Luxury at Hotel Quito

Our Galapagos adventure started today with a prelude. We and the other travellers we will be joining were invited to spend the day and night at the Hotel Quito, which functions as a kind of staging area for tomorrow's launch. We bade farewell to our hosts at the Blue Door and took a taxi to the other side of the city.

Unlike the budget accommodation provided before the Inca Trail trek, the Hotel Quito is one of the poshest in the city - or, at least, it has the nicest view over Guápulo.

A room with a view

The building itself reminds me of a modern church, with a purple parabola outside and floor-to-ceiling arched windows inside, which only seem to be missing the stained glass.

Hotel Quito parabola

Having checked in and had our luggage delivered to our room, we marvelled a while at the view from the balcony before spending the rest of the afternoon lounging by the pool.

We broke our lazing by trotting down the hill to the vegetarian restaurant, El Maple, which had served us so well a couple of weeks ago but which had recently been closed for renovations. According to posters, it was due to open its door again today, but they remained resolutely shut when we approached them this afternoon.

As it was the weekend, our choices were limited. We had no better luck at "Cats", where we discovered not a single vegetarian option on the menu, so we ended up with the fail-safe veggie option of an Italian restaurant, Romolo e Remo. However, the pizzas we ordered turned out to be tiny bite-sized pizza bits, more akin to bruschetta. I suspect any self-respecting Italian would have had words to say about the 'pizzetti', but we smiled and coyly ordered lasagne and salad to help fill out the meal.

Rations

In the late afternoon cloud moved in and so we bided our time until 6pm, when we met up with our local representative for the trip, Fatima, and the rest of the fifteen-strong group for an orientation meeting. Unlike the Inca trail, there was little in the way of serious preparations, so we filled out some paperwork and spent the rest of the time getting to know the other travellers, who hailed mostly from Australia, Britain, Switzerland, and the USA.