Planned

I've been reading several entries in lonelyplanet.com's Thorn Tree–a travel forum for people to ask questions/provide answers/suggest tips on travel–and have come to realize I may not be able to make up a lot of this trip as I go. It was my intention to arrive in Quito, Ecuador, and move from place to place as I felt like it. I thought the only time I had to be any where was January 30th In Ushuaia, Argentina, for the trip to Antarctica at the end of my trip. But it's looking as though a few of the bigger sites I wanted to see are filling up fast and I need to plan dates to see them. Machu Picchu and the Galapagos islands being the big two. Apparently only 250 tourists are allowed on the Inca trail a day. Thus reservations are required months in advance. And what I thought was a loooong low tourist season in the Galapagos is only a month or two. I'm just hoping since I'll be near both of these areas in the low season, I won't need to pick specific days just yet. Just to be safe, I emailed a few outfits to see what they suggest. Book now, I assume will be the response.

Planning out each day sort of takes the fun out of it. Then again, I probably won't care how organized I was when I'm looking down on Machu Picchu at sunrise one morning.