Oh no! It can't be time to leave already....

But it is...and the next few days are just as packed as the last three weeks. We've walked every day, enjoyed the several mercado's multiple times, picked up a few nice souvenirs in local artisan shops, met more new friends, and just generally had a wonderful time.

The highlight of the day was picking up our custom, one of a kind, hand made, sterling silver wedding bands. We have been frequenting the Magnolia Caffe restaurant since our first week here and have become friends with the owner, Simon Cordero. He is an amazing silversmith and jewelry designer and we fell in love with his work the first time we visited. We showed him our gold wedding bands and asked him if he could do something similar in sterling silver. That was less than three weeks ago; we picked them up tonight and absolutely love them. (I wish the photos were better, will try again tomorrow in daylight).

Here is the only photo I currently have of our gold rings:


Here is the photo we took tonight when we picked up our sterling silver rings:


This is Simon Cordero with Stu....


We've had some heavy night time rains the last few evenings, leaving a heavy dew in the morning. Here are a few shots of the sky at night and the plants in the morning as well as some interesting cloud cover moving in tonight as we walked to Magnolia Caffe.

Everyone has been telling us to take the double-decker red bus tour and we finally did. Best $5 (ea) we have spent and we'll do it again! Here are a few random photos. As always you can see all our photos from our time here in Ecuador on SmugMug.

Tomorrow night we are having dinner at a friend's house and they're going to show us the nightlife in El Centro. Sunday is Mother's Day (happy day to all the mothers out there) and we have reservations at Rustico Restaurant. For $15 we get minestrone soup, bolognese style meat lasagna or grilled Mahi Mahi, homemade tiramisu and a glass of house wine.

Monday we'll say most of our final farewells to all new friends, Tuesday morning we pack and that afternoon we take a van to the Guayaquil airport for our red-eye flight. (Ugh!) We will be staying in a hotel the first night and then we'll find out the status on our rig repair. Emails thus far aren't promising. (more later as we know more)