Jen and Rebecca Meet Their New Cachalote Family (12/30/09)

[Finally updating the blog from our trip--we wrote all the following posts while on the boat with no internet access...]

R: We made it to the Galapagos! An early morning taxi ride got us to the aeropuerto with mucho tiempo to spare. A rep from the travel agency met us as expected - yay, our expensive tickets weren’t a scam - and we were able to nap on our flight to Baltra (with a stop in Guayaquil in southern Ecuador) despite the woman in front of me who kept her seat reclined into my lap the whole time. Our naturalist guide, Juan, met us at the small open-air Baltra airport where we walked through a wet mat to rinse off our shoes before entering the island. We then met the others in our party, a family from LA with three college-aged children (2 boys and a girl), one couple about our age, one mother-daughter couple with a daughter also about our age, and two couples from Italy. (We were surprised that there are actually more people under 50 than over in our group.) We boarded a bus for the harbor, and were ferried out to our boat, the Cachalote, luggage coming separately. But not before we already spotted some iguanas, pelicans, and herons on shore.

The Cachalote

J: After a delicious lunch of red snapper (possibly caught fresh that day), we were assigned our cabins. Rebecca and I are sharing a spacious room with 2 bunks and small bath. Unfortunately, it’s below deck and was exceptionally hot when we arrived, so even if we had room to move, I don’t think we’d want to spend any time in there. But, there is ample deck and salon space for the passengers to gather in.

J (cont’d.): We left the boat at 2:30 for our first island adventure to South Plaza. Once there, every passenger on the boat became a professional photographer - at least in our own minds. Within 5 minutes of landing, I had taken approximately 30 pictures of sea lions, sally lightfoot crabs and iguanas. (Over the 2.5 hours on the island, I racked up an impressive 84 snapshots. Rebecca surpassed me with 100).

The Cachalote family ready with their cameras to take pictures of flying birds.

R: Yes--30 of my pictures alone included at least one iguana! Jen discovered that taking photos of moving birds was highly challenging, though we did manage to see flying frigate birds, red-billed tropic birds, yellow warblers, finches, and blue-footed boobies, though you really couldn’t see their blue feet while they were in the air. The island itself is not inhabited by people. It’s a pretty small island and you have to keep to the paths so as not to trample vegetation, but fortunately all types of wildlife--including the sea lions-were directly on parts of the trails. I think Darwin had a good-time getting reacquainted with the Galapagos today.

Darwin on South Plaza. (Actually, the real live Darwin never landed on this island.
But I figured it wasn't too late for him to see it.)

One of Rebecca's 30 iguana pictures.

Yellow warbler

Sea lion napping inland

J: Once we got back to the boat, things got a little rough. And some folks turned a little green. Several passengers, Rebecca included, lost their lunches. Luckily, the passage from South Plaza to Santa Cruz did not affect me. But I did have some trouble walking a straight line at times (for once without alcohol to blame). Dinner consisted of chicken, asparagus and rice. After a brief discussion of the day’s activities and tomorrow’s itinerary with Juan, we were all off to bed. The equatorial sun really does take it all out of you!

Jen and Rebecca Survive the Galapagos

Despite sea sickness (Rebecca), a migraine (Jen), itchy heat rash (Rebecca), and colds (Jen, Rebecca, and everyone else on their boat) we survived 7+ days on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We managed to avoid being eaten by sharks, stung by stingrays, and bitten by sea turtles, though we were barked at by sea lions and spit at by iguanas. (Fortunately we were out of the spit trajectory.) Though we still kind of feel like we´re on a boat (perhaps due to the cold medication), we are, in fact, back in Quito in mainland Ecuador, and in an awesome, huge room at the hotel! We will post more about our exploits later after we´ve enjoyed some Quito nightlife (er, late afternoon life.)

Jen and Rebecca Get Really High

R: Jen and I had a fun-filled, exhausting day in Quito. Quito is known for its high elevation in the Andes Mountains (¨high,¨ get it?) as well as all its churches and we made sure we experienced both today. As our hotel is in Old Town, we decided to focus our tourism attention on Old Town today and were able to see about three sites of interest to us within three blocks of the hotel. We started out at la Iglesia de la Compañia de Jesus. (I love that we have an ñ key!) This church has an ornate gold interior that, as one guide book put it, could raise Liberace from the grave. It was very pretty and very shiny.

