Gigi and Bearpaw travels

October 6, 2025 and epilogue Today began like many other travel days.  Up before dawn and then off to the airport.  Luckily there was very little traffic.  Once we were checked in and our luggage on its way we made our way through an immigration check and then on to the ‘Punto de Control Carlos’, which is an Ecuadorian ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ (TSA check point).  We boarded the plane and in only a little over four hours we landed in Miami. The line at Miami customs was incredibly long and slow with only two lanes open (out of about thirty).  Gigi asked where the Mobile Passport Control lanes were since there was nobody manning them (they are supposed to be quicker as you fill out the immigration form on a phone app).  Once we were told where to go we hustled to those lines.  It only took about five minutes to clear. BUT WAIT!  YOUR CUSTOMS EXPERIENCE IS NOT OVER YET!  Yes, I was ‘randomly’ selected for a secondary screening.  The first quest...

October 1 through October 5, 2025 The Galapagos Islands have been inhabited since the 1500’s, mostly by travelers and pirates (Yarrr!).  In the 1860’s Charles Darwin made his trip to the Galapagos Islands and developed his theory of evolution, which in part states that animals will tend to adapt to their environment.  For example the Galapagos tortoise developed a taller neck opening in their shells to allow them to better reach low hanging fruit that their other tortoise cousins would not be able to reach. Our first day in Galapagos started with our arrival at the airport.  There are two main airports in Galapagos.  One in their capital city of San Cristobal, surprisingly called San Cristobal Galapagos airport.  We flew into the Seymour Galapagos airport on the island of Baltra.  Once we landed we disembarked and after climbing down a flight of stairs walked across the tarmac at the airport to the terminal.  We then waited for luggage to be brought in...

September 30, 2025 Today was a travel day.  We arose about 3:00 in the morning in order to have our luggage in the hall by 4:15.  We really didn’t plan on getting up quite that early, but we woke up and figured it must be time to make things happen. After a quick breakfast of a so-so chocolate chip muffin and water we boarded our bus and headed toward the airport. We flew from Cusco to Lima.  It was an uneventful flight of just over an hour.  We hit some minor turbulence, but no more than usual.  Once in Lima we had to collect our baggage, leave the airport terminal, and go back into the terminal to check our bag for the next leg of our trip.  It made no sense to me, I could not understand why the airline could not just send our luggage to the final destination.  Maybe I don’t need to know or perhaps there is no explanation.  We may never know.  We were just glad our luggage arrived. We headed to ‘checkpoint charlie’ where they actually let u...

September 29, 2025 Today was an easy day.  We moved from Urubamba to Cusco.  This was about a ninety minute bus ride.  When we had arrived at Cusco a man in a tiny car pulled in front of the bus.  The bus stopped abruptly but we believe managed to clip the other car in the back fender.  Both the little car and our bus continued on as if nothing happened. We visited a couple of churches on the large square in downtown Cusco.  One was built by the Spanish in the 1500’s.  It was built directly on top of an Incan temple.  Some of the Incan structure remained.  This allowed us to see how some of the blocks from the Incan temple were joined.  They reminded me of 500 pound Lego blocks. There was even a photograph of what the town looked like prior to a major earthquake in 1950. There was one example of the symmetry that the Incas used.  You could stand in one room and see through the same window in the next two rooms. There was a really ni...

September 28, 2025 Today was going to prove to be a long day.  After a quick breakfast we headed out to an archeological park called Ollantaytambo.  After exploring there our final destination was going to be Machu Picchu, the Incan ruins.  Maybe I’m giving it away, but this photo was taken at Machu Picchu.  But I’m getting ahead of myself. We were transported by bus to Ollantaytambo.  We walked through a small village to the archeological park.  The bottom of the park was at an elevation of just over 9,000 feet, so the air was starting to thin a little.  We looked up at the several hundreds of steps to the top and decided that we didn’t come all this way to simply look up, so up we went.  The first third of the way was pretty tough.  Luckily our tour guide stopped to give us some information on what we were seeing.  There were many terraces.  Some used for farming, some used for ceremony, and some used for other things.  Since...