Argentina & Ecuador 2024

  Today we start to head for home via Santiago de Chile and Auckland.  Here are three last images from Buenos Aires yesterday. The first is St Andrews Presbyterian church, just around the corner from our hotel in Monserrat BA.  Open for business at 10 am on a Sunday morning, just like at home! Next, these enormous fig trees with their buttressed roots were everywhere in Buenos Aires.  I love them. And lastly, the street furniture.  What look like plush benches and footstools are hard cement and the 'buttons' are drainage holes.  I don't think anyone would sit for long!  But they did look good.

  In Buenos Aires it has barely stopped raining for the last 2 days.  So yesterday we went to the art gallery, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.  It has a wonderful collection of European art from the last 5 centuries, Incan antiquities and the work of significant Argentine artists - painters, multimedia artists and sculptors. One gallery had a collection of works by Auguste Rodin including a bronzed plaster cast of "The Kiss" and a marble copy. There was a room that had works from every European artist you've ever heard of.  In here are all the major French and Dutch post Renaissance artists.  It was wonderful! It was good to see the works of Argentine artists.  I really liked this one of a bird stealing an empanada.  We have eaten so many empanadas in the last 8 weeks.  Every bakery has its own recipe so they are all different.  The ones we ate in Patagonia stand out as the best pastry and fillings.   Pablo Suarez "La terraza" Oscar Domi...

Here are some photos, I will gradually work on this post as I sit in airports over the next 3 days! I hope I'll be able to get Steve to share some photos too. Our trip to Galapagos began with a 5 am trip to the airport in Quito.  Luckily the agent had organised a driver who also shepherded us through the quarantine and check in process - more stringent quarantine than getting in to Australia to prevent unwanted pests getting in.  We landed on Baltra Island  and were met by our guide at the airport.  Baltra has the main Galapagos airport, it is just north of Santa Cruz Island and has North Seymour Island just north again.  We boarded the Seaman, the boat that would be home for 7 nights, from the pier on Baltra and sailed to North Seymour for a walk and a snorkel. Here is a map (ignore the green line - that isn't us!) so you can see where the islands are relative to each other. On North Seymour Island we walked among the iconic birds which are quite oblivious...