The Slow Evolution of This Winter's Itinerary

Jay and I have spent just a single day in Ecuador. This is where these two pictures were taken. We visited the port city of Manta at the end of November 2022 on our cruise to Buenos Aires. We'd come through the Panama Canal and were heading down the west coast of South America towards our destination. However, Ecuador holds a profound treasure found on bucket lists for many serious world adventurers. Our buckets may be far from running low, but our time holding them grows shorter. We made a strategic Expedia purchase this afternoon.  The three-flight Avianca tickets form the first step in our return to Vancouver at the end of the upcoming winter away.  

   

One does not need to engineer an entire winter away in a single sitting. The genuine luxury of a long absence is leaving generous stretches of the calendar entirely blank, allowing one to turn ideas over, test routing variations, and let the itinerary take shape over time. Today, that process received a decisive push forward when we brought an AI into the room to poke holes in our assumptions and run the numbers on our return leg from Rio de Janeiro.

Our initial musings centered on using Guayaquil as a convenient stepping stone into the Galápagos. That notion did not survive scrutiny; treating a rough mainland port as a holiday base means spending far too much energy managing urban security perimeters. Shifting our gaze directly to the archipelago made far more sense. San Cristóbal may have charm, but Santa Cruz has the restaurants, the day-boat fleet, and Seymour Airport on Baltra with a tarmac built to handle full-sized commercial jets.

The flight logistics resolved themselves with almost suspicious precision. Brazil allows a strict ninety-day residency, and our newly booked Avianca flight departs Galeão at 1:45 in the morning on March 1st. That allows us to clear passport control before midnight on February 28th, stepping out of the country on the final valid day of our visa window. We bounce through Bogotá and Quito before touching down on Baltra just after noon.

It took only a short, focused conversation to turn a vague ending into a masterclass in routing. We resolved our exit vector and secured our arrival on Baltra. One more crucial corner piece of the winter puzzle has dropped firmly into place. The exact date and path home, perhaps wandering back through Colombia, remain open for a future commitment. Those reservations can wait.