Amazon and Return to the Galapagos

Amazon Galapagos Pre Trip: 

In a couple of days we will be heading to Quito Ecuador to travel to the Amazon and Galapagos with Adventures By Disney (ABD). 

Prior to the trip we have notified credit card companies of our travel and enrolled in the STEP program.  Standard pre trip procedures for us. 

As we fly with United Airlines our flight will take us from DEN-IAH-PTY- UIO or Denver to Houston to Panama City, Panama to Quito. A full day of travel for sure. Hence our plan is to drive to Denver the day before we fly, staying at an airport hotel. Given we will be flying for a full day and arriving at UIO at 11:00pm we have arranged for an airport hotel for our arrival night. The Quito airport is 45min to an hour away from Quito, so we would rather just crash close and travel into Quito the next morning. 

Our airport hotel in Quito is Quito Airport Suites, they offer a shuttle and breakfast, $49.  We could have been picked up by ABD and transferred to the Marriott where our trip starts from, but opted to plan a bit and save a considerable amount of money with this plan.  For some reason ABD and other tour operators seen to want a great deal of money for arranging a pre trip stay. We book these ourselves and save. 

The next  morning we will go back to the aeropuerto where ABD will pick us up and transport us to the Marriott.  

Our first day in Quito will probably find us taking public transportation to the National Museum. After the museum we will return to the Marriott and checking in with ABD, then find a local place  (Irish Pub) for some dinner and call it a night. 

A thumbnail sketch of our itinerary is as follows: Day one fly to the Amazon, lodging in the Amazon will be The Anaconda Riverboat. Day trips into the rain forest  for a few days. Return to Quito a night to two there and then to the Galapagos for a land based experience. Then return to Quito for a final night.  A more detailed  Itinerary can be found on the ABD website. 

ABD does a good job and this should be a great trip, as I am looking forward to the Amazon and a return to the Galapagos. It will be interesting to see how a land based Galapagos experience works out. 

We have customized our standard packing list and I am planning to travel light, even with camera gear. All clothing will be room laundry friendly. Camera gear might be limited to two camera bodies, a long lens and a walkabout lens. I will probably not take a macro lens, or extender, or wide angle lenses. I will take the laptop and 2 portable hard drives, for back up,  camera batteries, charger, cleaning stuff, rain selves, and extra media cards. 

All camera gear will go in single cases which will go in a roller hard case. This will be for the long haul days. The hard cased roller will be stowed in Quito with cold weather clothing. For the shorter flights and in the Amazon for day trips the cameras will be transferred to single soft cases to be carried in a true waterproof backpack. We will be there at the start of the rainy season. 

We have reviewed the various wildlife guides for both locations and the guides for Quito. Our Internet research has given us a good idea as to what to expect as well as a good foundation of the locations we will be visiting to enhance our experience.  

This should be a good trip and we will be posting as we can. Our internet access should be pretty good except when in the Amazon Basin  on  the Napo River.