Taking Care of Business

As if I hadn´t spent enough time on buses lately, after only one day in Vilcabamba I decided to leave to get to Quito. Vilcabamba was very pretty, but it is a place that people go to chill out for a few days or a week, to go horseback riding in the mountains or to trip for five days on hallucinogenic cactus. I wasn´t interested in any of those things, and besides, I had business to take care of: I needed to book my flight home, look into trips to the jungle, and finally, organize my Galapagos cruise. So last night I took another 13-hour night bus and here I am in the capital, as close to the Equator as I have ever been.

I´m glad I didn´t wait any longer, because when I got here I found out that space in the next five weeks in the Galapagos is extremely limited! I wound up reserving a last minute cruise leaving this Wednesday, and paying an arm and a leg for it...and an ear and a nose and another arm. And I haven´t even reserved the flight for it, or paid the $100 Galapagos National Park Fee. Whew! (I´ll officially have no limbs left once this is all through--which should make the snorkelling quite difficult).

So, that´s taken care of, and I also booked my flight home for August 16th. Time is officially running short! Of course, it did work out to be cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket, so I could be on my way back on September 19...