Week 42 - Ecuador

I can fly!!

Love the sea lions

Simply gorgeous!

Hey you iguana!

Volcano Sierra Negra

Wow, what a wife!

Hey ladies

Buenos Noches Amigos!

Wow, this has certainly been one of the best weeks of the past 9 months! I´m ecstatic and can´t believe how fun we had in the Galapagos! So how cool are these islands, well, I can honestly say that of all the islands these are my favourite islands I´ve ever been to. Not meaning to brag, but just to explain how good this place is, I´d honestly rate the Galapagos more fun, interesting and exciting than the Maldives, Seychelles, Hawaii, or the Virgin Islands! This place is downright amazing!

Some of you may not know what is so special about the Galapagos. Just to explain the basic history - this is where Darwin discovered his theory of Natural Selection, thus giving more evidence to evolution. The islands have only been inhabited for about 150 years. As a result, the animal population is phenomenal, did you know they actually have dinosaurs here!!! Well, not really, but it’s still pretty cool!

Possibly since people were not around for all this time, or more to the fact that the animals don´t have too many predators, they are just not afraid of people. It’s one of the few places where you can walk up to all the wild animals and they don´t run away!! Also, unlike Asia, the wild animals do not expect food from you.

Lonesome George: Poor Lonesome George is the last remaining Pinta Tortoise in the world. He was discovered about 40 years ago. All his family was wiped out, many by whalers in the 1800´s. We are told that the whalers mainly took females as they were lighter thus easier to carry so the population dwindled so much that they died out, all but George. They had tried to get him to mate to make a cross species, but this was unsuccessful. We actually saw George mating at the Charles Darwin Centre which was a pretty funny site (yes I´m very immature).

Our route: Seymour Island > South Plaza Island > Santa Fe Island > Espanola Island > Floriana Island > Santa Cruz Island > Isabella Island

Sunday to Wednesday - Cruising the Galapagos: A cruise in the Galapagos is a must for any visit! It’s the perfect way to see the many tough to reach islands and close enough to touch the wildlife - yes pretty much all of them - birds, iguanas, sea lions, and even sharks, but you never know if they bite; the sea lions and GUIDES have big teeth - the latter being more concerned. Our ship had 16 passengers, 7 crew and it was plush! With overly comfortable AC cabins and more delicious food than Henry the 8th was accustomed to!
We visited the islands of Seymour, South Plaza, Santa Fe, Espanola, and Floreana. All the above are not inhabited except Floriana. I´ll be brief and tell you just a few of the thousand cool things about this trip. Starting with the birds, we were sailing the first day and had 10 Frigate birds flying closely over our boat, sometimes just one meter (3 feet) over our heads! Unfortunate for one Australian girl on our boat, a frigate bird had good "aim" and she received a "present"! The frigate birds are over 2 meters in wingspan and watching these birds fight and play over our heads was a great introduction to our boat ride. The albatrosses on Espanola were clumsy and amusing. It takes them up to an hour to land. They seem to hit the ground as smoothly as a drunken Easyjet Airlines pilot!
One species which is impossible to miss in the Galapagos is the Iguana. There are two main types; land iguanas and marine iguanas, with Floriana island being the only place where the two mate. On Espanola Island there are thousands of these guys and it’s almost hard not to step on them. We also walked by their extensive nesting areas.
The snorkeling was out of this world! We snorkeled every day and saw a bevy of sea creatures. The penguins swimming by was a special site! We also saw sharks (white tips and Galapagos sharks), rays, turtles, and may tropical fish including many puffers. The MOST exciting characters we came across were the sea lions. I mentioned on the last post how friendly they are. The young pups would even come up and almost kiss our masks!
On Floriana island we went to an unswimmable beach due to the stingray population. We walked into the shallow water and quickly the rays were swimming over our feet!
Also on floriana we saw the old post box used by whalers who would leave mail there for the next person to take it if they were headed in that direction.
One funny species of birds is the boobies, notably the blue footed boobies! These guys perform a crazy ritual for mating where they dance and if the lady likes them they reciprocate... hmmm interesting...
I hate to keep going on about the sea lions, but on Santa Fe and Espanola, we sat amongst sea lion colonies (100+ at each place) on the beach. This is overlooking perfect aqua blue water on soft white sand beaches. We would just sit by them and watch the little ones who after playing around would come looking for their mothers. Essentially if the mother didn´t respond to its yelp, it would go around to all the ladies and try to feed. If it wasn´t the mother it would grown and try to bite the young pup. At one point one of the babies came after us! It was pretty funny, but I didn´t want to stick around to see what happened. Look at the picture to see how close we were, we just laid a few feet away from them all!
The other notable thing about our cruise was the sunsets! WowEwow! Such great colors making the whole place look like a fictitious painting!

Thursday - Isabella Island: With our tour now finished, we joined a dive boat to take in a few more underwater adventures. Sadly we wouldn´t be seeing any hammerheads today or any other sharks for that matter. This may be the Galapagos, but it’s still South America and corruption is high. All the dive boats were barred from leaving the harbor by the coast guard. The dive shops all claim to have paid the money for their permits, but apparently someone in the government stole the money. So they turned us back, shame. Later than day we headed to Isabella island which just opened up to "free" tourism 3 years ago! On the way, they stopped our speed boat in the middle of the ocean and moved us to another boat. Think about this, the boats rocking and if they drop a bag, its gone! Hilarious! Isabella, what a place! Get here fast before it changes, true island paradise! It´s still very raw and has the small town island feel!

Friday - Volcan Sierra Negra: It has the second largest crater in the world for a volcano! What a site! The last eruption was in 2005 and it was over 125 years since the previous eruption so it killed all the vegetation in the crater which was very lush. Our 16km (10 mile) hike there was fantastic! So nice to get some real exercise! Later in the day we went to the Tortoise reserve and saw an overturned baby tortoise. We watched him frantically try to resolve the situation to no avail. Surprisingly a buddy came over and actually and obviously worked to get him back on his feet. I am shocked that turtles are this smart, but they are! We then hiked down to a salt lake and found 5 bright pink flamingos! The nice thing about the Galapagos, that night we walked the beach back to our hotel. It’s the first time we have done this in South America and I can say we felt perfectly safe. Whilst it’s South America, it’s not....

Saturday - R-E-L-A-X-I-N-G: We had woken up early for over a week and today we just chilled. After enjoying the almost deserted beach in Isabella we caught the boat back to Puerta Ayora where we are now sitting in an internet cafe. Tomorrow I hate to say it, but we have to go back to Quito.

So what’s next - We are now heading to Columbia and Pasto, then Popayan and San Augustin.

Until next time,

Ciao,

Dan and Marina