J: Sadly, none of the churches would allow us to take photos inside the sanctuaries, so we can´t show you any of the golden walls or flashing Christmas lights on the altar. You´ll just have to trust us. The church had a small museum attached displaying a variety of scientific instruments that you all know we had to tour. And then I discovered something amazing- all of the signs in the museums were in Spanish which severely limited Rebecca´s ability to read them. She could only look at the objects and pictures (normally she reads every word printed - which takes considerably longer). We made it thru in record time! After the museum, we proceeded on the
Monastery of San Francisco. It also had an adjoining musuem of religious artifacts and artwork. Once again, we set a new museum speed record. However, we both got distracted by a collection of nativity scenes on display for the Christmas season. Granted, part of the distraction may have been due to the many settings on our cameras and our experimenting with our photography skills.

R: The Franciscan Museum had a nice courtyard (again good for photography) and I also made a new monk friend. See below:




R (cont.): Next, a quick stop at the Casa de Sucre before lunch. This is the home of one of the military leaders who helped Ecuador gain its independence. Too bad we couldn´t read all the placards to learn exactly what this dude did. Onwards to lunch. We picked out a lovely restaurant from the guidebook located near the Monastery, but it didn´t seem to exist anymore. We headed to the other guidebook-recommended restaurant instead, only later in the afternoon I realized that we´d eaten at an entirely different restaurant. It´s okay. The food at this one was good too, though we exposed ourselves as complete tourist morons by not ordering at the counter as we should have, causing much confusion for the poor waiter later. It turns out we don´t really understand much Spanish. Next we headed to the Basilica del Voto Nacional, or as Jen started to call it, the ¨scary church.¨ I told her all about how you can climb to the top of the clock towers, a jounrey which also included walking across a precarious wooden plank path. Since Jen has a bit of a fear of heights, she was a little apprehensive about this. I, however, insisted we go! Here´s Jen crossing the plank path which turned out to be the least scary part given all the skinny metal steep stairs that came next!

J: I was not nearly as excited to climb to the top of the belfry as Rebecca, but I made it most of the way. The photo below is where I chickened out and sent Rebecca on ahead:

J (cont´d): But, I´m glad I made it as high (hee hee...get it...high) as I did because the views were awesome. We could see almost all of Quito from the top, plus, if it hadn´t been cloudy and we knew exactly which direction to look, I´m guessing we could have seen Cotopaxi as well. The Basilica is different from most other churches (at least on the outside) because instead of gargoyles, it had animals carved into its walls (see the bird below):

R: The weather had been sunny and hotter than expected up til we got to the Basilica--yes I know we´re at the equator, but we´re also high in the mountains! And weather.com had me believing it would be 60 and rainy. But in the afternoon, the clouds rolled in and in a very beautiful way. But yet it never rained. Yay! After climbing back down all the Basilica steps, we took an over-priced taxi ride to the Parque Itchimbia for more over-the-city views. (Guide book said the ride shouldn´t be more than $2 and we were charged $7. But when Jen handed him a $20, he only gave us $10 back. Ack! Stupid language barrier again!) After wandering in the park, we headed to a recommended restaurant across the street (Cafe Mosaico)where we got to see the sunset behind the clouds.

R (cont´d): We had a more reasonably-priced taxi ride back to our hotel where we got our bags organized for leaving again tomorrow - we have to leave the hotel at 6:00 am, ugh! And we´re exhausted. But to add to the day´s excitement, Jen got the memory card of my brand new camera stuck in her computer. Good thing I take crafting supplies with me everywhere I go. We managed to get two sewing needles in the drive the pry the thing out. And all the pictures were intact! I think we were both too tired to realize the folly of putting the small memory card in. Oh well. It all ended well. And speaking of endings, we need to get to bed. After our long travel day yesterday, the 6:00 am unintentional wakeup call this morning and another early day tomorrow, we are exhausted! Next stop, Galapagos Islands!

