Future Plans for February

This is the last week of classes for me, and I'm already looking ahead to what I will do with my almost month of vacation in February. Exams will take place Monday through Thursday, and then on Friday, February 6th, I will be heading to the Galapagos Islands for 5 days and 4 nights. I'll be there from the 6th to the 10th, and you can be sure that I'll be taking plenty of photos and maybe even some videos of the wildlife and scenery that I come across.

I'll be traveling there with some friends from my organization, as we were able to get a pretty good deal. I only found out about this a week ago. For about $630, we will get round trip airfare, pick up at the airport, hotel, meals, guided tours, and equipment for the excursions we do. We'll be staying on an island but taking day trips to surround islands. The price is right, especially since we only have to pay $6 to enter the park, rather than the normal $100 that foreigners have to pay. This is because we have Ecuadorian residence.

After the Galapagos, I'll come back to Guayaquil and might need to spend the night, then come back to Cuenca for a few days to rest and relax. I'll be taking off again on February 16th, this time bound for Peru. Going with two other friends, we'll be leaving from Guayaquil and flying to Lima, where we'll spend a day. We then fly to Cuzco, where we will see the city and spend a day at Machu Picchu. After a couple of days in Cuzco we will take an 8 hour bus ride to Puno and spend some time at Lake Titicaca. We'll be on the border of Bolivia, and we'd love to go in and get as far down as La Paz if possible, but there is a $135 entrance fee for Americans, so we probably won't be able to do it. It's a let down.

We'll head back up to Cuzco, fly into Lima for another night, and then head back to Guayaquil. From there we will still have a week before classes start again on March 2, so we could visit some other cities in Ecuador like Zaruma, Loja, and Vilcabamba. I'm excited to see all of these places, and to write about them and photograph whatever I can. So if I don't have many posts in February, it's not because I've abandoned the blog, but rather because I'm out there getting more material for it. And once I get back I'll definitely update on what we've been up to.