ECUADOR: MINDO, PART I - PARADISE AND BUTTERFLIES

 March 17-19, 2022

We had a two-hour flight from Panama City to Quito, Ecuador, arriving at about 7:00 PM. We passed quickly through immigration and customs, but we couldn't find our driver on the other side. After about half an hour, he arrived and found us. After two long drives with him, we understood why he was late to pick us up. More on that later.

We set out for Mindo, a small town of about 3,000 people located northwest of Quito in the Andean foothills of Ecuador. It is set in a cloud forest, or a tropical mountainous region that gets frequent, heavy rainfall and has a persistent low-level cloud cover at about canopy level. Forget the details; just the name "cloud forest" was enough to make me love the place.

Although just 70 miles, the drive took about 2 1/2 hours on winding, sometimes unpaved dirt roads that climbed first to the high elevations of northern Quito and then dropped into the valley where Mindo is located. There were many speed bumps that enforced a low speed limit. We drove through one area where the road was more or less washed out by a landslide, and for the last hour the road was narrow and very dark as it was often shrouded by tree canopies. We later talked to a couple whose driver had done the route in half the time. "Cautious" doesn't even begin to describe our driver.

On the other hand, he didn't speak much English, so the l-o-n-g drive was a great opportunity for me to speak a little Spanish, which was fun for me. I'd been reviewing my Spanish (learned 40+ years ago) before the trip, and I think I did fairly well at keeping the conversation going.

We finally pulled into the parking lot of our hotel, Las Terrazas de Dana, at midnight. Staff was waiting to welcome us, haul our luggage up to our rooms, and give us instructions. We were exhausted and fell into bed immediately. In the morning, however, I realized that we had arrived in Paradise.

Our room was large with a queen bed and two doubles, tile floors, and a sliding glass door that opened onto a private balcony and gave an expansive view of the lush valley we were nestled in.

So how did we end up in Mindo? Aside from the fact that is is one of the most visited places in Ecuador, it is also one of the best birding sites in the Americas, and birding is Bob's passion. He had arranged for a private guide to take him birding on that first day, and Terry was gracious enough to go with him.

PANAMA: A DAY TRIP

 March 17, 2022

We are not ones to sit around the airport in a foreign country for hours on end waiting for our next flight. Our flight to Quito included an 8 hour 52 minute layover in Panama City, and that meant we had plenty of time for an excursion.

The four of us were met by our pre-arranged guide as we exited the airport at about 10:00 AM, and he drove for over an hour to a dock in a lake area that is part of the canal system. Honestly, I didn't think it wasn't the best way to start the day as we had already been sitting in LAX and then on the plane for hours and had eaten only a small breakfast on the plane since leaving LAX the night before. 

There was one highlight on the drive, however--a stop at a little convenience store where Geneil bought dim sum dumplings to share and we all got Cokes. The dumplings were divine, and the Coke/caffeine was much appreciated. Unfortunately, it would be the only food we bought all day until we returned to the airport, which was a significant negative for us as we were looking forward to eating in one of the restaurants recommended to us by a friend who lived for several years in Panama City.

Anyway, we boarded a boat like the one below that could have seated twelve or more passengers. It had a nice canopy for shade, and the temperature was very pleasant. 

The Panama Canal stretches 51 miles across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and creating a man-made division of North and South America. It was started in 1881 by France, but progress was halted by engineering issues and a high worker mortality rate. In 1904 (23 years later!) the United States started work on the canal and was able to finish construction in ten years. 

Part of the project was creating a huge artificial lake 85 feet above sea level that has been named Gatun Lake. This reduced the amount of excavation work needed.

Map from Wikipedia

ECUADOR (AND PANAMA): MARCH 2022

 March 16-17, 2022

Background:

Back in 2019, Bob began planning a trip for the members of his law firm and their spouses to the Galapagos Islands in March 2021. Bob booked a yacht that would hold eight couples. Five of the rooms would be taken by the attorneys and spouses, and we found three other couples to join us, including some close friends of ours, so that we could fill all the rooms. Then Covid-19 hit in March 2020, and after it became apparent that travel would not be possible in March 2021, the trip was postponed. 

Over the ensuing year, Bob's partners dropped out one-by-one for various reasons, as did our friends. However, Bob would not be deterred. We cast about among our other friends who enjoy travel and came up with two new couples, and one of those couples had friends who wanted to join us, making four couples total. For several months at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, we bounced back and forth as to whether or not we should commit to the trip, knowing that we stood the risk of losing a substantial downpayment. We had been badly burned in 2020 by our aborted trip to Argentina and another trip to Indonesia that we had fully booked. (Trip insurance, which we had, did not cover any of it.)