Jen and Rebecca Cross the Equator

We made it to Quito, Ecuador last night, and finally arrived at our hotel around 1:00 AM after our flight from Atlanta left about an hour late. But we breezed through customs. We´re staying at a lovely hotel called Hotel de San Francisco in Old Town. We like that our room has a window into the hallway. We don´t like that some strange alarm went off at about 6:00 AM this morning. It may have been the fire alarm, but as we never saw any fire or smelled any smoke, I think it was just a false alarm. Or maybe it´s the Ecuadorian wake-up call?

Jen at our room´s hallway window.

We´ve just finished breakfast--eggs (Rebecca´s scrambled, Jen´s fried), rolls with butter and jam, watermelon juice and hot chocolate. This should be enough to fuel us as we head out to explore Quito! And despite weather.com´s predictions that we´d been checking for weeks before we left, it is NOT raining, and is, instead, shining bright equator sun down on us. (Can´t forget to bring our hats!)

Jen at breakfast

Tomorrow we head out early for our flight to the Galapagos. YAY! Can´t wait!

Jen and Rebecca Head for the Equator

R: Jen and I had intended to blog a reflection on our RAGBRAI experience, but as our many loyal readers may have noticed, it took me until last week to actually update the the blog with our last day of the ride, let alone actually think deep thoughts about it. So we'll just chalk that one up to, "Oh well!"

And now Jen and I are heading out on our next adventure--the Galapagos islands! After months and months of hemming and hawing about the expense, looking at all of the cruise options, we made the decision to go! I'm guessing our internet connection will be fair to non-existent while actually on the islands (though I could be surprised) but we're planning to update the blog as soon as we can, when we're back in mainland Ecuador, or, like RAGBRAI, perhaps in the weeks (months?) following the trip.

Mini-Darwin prepares to make a return trip to the part of the world he made famous:

Jen and Rebecca Finish! AKA Day 7 of RAGBRAI XXXVII

R: After our near-miss storm the previous night, and resulting later bedtime, we were still able to pack up the wet tent (for the last time!) and get on the road relatively on time. As they always make the last day a short one to get people done and on their way home, we weren’t too concerned with the 43-mile day ahead of us. But as a bonus, we had a tail wind!

J: Tailwinds are a beautiful thing. We made excellent time on our way to New London - the first stop of the day. The first two food vendors had long lines, so we rode in to the town square hoping for a better option. And we found one. One of the local restaurants (perhaps the only restaurant) was serving skillet breakfasts – scrambled eggs, sausage, cheese biscuits and juice or coffee for $5. I think the youngest waitress was 75. But the food was yummy and more than I could eat in one sitting. The ride was pretty flat today, so we didn’t need to stop and rest much, but we were making good time and so when we saw the signs for Peanut Butter Jam and Turkey Tom’s, we couldn’t resist stopping. There’s nothing quite like a glass of chocolate milk and pb&j after a day on the bike. I’m not exceptionally adventurous when it comes to my sandwiches, so I went with a plain peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I had the option to add marshmallow cream, potato chips, graham crackers, sprinkles, and a bunch of other odd things I never would have imagined putting on a sandwich before.

R: On a last minute impulse, I added the graham crackers, and it added a pleasant crunch. I might even do it again sometime! I was annoyed, however, that no one was actually jamming at the PB Jam. They have a tent set up with instruments for people to pick up and jam while they wait or while they rest before getting back on the bike. (Get it? “Jam” as in the spread to put on your sandwich with peanut butter and “jam” as in improvising on instruments? How clever! Plus they drive a hippie van. What’s not to like about this picture?) As we arrived, one woman was trying to tune a violin, but she was failing miserably using the metronome’s electronic A. So I hummed an approximation of an A (I’ve certainly heard enough of them in my life) and she STILL couldn’t get it tuned to an A (or to my approximation of an A). Then she apparently gave up and never even tried to play anything. Sheesh. Also while sitting in the shade, an ambulance went by with lights flashing. This had happened several times throughout the week (and, in fact, the day before we saw an accident happen right in front of us, stopped to help, and Aaron was the one to call the ambulance. Fortunately that guy seemed to be okay, just shaken and dehydrated.) But this ambulance may have held what turned out to be the only fatality of this year’s RAGBRAI. By this point, we had already gone up the only hills for the day (outside of downtown Burlington), and one of the down-hills was both steep and had a sharp turn at the bottom. We speculated that this might have caused at least one accident, unfortunately.

