Planning a journey is half the pleasure. As usual we planned our Ecuador-trip on the Internet. First we had decided that we wanted to spend a week in the rain forest, a week brd-watching in the cloud-forest and a week cruising the Galapagos Islands. We were planning to be away for a month, so still had about a week which we could spend anywhere interesting in the country.
We searched the Net for Galapagos cruises, for rainforest lodges and birdwatching tours. We found Safari Tours in Quito, who proved very helpfull. In Galapagos we particularly wanted to visit Genovesa, Isabela and Fernandina. There are not many boats that visit all three of those but Safari found the Sea Man , which does. The very reasonable price, 750 US$ for a week in February, made the decision very easy.
South America Explorers Club , also proved a good source of information and we found a year's membership a good investment. In the end we never found time to visit their premises in Quito.
As for rainforest lodges, we looked at La Selva and Kapawi, before settling for Swedish owned and run Aves Travel , who offered an 8-day birdwatching tour of the Andean cloud-forest north and east of Quito and a week at Tiputini research station deep in the Oriente on the Tiputini river.
KLM offered the best price Copenhagen - Quito, and on Friday the 12 January we are off. Its a long flight with a dreary late evening wait in Amsterdam's Schipol airport. Ente,ring ther plane with destiation Ecuador is like entering another world. Suddenly we, the northern Europeans, are not the majority, most of our fellow passengers are Ecuadorean, indians and mestizos, and Spanish is the language.
Ecuador as a population of about 14 million, 40% of which are indígenas (native indian population), 40% are mestizos (mixture of indians and Spaniards), 5-10% are Spanish and the rest Asians and blacks. The country is more or less owned by 2% of the inhabitants, a Spanish elite with little or no interest in the welfare of the majority of the people. The mestizos tend to identify with the small Spanish elite and look with contempt on the Indígenas. There is also a small grop of gringos, Europeans and north Americans, mostly in tourism, who seem to be living in selfsupplying circles.
