The most striking difference may be that conda also installs and
manages Python itself. For example, conda create -n py33 python=3.3
will download and install Python 3.3 into a new environment named
py33. This is completely different than pip which tends to run inside
the same Python environment that it's installing into.

we've been talking about (and I've tried) "conda init" , not "conda create".

that sure seems to setup conda in your *current* python.

I had pip (the one that installed conda) and conda working in the same environment.