But on to happier things, like finishing! The rest of the ride to Burlington was so smooth, that we were at the end by 10:30 am. We had seen a bunch of signs throughout the day challenging us to “Rattle the Snake” in Burlington. I had no idea what this meant, despite the fact that my second RAGBRAI (XVIII) had also gone through Burlington. In my memory’s defense, this was 19 years ago. (Oh my God, that was 19 years ago! And upon reflection, I think we went DOWN the alley that year.) We eventually reached a corner near the river where there were a lot of people yelling at us. (Okay, one might call it “cheering.”) I had no idea what was going on, and sadly didn’t have time to realize that I had the CHOICE whether to ride my bike up the stupid, winding, steep cobbled “Snake Alley” or to bypass the thing entirely. So I went straight and up into the alley instead of turning like normal, rational people. Fortunately I didn’t fall over backwards. I was so winded, I had to take a break in the middle and let my heartbeat catch up. But I persevered and made it to the top without walking. And as a reward, I got a beer can cozy that says I rattled the snake in Burlington. So worth the effort for that can cozy...

J: I was following Rebecca into Burlington, heard a woman yell “You might want to rest a minute before you ride up” and another person say “You don’t have to do it,” so I turned right and headed downhill to the river. I didn’t earn a can cozy, but I’m okay with that. I spotted Aaron as I was headed down the hill and followed him into a big parking lot to wait for Rebecca. Once she was done rattling the snake, we took our places in line to dip our front tires in the Mississippi River (one last RAGBRAI tradition).


J (continued): We said goodbye to Aaron and headed off to find our own charter service to prepare for the trip back to Grinnell. We handed our bikes over to the guys from Bikes to You to be put on the truck, found our clothes bags and then headed off to find our final $5 shower of the week. Once we were cleaned up, it was time for our last guilt-free meal of the trip (we’ll talk about my snacks on the drive home later….). I think this time it was beer and brats. Finally, we boarded the bus for the trip back to Grinnell and I’m pretty sure Rebecca had Hawgs flashbacks since it took awhile for the driver to get the bus started. I have no idea if anything interesting happened on the drive because I slept the majority of the way back to Grinnell. Once my bike and bags were packed back into my car, I said goodbye to Rebecca, Matt and all of my other new friends and started my long drive back to Denver.

R: Jen forgot to mention that after a week of having to use the same towel that never quite got dry (by which I mean we each had our own separate towels that we each used for ourselves the entire week) plus mine had sat out in the rain the previous night, we were each going to splurge the extra dollar for a clean, dry towel from the shower guys. Only to learn that they were out of towels! Ugh. That was probably the point when I really was ready to be at home again! As we’d made such good time we had to wait several hours before the buses departed, but I concur with Jen that I don’t remember anything of the drive other than the candy bar I bought at the rest stop.

After saying good-bye to Jen (sad!) I had an only slightly more interesting evening than Jen’s spent in her car. Matt and I had decided to stay one last night in Grinnell as neither of us felt up to the task of a 5-hour drive. Grinnell sponsored a Pag’s pizza-feed for the alums still hanging around, after which we walked to the Dari Barn, in large part to keep ourselves from going to bed at 8:00. We managed to chat with our host for awhile before turning in (and, technically, Matt went out for drinks with a new lady friend he met on the team when I turned in).

Given how easy the ride was that day, it kinda made you ready to sign up for RAGBRAI XXXVIII already. But only kinda.

Jen and Rebecca Have an Awesome Ride Until the Headwind Kicks Their...Well...Faces, AKA Day 6 of RAGBRAI XXXVII

R: Friday dawned beautiful and perfect for riding. There were a few tough hills just to get out of Ottumwa, however--we passed Janelle’s parents walking up the first monster one. (They said they weren’t yet warmed up enough for the hill.) By the time we wound through the Indian Hills Community College campus and officially left the city of Ottumwa, we were halfway to the first town of Hedrick, 16 miles in. Rather than stopping at Hedrick though, we opted to stop at the Farm Boys Breakfast Burrito stand, in one part because going into Hedrick was a mile out of the way on a gravel road, and in the other part because Aaron had been talking about wanting to stop at Farm Boys all week, every time we saw their sign.

