A great trip to these amazing islands with my brother. We flew to Quito the capital of Ecuador via Amsterdam. We stayed three nights in Quito before flying onto the Galápagos Islands. We had a cultural tour of Quito one day and were quite surprised to be accompanied by two armed police officers for most of the day. The following day we went to the Cotopaxi reserve on a nature tour. We later found out that the security in Ecuador had become a bit of a problem and a curfew was brought into place whilst we were there. Luckily it did not really affect us whilst we were in Galapagos and it was only noticeable when we were in the airport on the way home, when we noticed a strong army presence and police offers with guns!

Some of the sights in Quito:

The following day was a trip to Cotopaxi Nature Reserve with a quick stop at a local market at Sangolqui.

Great Thrush

Andean Gull

Andean Lapwing

Blue-and-yellow Tanager

Our third day and we were on our way to the Galápagos Islands. We had to fly from Quito to Guayaquil and then onto the islands. We landed on Baltra Island and we were soon seeing some of the fantastic wildlife much of which is endemic to these islands. Before we had left the airport we had already seen Galapagos Dove, several Darwins finches and Iguanas.

Galapagos Dove