Tumbaco Madrid Elewijt!

As most people now know, we arrived back in Belgium early evening of Friday 13th.... after an unexpected 24hour stopover in Madrid!The flight from Quito - Madrid was almost 3 hours late in arriving, so our connection to Brussels was long gone.  The only remaining Iberia flight to Brussels was full and there was an Iberia Pilots strike on the morning of the 13th....which meant the next flight available, with pilot, was 16.00 on the 13th, exactly 24 hours 'late'.

However we were quite happy - we were really tired from the long flight (in Economy!!), the hotel was very comfortable (food less so!), and we managed to fit in a metro trip into the centre and have a couple of hours walking around - our first visit to Madrid, definitely to be repeated, we were very impressed (if rather cold!).

We find it very difficult once again to pinpoint the highlight of this trip to Ecuador - there were for us so many.  The Galapagos is exceptional; our Amazon jungle trip was great; the Andes in particular we also loved (if I didn't seem to suit the 3000m and plus too well) - the markets (we'll never forget the sheep arriving on TOP of  the bus), the people and the scenery.   Visiting a country like this does bring you down to earth a bit in terms of what we all have here in Europe compared to so many others, our health systems etc - we might complain but we are SO lucky.  The coast we enjoyed less, but were very happy (and grateful) with the 12 nights in Puerto Lopez as it was so peaceful and the hostel excellent and we were in need of a rest by the time we arrived there.  Our last stopover near Esmeraldas was less in terms of location due to the hectic Easter weekend which was initially a great disappointment,  but our Belgian hostel host made it more than worthwhile by taking us to his nearby farm plus a day out to the mangroves etc.

So, these really are the last photos (unexpected photos too!)