J: For the first 30 miles of the day, we kept seeing signs for Dutch letters in Packwood, so we HAD to stop. Most towns on RAGBRAI offer a large variety of food options, but they may or may not be exceptionally organized or even centrally located. Packwood, on the other hand, had an assembly line set up. They had a large offering of food and beverages, so we were worried that it was going to be a huge mess and take forever to get thru the line, but it was an extremely well run operation. And after seeing the Dutch letter ads for well over 2 hours, Rebecca couldn’t resist the urge to try one.

R: This was a day of clever sign advertising. Not only had the advertising worked on me in regards to the Dutch letters, but also the Catholic ladies’ double-entendre-filled signs about “whoopie” in Brighton had me curious to find out what exactly they were selling! So after riding to Brighton and having some walking tacos (mmmm….walking tacos) we headed down the street where I had whoopie. From the Catholic ladies. And it was great. Okay, “whoopie” is actually two chocolate cake-cookies with a frosting filling. But it was actually really tasty! And apparently trendy. Check out this NY Times article on how this delicacy is re-sweeping the nation: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/dining/18whoop.html?_r=1 (I’m glad mine only cost a dollar, not the $4+ in the Williams-Sonoma catalog!)

R (continued): I think we were dragging our feet about leaving Brighton because all day we had felt a southerly breeze/wind. This hadn’t been a problem yet, but we knew that a majority of the remaining 25 miles would take us south, directly into the wind. This was probably the hardest stretch of the whole week for me. Yeah, the hills the first few days were tough, but there were hills here too, with wind blowing in my face. Plus it had gotten hotter out and the sun had caused a really attractive rash to take over my legs from the bike shorts edge to the knees, as well as some on my calves and neck too. The rash, I think, made my body feel even hotter, more uncomfortable, and more tired. We thought we only had about 7 miles to the next town of Germanville, but were dismayed to realize that this was one of those fake towns—only a few houses with no big welcome set up for us! So we had to keep plodding on another 9 miles to Lockridge.

J: The hills wouldn’t have been so evil on Friday, if it hadn’t been for the nasty headwind. On a good day, I could get up to 35 mph or so going downhill and make it partway up the next hill before I had to start working hard. Not so on day 6. I was happy to not come to a complete standstill at any given time – possibly an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like! So, when we finally rolled into Lockridge, we were all ready for a break. I’m sure that we had some tasty RAGBRAI treats, but I have no recollection of that stop other than that we sat under a tree for an hour.

R: Actually, I think we were so tired and I, for one, was feeling too yucky, that we only drank Cokes, and didn’t even eat anything other than Cliff bars from our bike bags. Sad, right? But the shade was awesome. I think I even took a brief nap that helped revive me for the final push.

J: It really was the day of great advertising because the Lutheran church posted signs for free ice cream starting about 10 miles out. After the ride we’d had, there was no way we were passing that up even though they were set up only about 3 miles from the overnight town. Once we finally made it into Mt. Pleasant, we were happy to see that Matt had once again set up our tent for us. Tent service really is a wonderful thing. It was a fairly uneventful evening until we got back to camp after dinner. The police were driving thru the campground telling campers to leave their tents and move to the museums at the bottom of the hill until the storms passed thru. So, we joined thousands of other riders in a couple of buildings shoved full of antique farm equipment. On a happy note, Rebecca finally got to visit a museum. On a scary note, the storms were supposed to arrive with 70 mph winds, heavy rain and hail. Luckily, we ran into our new friend Al again and he had saved bench space for any Grinnell alum that happened to pass by, so we were saved from wandering aimlessly or sitting on the floor. But the best news of the night was that the storms never materialized and we were soon able to head back to our tents to sleep before our final day of riding.

R: Yeah, I think we were back to the tent by 11:00. This was later than we had been going to bed the rest of the week (yup, we’re party animals) but it could have been a lot later if the storms hadn’t conveniently skirted around Mt. Pleasant. I was, sadly, too tired to actually look through the Thresher Museum, and instead preferred to sit, chat, stare at my heat rash without itching it, and finally attempt to nap in a seated position on a wooden bench. It seemed that a giant metal pole barn full of heavy machinery may not have been significantly safer than our tent had the storm really hit hard, but thankfully we’ll never know.