Saturday 16 March - San Christobal & Home

 

San Christobal to Quito to Madrid, and, many hours later, to Alicante

Homeward bound. Out of the room by 7 am and then into breakfast before sitting on the back deck until 8:30 am when we were taken off by zodiac to the main town of Sam Christobal. There were 70 of us and we went to a café on the waterfront, alongside hundreds of seals. Like many of Silversea's activities this was either parsimonious or not well thought out, depending o how you looked at it. Silversea only paid for coffee and soft drinks, not food and not beer. Given the price of the Galapagos trip on Silver Origin, and the fact that there was no possibility of lunch, they really should have sorted some food for the punters.

We stayed here until 11:30 am, talking to Paul and going for a walk round the town, before a bus to the airport.  Even Charles Darwin turned out to shake us by the hand and say goodbye

Click on any of the thumbnail photos for a larger version

 

Once at the airport we were in a  queue to check in our bags. We had window seats on the plane which stopped again at Guayaquil . At Quito we had a bad experience as Iberia had shut their check in a full 75 minutes before the flight and had all abandoned the check in facility.  The result was that we had to take our baggage as hand luggage and our bottle of Amaretto was confiscated. The Iberia flight at 7 pm was as bland as most Iberia flights, but the food was at least just edible.

During the night Chris watched A Very British Scandal and Oppenheimer. Once at Madrid, we found that we could only buy entrance to a lounge for 85 euros, so we declined it. We had 8 hours to kill because of some unknown work going on somewhere. All  earlier flights to Alicante were cancelled, and the alternative was to take the train. Result of it was was that we got back to Moraira finally at 22.15, ready to fight jet lag. St Patrick's day had gone before we even knew it had arrived

But, hey, a superb holiday

 

Galapagos Holiday