San Cristóbal, Guayaquil, and home, 1-4 Oct 2017


Still recovering from our bout of gastro, Jill, Marie and I waved goodbye to our fellow passengers as we rested up for a couple more hours:

Sofia, crewmember, Leysa, Sarah, John, Mariangela, Pedro, Barb, Cedric, Suzanne, Pete, Panga pilot, Francois

When it was time to go, we met everybody at a little cafe in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. A yellow warbler pretended to be our barista:

Yellow Warbler
We walked to the bus; on the way, we saw a very large lizard - I think it is what a Lava Lizard looks like if it gets enough to eat:
Lava Lizard?

At the airport, I took my last wildlife photo on the Galápagos (this trip, anyway):

Grasshopper

Here are Jill and Marie preparing to board the airplane:

Jill and Marie
The flight was uneventful; it was cloudy, so I mostly watched the flight map:

Flight map

We got a taxi to our hotel (back at Parque Historico) and Jill and I did a little more exploring while Marie rested. We saw more hummingbirds:

Short-tailed Woodstar (?)
More dragonflies:

Dragonfly
More Fasciated Wrens:

Fasciated Wrens
Another Sandpiper:

Sandpiper
A Black-crowned Night Heron:

Black-crowned Night Heron

And this moderately large tortoise (I think it is a Red-footed Tortoise but it was very muddy):

Red-footed Tortoise?

Red-footed Tortoise?

We turned in for a good night's sleep, because we had to get up early the next day. The flight from Guayaquil to Panama was uneventful:

Jill and Marie
 We could see the Andes poking out from the clouds on the right side of the plane:

Andes
Disaster unfolded in Panama, though. United put our crew on a very tight turn-around; this means that they were very close to their legal hour limit. Unfortunately, weather delays and ground delays put them over, so the flight was cancelled (while we were sitting on the tarmac!) They sent the plane to a parking lot, took us off on buses, and we had to process through customs in Panama so we could stay at our exotic casino hotel:

Hotel in Panama
A good time was not had by all. The next morning, we got back to the airport, only to experience another long delay by ground processing (the plane took forever to get from the parking lot to the gate). But it eventually took off, and we made it back to the US:

Texas Coast

Strike two - due to the delays, we missed our re-booked connection and had to re-re-book. We made it home over 30 hours later than planned. But we made it home. And here we are!

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