Trick And Treat

Days 113-114

While wandering the streets of Quito's colonial old town, Ric suddenly noticed some sort of liquid down one side of his trousers. Quicker than Emily could get a tissue from her pocket a lady appeared with a napkin and started wiping Ric down. She then pointed out that Ric had the same sauce like substance down his other side too, and on his camera bag which she wanted him to take off so she could wipe it. At the same time another lady appeared and started trying to take Emily's jumper off from round her waste – indeed there was also sauce on there. We've never had much occasion to suspect women brandishing napkins but even with the speed at which this event unfolded we were pretty sure something strange was going on and held onto all of our stuff pretty tightly. Sure enough some passers-by saw what was going on, ushered us into a shop and shooed off the women. Apparently it's a common trick in Quito and it's not just sauce – any sort of food stuff might be used to opportune a quick pocket pick or bag snatch, so we felt pretty lucky to have got away with just some dirty clothes (although this was pretty annoying as the rest of our clothes were in the laundry!). Chinese whispers about the attempted robbery spread through our hostel such that we got a note from our friends later in the day saying how sorry they were to hear about our stolen laptop!! But no lasting damage was done and all was forgotten later that day, when we booked a five day boat trip in the Galapagos Islands.

We spent Ric's birthday, and our last day in Quito before flying off for our boat trip, learning how exhausting the altitude can be and how unfit we've become. We only climbed from the top of Quito's teleferiqo (cable car) at 4100m to the top of Rucu Pichincha at 4680m but it was a painful few hours! Fortunately we just made it to warmth, hot chocolate and food when the heavens opened, so we were spared a drenching on top of our fatigue.

Thanks to everyone for all of Ric's birthday messages! Our French friends presented him with a candle-adorned croissant in the morning and he had at least one piece of chocolate cake to celebrate! Oh, and not forgetting the trip to The Galapagos the following day...

Days 115-121

Our cruise around the Galapagos Islands was fantastic. Our boat was much nicer than we were led to believe by the agents, our guide was very knowledgeable and our fellow passengers good company. Over the course of our four days there we literally saw more wildlife than you could shake a stick at, and at such close distances – we were astonished at how unafraid all the animals and birds were. We saw giant tortoises, huge turtles, hundreds of sea lions, multitudes of iguanas, penguins, sharks, fur seals, albatrosses, flamingoes, frigates, Darwin's famous finches (heavily used in his arguments for natural selection) and lots and lots of boobies – blue footed boobies, that is. The snorkelling on the cruise was fantastic too, and a definite highlight was seeing so many turtles and sea lions at such close quarters in their element. Although there was one point at which a huge sea lion came so close and gave Emily such a fright that she managed to manoeuvre herself out of harms way - the water - onto Ric's back!

We decided that we hadn't quite seen enough of the aquatic life after the cruise, though, and spent an extra couple of days on one of the islands so we could do a couple of dives. We were apparently in prime hammerhead shark area although unfortunately they evaded us that day, but our disappointment was more than made up for by a huge school (or is it a flock) of eagle rays gracefully swimming around and over us, as well as some manta rays, turtles, sea lions and other water-borne delights.

Back to dry land (and the altitude) of Quito today, we were relieved to find both bikes and all the luggage we'd left behind on the mainland all present and correct.