TEXAS, HOUSTON: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF FUNERAL HISTORY

 November 29, 2022

Our last stop in Texas before flying home was one of the weirdest museums we have ever visited (aside from the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico). 

The 35,000-square-foot National Museum of Funeral History opened in 1992 and, according to their website, has the largest collection of funeral service artifacts in the country. (I can not imagine that any other place even comes close.) The museum's purpose is to "educate the public and preserve the heritage of death care."

I have to confess that I was intrigued just walking through the gift shop to buy our tickets. I could tell this was going to be an unusual experience, to say the least. I was happy to see Frida, but a death mask???

We began with the large Presidential Funeral Gallery.

Just after seeing this famous photo of five living Presidents standing together . . . 

. . . we started learning about their deaths and funerals, starting with George and Barbara Bush and moving backwards in time.

TEXAS, HOUSTON: THE GRAFFITI BUILDING AND SHIPLEY DO-NUTS

 November 29, 2021

Bob knows I love street art/good graffiti, and somehow he found out about the Houston Graffiti Building, located near downtown Houston, and added it to our itinerary. A bunch of old industrial buildings have been "repurposed" as an outdoor art museum. There don't appear to be businesses inside these buildings as the parking lot only had the cars of the people who came to take pictures of the art. 

I don't think any of the art is meant to be permanent, and the pictures I have found online of this site are different than the ones I took, but this is how I will remember our visit. I don't think too many words are needed--just enjoy.

This video shows the front section parallel to the parking lot. From here we circumnavigated the complex until we returned to the parking lot.

TEXAS, HOUSTON: RICE UNIVERSITY AND THE HOUSTON ZOO

November 29, 2021

Since we were flying home out of Houston, we spent our last day of our Southern Texas trip there and managed to cram quite a bit in.

We began the day with a drive-by visit to Rice University. The average GPA for admission to this elite private school is 4.12. It has an acceptance rate of 8-10% and an impressive graduation rate of 95%, which I would guess is due in part to the 6:1 student-faculty ratio. About 7,200 students attend Rice, with about 55% of those being undergrads and 45% being grad students. Tuition is $51,000+ for undergrads.

In his travel agenda for our trip, Bob noted that every incoming freshman is placed in one of Rice's eleven residential colleges, somewhat like Hogwarts houses, where they live, dine, and socialize. 

Less than a mile away from Rice is the Houston Zoo, a 55-acre park with over 600 species of animals. It is relatively small in comparison to zoos like New York City's Bronx Zoo (265 acres), the National Zoo in Washington D.C. (163 acres), or the San Diego Zoo (100 acres), but Wikipedia says it is the second most visited zoo in the United States, or at least it was in 2017.

Cute door handles. (Can you see Bob in the reflection?)

They already had Christmas decorations up, which added some festivity to our visit:

TEXAS, GALVESTON, PART 2 -- A SEGWAY TOUR, GOOD FOOD, AND WINDOW SHOPPING

 November 27-28, 2021

One thing I should mention is that Galveston is an island of about 212 square miles and with a population of around 355,000. It's a popular tourist destination and had about 7 million visitors last year. I can understand why. I had a lot of fun there! And while it didn't have any bird sanctuaries, I think Bob enjoyed it as well.

1. SEGWAY TOUR

We had scheduled a Segway tour for the 27th, but a storm had moved in and we had to reschedule for the next day. We met our guide at 9:00 AM and discovered that we were the only people on the tour!  We chose our helmets, had a quick training session on how to operate our Segways, and were off! We spent the next 2 1/2 hours rolling around Galveston and learning all about the city. It was a blast.

We learned that before the 1900 hurricane, Galveston was the financial center of the United States. It was the main entry/trade port in the United States, and it had the most millionaires of any city in America. After the city was wiped out by the hurricane, however, the financial center moved north (and far away from hurricanes) to New York City.

The last vestiges of those days are the incredible number of well-preserved or restored elaborate Victorian homes. We live in a town full of similar Victorian homes of the same era, so it was really fun to roll around and look at dozens of them. I wonder how many of them were built or rebuilt post-hurricane and how many actually survived the hurricane? I'm sure our guide told us, but I can't remember.