Our last stop in Ecuador was the colonial city of Cuenca. All the Ecuadorians we met and talked to bragged about the city, and we also found out that Cuenca is a popular expat relocation site. We quickly learned why; the city has a perfect climate of eternal spring. This is largely due to its picturesque setting in the Andes mountains with four different rivers flowing across the city. And the city is safe—especially compared to Quito. ...

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From the Galapagos, we flew back to Quito and visited a couple more places in Ecuador. First up is Mindo, a little under two hours away from Quito by bus. Mindo is home to a cloud forest, essentially a rainforest at high altitude. The town is very sleepy on weekdays; more than one business would close with no notice or posting. Right now, Mindo caters to local tourists dropping in on the weekends or holidays and not the international...

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Galapagos is also famous for its birdlife. It was through comparing finches from different islands that Darwin reached his breakthrough on adaptation and evolution. While we did not have a chance to visit any of the colonies, we still saw plenty of these island...

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If there’s one citizen that rules the Galapagos, it has to be the sea lions. These gregarious fellows have seemingly colonized every beach, rock, and shore available to them. The animals are curious and unafraid of people. On land, they’re usually just basking in the sun but the real show happens when they enter the water, either swimming or even surfing. A definite highlight of our entire trip was snorkeling with one sea lion...

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We had an unforgettable boat ride from Punta Morena to Puerto Villamil, one which got the captain asking all of us for pictures afterwards. It started with huge flocks of sea birds, far from the coast which suggested there was an avian buffet going on in the ocean. Then, someone spotted a large fin and the chase was on. It’s hard to capture the excitement of the boat in photos and videos, but it was just pure joy as everyone (including...

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The Galapagos Islands were named when Spanish sailors visited and saw giant tortoises with shells curved upward at the neck resembling a saddle or galapago. The tortoises with the saddle shells had evolved to eat vegetation that required them to stretch their necks upward. We never saw the saddlebacks, but we did see the huge dome shelled tortoises, both in the wild at Urbina Bay and at the Puerto Villamil breeding center. Tortoises were once...

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