Seoul to Quito

We’re sitting out on the sundeck of the Ecoventura Origin, a few hundred feet off the coast of Genovesa. Seabirds are circling above the volcanic cliffs and we’re killing some time before sea kayaking this afternoon. Alice is making her way through The Selfish Gene, which seems to me like required reading for sailing through the islands where the idea of evolution started.

We spent a week transiting from Tokyo to the Galapagos. It took forty hours in the air across seven flights, and passing through Seoul, Dubai, Sao Paulo, and Quito. The shortest route would’ve taken about half of the airtime, and just one stop through Houston, but then we wouldn’t have gotten our personal color analyses done, eaten unlimited caviar in Emirates first class, or gotten lost in the middle of Seoul searching for Korean barbecue, and what would’ve been the fun in that?

Feeling fresh

Time passes in new ways on this sabbatical. Phases of the moon, boxes of Alice’s contacts, books read, and haircuts—the first on our first day in Tokyo, the second at this scalp spa in Seoul—become waypoints just as clear as airports or cities.

Dark winter, muted summer

We got our color analyses done in Korea to find the colors that best matched our features. It turns out that as a “dark winter”, tan is my worst color, a fact I had already learned almost twenty years ago when Alice Yu roasted me aggressively for wearing a tan shirt with tan khakis to school. She doesn’t even remember this, but I was permanently scarred from ever wearing tan again, apparently for the better.

Airside

Just under three hundred A380s were ever made, with the last one being delivered to Emirates a few years ago. These enormous double-decker planes fell out of favor as airlines around the world moved away from the hub-and-spoke model and the associated need for high-capacity aircraft. I’m not quite an aviation geek, but it’s hard not to feel a bit of anticipatory nostalgia for these amazing machines.

Lying in a metal tube

Emirates first class was extravagant, outrageous, over-the-top, as least as far as you can take those words while sitting in a metal tube forty thousand feet in the sky. Being able to take a shower in the middle of a flight is completely unnecessary and yet also the only possible conclusion when said flight also involves unlimited caviar and Blue Label.

Errands at 10,000 feet

We spent two days in Quito, but between the rain and the backlog of errands and planning we had to do, we only left our hotel once to go to the McDonald’s down the street. As we sketched out the second half of our sabbatical after February, nine months suddenly felt like not all that much time.

Among the clouds

Quito is either the highest or second-highest capital city in the world, depending on whether you think La Paz or Sucre plays that role for Bolivia. Passing clouds float between the city’s buildings and sometimes the ground itself would disappear into the mist. It’s as close as you can get to being in a city in the sky.