. Scuba diving in Galapagos means scuba diving with sea lions, GIANT manta rays (sw. rocka) and huge schools of fish (sw. fiskstim). The beaches were white caribbean style, long and almost empty. Amazing is not enough.

The third day we joined with the boat Amigo which would be our home for the next 8 days. It was me, Marta and 14 others and just to make matters better, they were all really nice. For a good description of the people check out Martas travel diary (username martacassel). We hung out most of the time with an awesome Norwegian girl, Lise, who recently arrived from a couple of months in Guatemala.

The boat went from one island to another and we normally visited an island in the morning, snorkled in the afternoon and maybe saw another island in the afternoon. While waiting for the dinner we were sitting on the roof of the boat watching the sunset and most of the nights we digested the fairly good food on the roof watching the stars.

The islands themselves were filled with animals who gladly posed for the camera. They were so unafraid of people they even approached you to check you out! I guess if the sea lions had cameras the would flock around the tourists in order to take pictures of us.

The coolest animals were the sea lions, the swam up close to you while snorkling, they had cute little babies that came up to you and sniffed your legs (one liked it so much it took a little bite), they had a growling sound that was just hilarious. It sounded somewhere between Hebrew, Fidde being hung-over and a drunk Djurgarden-fan…to give you a picture.

There were also a bird called blue footed boobie (!). Just the name would be enough but they had feet the color of this website, they crash-dove into the water from 20 metres, they performed the most silly little mating dance there is. Everything just in front of you.

I could go on forever about sharks, dolphins, iguanas, mocking birds, flamingos etc but I won´t. This trip was really one of the most amazing, most relaxing and probably most expensive I have done. It was just all of it, the proximity to the animals, the people on the boat and so on…

Well, I have to admit it as well. I´d actually would have liked to be in Quito this week as well. It´s not every day you get to experience martial law, presidents being overthrown etc!

Lastly, some terrible news. The equipment could just as well been in Galapagos as far as we are concerned. A really stupid mistake has mismatched the figures in the important list (remember?) and of some stupid reason the only place there is actually democracy in this country right now is at the customs so you can´t even bribe anyone.

If worst comes to worst we have to either come back to Sw…I can´t even put myself to write that…or change the project entirely. I´m not nearly as worried as I should probably be though. Mom, did you put valium in my havregrynsgrot when I was a kid??

To be continued…

My phone numbers by the way: -Cell: +593 96110821
-Home: +593 22 527547