May 28, 2026
Last night we had a blast at dinner. We’d already been to Laguna Beach restaurant twice, and we decided that for our final meal, we really just wanted to savor the fried scorpionfish one last time.
We sat at our table and enjoyed our pisco sours, alongside the yummy bread and spicy dipping sauce they provided. The tables were set as if they were expecting a large group, and soon enough, a large group filtered in.
There was also a pair of extremely drunk locals sitting off to the side, but I didn’t notice them until one of them leaned against the wall in the corner and started peeing. The restaurant is outdoors and has a gravel floor… I mean, when you got to go, you got to go.
We chuckled about it with a nearby table, but the highlight (besides the fish) was actually the fun, large group seated on the other side of us.
After the large group was done with their food, they got up and danced and danced and danced to the music. We cheered and clapped. So fun!
This morning we got up, showered, ate breakfast, and had to pack up. Our Airbnb hosts have a 10 am checkout, but Marco’s not picking us up until 11 to make the journey to the Itabaca Channel, so we asked if they had a safe place for us to store our bags. Even though they have a same-day turnover, they let us store our bags inside while we walk down by the pier. I messaged them at 9 am when we left that we were out and the cleaners could get started.
We walked around down by the water, saw the baby sea lion and its mom again, and slowly walked down to the fish market to see that hullabaloo.
By 10:50, we were back at Casa Paloverde, grabbed our bags, said hello to the cleaner, and went outside to wait for Marco, who arrived right on time.
Taxi, water taxi, bus, and then airplane. The fun large group/family from last night was on the water taxi, so we chatted with them for a bit. Some of them will be travelling on the same flights as us until we get to Houston.
Our flight from Baltra Island (the island the airport is on) was right on time, and we ascended the rear stairs to find that we are seated in the last row, row 32, and it has no window. I hate that. This flight to Guayaquil isn’t full, and the final 3 rows are all empty, except for us, so I asked a flight attendant if we could move up a row so we could have a window. She said for this leg, yes, but when we stop in Guayaquil, we’d need to move back.
And that’s when the excitement began. A ‘gentleman’ sat down in seat 30A, but he left his bags in the overhead bin in the middle of the plane (I was 32K, Nathan was 32E, not sure what happened to F-J). Weird, when you realize he boarded from the rear stair like us.
While we were still on the tarmac, a ‘woman’ walked down the aisle from the middle of the plane, sat in seat 30C, and the two of them proceeded to argue, scream, holler, kick, and nitpick at each other, in French, for the duration of the 2-hour flight.
At one point, the fellow reached behind him and closed the window shade in row 31, and the girl moved away from him, to the row in front of us, and also closed the shade. I was so irritated by their behavior that I passively-aggressively turned all three reading lights on in rows 31 and 32 on our side of the plane.
So now, in the final 3 rows of the airplane, we have four passengers, one open window shade, and six lights on (it’s the middle of the afternoon and we’re flying over the Galapagos for Pete’s sake!). At some point, the entire row in front of them got up and moved.
Nathan looked at me and said, “Maybe they could just WhatsApp.”
We landed in Guayaquil to refuel and pick up more passengers, and turns out neither one of them was in their correct seat. All the seats are now full on this plane, and more drama ensues. At one point, a flight attendant asked the gal if she wished to disembark, and she said yes. More drama, as their belongings are intermixed, or he has something of hers, and she needs it to get off the plane. The flight attendant is trying to help, but at the end of all that hubbub, they both stayed on the plane, in their assigned seats, nowhere near each other, and the final ~45 minutes onward to Quito was quiet. Street urchins, I called them.
Once we got to Quito, the rest of our travel was uneventful. We had dinner in the Quito airport, flew overnight to Houston, cleared customs and immigration without issue, redeposited our bags, recleared security, and had breakfast in Houston. The Houston to Denver flight was on time and quick, and before we knew it, we were back on land in Denver, where the temp was a refreshing 62 degrees.
