Galapagos Islands, Ecuador 26 September - 4 October

Day 1

We caught the flight early in the morning from Quito to Galapagos. Because we had booked the trip through Carpe DM travel agents the guy who owned the place took us to the airport and made sure that we got booked in and our boarding passes sorted out.

Our flight landed on a very simple runway in Baltra, the luggage carousel is you walking around looking for you bag rather than a carousel at all! To get to the port we needed to take a bus, a ferry and then  the slowest bus in the world. It took us more than an hour and a half to do about 30kms and this is all on good tarred roads. It was a lot cheaper than catching a taxi, which are all double cab bakkies on Santa Cruz Island, maybe that would have been a better idea in the end?

Not knowing where we were going to stay the night we headed up the street and asked to find the Darwin Hotel, some guy directed us to the next corner and Tess checked out the room, it was very simple and a little dodge but we figured it was just one night before our cruise started the next day so we took it. We were starving and so went in search of some lunch. As we were tucking into our lunch, the first time trying ceviche (fish marinated in lemon juice with tomato, peppers and onion, delicious!), we bumped into an America girl we had seen in Cartagena and on the flight. We invited Tammy to join us, the three of us ended up spending the rest of the day together which was so much fun! We headed to the Darwin centre where they house the giant tortoises (incl, Lonesome George) and some land iguanas.

In the early evening we headed out to The Rock to take advantage of the 2 for 1 drinks special they were running. After a few drinks an American who now works at the embassy in Quito rolled into The Rock, Tammy had met him earlier and so we invited him to join us.  As it transpired he had been in the army and had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan and had been in special security forces for a number of years. He regaled us with some great stories of people who he had been special security for, the most notable being the Dalai Lama! It was a good day and we were now all set to go on our cruise the next day. We were happy campers!

Day 2

The day of the first organised tour/cruise for either Tess or I started rather slowly and we had a chilled morning before we needed to meet on the New Pier in Puerta Ayora to meet the Fragata at 12:30. We arrived on the pier at 12:10 to make sure that we didn’t miss the boat, literally and figuratively! We were a little unconvinced of what we had been told by the travel agents: “Wait on the new pier at 12:30 and someone would come and meet us there”. Sure enough before 12:30 we were ushered onto a water taxi and taken to the Fragata to start our 7 day cruise of the Galapagos.

The Fragata

We met some great people on the boat, most notably the first South African we had met on our travels, Leigh-Ann and her Aussie boyfriend Michael. Also there was a French and American couple, Heinde and Christina, that were really nice and really funny, keeping us entertained through the trip.

As we got on board we were shown to our cabin, single beds on either side of the cabin, but nice and clean with a private bathroom and the hottest shower we had had all trip. Straight away we sat down to some lunch, we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food, this boded well for the next week.

Our Galapagos guide for the trip was Ivan, he was great! His English is really good and he loves the islands and the wildlife. It’s amazing to have someone so passionate about his work and home, guiding us around the islands. We loved his sayings too, like: “Dju know guys”, and when asked about seeing wildlife he would say things like “Turtles for sure” or “No guarantee” if we were not likely to see that. All of these in your best Spanish accent of course!

After lunch the yacht headed off on a 3hr trip to our first stop: Santa Fe. We took some motion sickness tablets just before boarding, but even so Tess was not feeling great and needed sit quietly at the back of the boat and take a few deep breaths to avoid disaster. Soon enough and with no bad news along the way we arrived at Santa Fe and got our first taste of the action. On the islands you can really get so close to the animals, it’s amazing. We actually had to get warned by Ivan not to get too close to the sea lions on the beach. And he always says “No Flash!”, apparently this blinds the animals. He is militant about it!

On the walk we also saw Sally Lightfoot crabs, a land iguana and amazingly, a short eared owl, this was only the second short eared owl Ivan had seen on Santa Fe for 20 yrs. When we got to the boat we had our first snorkelling of the trip. We got ourselves suited up and splashed into the water and then followed the rest of the crew around for the next hour. The snorkelling was great, we saw loads of fish, sea lions, golden rays, diamond rays and half a dozen turtles. If this was what all the snorkelling was going to be like it was going to be an amazing trip.

Day 3 - Espanola

We travelled in the night while we were sleeping, which makes thing a little easier on the sea-sickness and also rocks you to sleep quite nicely J. In the morning we landed at Espanola and we were immediately among all the marine iguanas. They pretty much just stay in the path and you have to walk around them. The rest of the walk on the island was mainly focussed on birds and what amazing birds we saw! The blue footed boobies, just love the name, every time one flew overhead I’d say to Tess: “Look a blue footed boobie”. I think she may have got tired of this, but I never tired of it. The boobies also do this cool mating dance where they lift one blue foot after the other, rather cute! We also saw the albatross. Espanola is the only island in the Galapagos that has albatross. They are pretty amazing birds and have a wingspan of about 2.4m. At the end of our walk we saw the Galapagos hawk which was a rare treat.



Tropical Bird

Marine Iguanas in the path



Albatross

The Blue Footed Boobie

After we got back to the boat we went snorkelling and we saw 2 sea lions playing with a feather underwater, swimming around us. They are rather fun. We also saw a big ray and some turtles at the back end of the dive. In the afternoon we headed to a secluded beach with amazing white sand like flour where we could just stroll along the beach, hand in hand like the lovers that we are! Haha!

Day 4 - Floreana

We arrived on Floreana where we headed to a salt lake that potentially has Flamingos during mating season, unfortunately we only found one poor sole, and renditions of Eric Carmen’s “All by myself” began. We then moved on to a beach where Sting Rays are in the very shallow waters ingesting the nutrients from the sand they apparently need, we also saw a shark and some penguins in the very far distance, they were almost too difficult to work out, but the rest of the crew seemed excited about the sighting, so rather than ruin their fun we went along with it.

Stingray in the shallow waters

After we had got back to the boat we went snorkelling around Devil’s Point where the visibility was amazing. The current around the island was pretty hectic and so when we were going with the current we would just float along with it. We had a go against it for a bit which was hard work. We saw loads of fish and many different colours and an Eagle Ray right at end of dive. This was Tess' favourite snorkelling of the trip!

Ivan and Tess at the Postbox

In the afternoon we went to Post Office Bay and the Lava Tubes, where there is actually a postbox, but this is one with a bit of a difference. You can bring your postcard here without a stamp and leave it and hopefully sometime in the future someone comes along and they can then take the postcard and deliver this by hand to the address. We found one for Cape Town and so we have that with us that we will try and deliver in December. Seems like a cool system and can’t wait to see who we are delivering the postcard to.

We went snorkelling from the beach in the afternoon and we saw so many turtles, at least 10! It was absolutely amazing how close we could get to them. One of them was actually feeding just below me, if I put out my hand I would have been able to touch it. They are pretty big when fully grown and seem like such chilled out creatures. I think Crush in Finding Nemo is a really good depiction of what turtles are like J.

Day 5 – North Seymour and Baltra

We had a really early start the next morning, we watched the sun rise on North Seymour island. We needed to do this as the Frigate birds nest on North Seymour and they are in mating season at the moment and so all the males have those amazing red bubbles that they inflate under their chin and then beat their beaks against this to attract the females.

Blue footed Boobies

Black tipped reef sharks around our boat

The rest of the day was pretty chilled as we went to Baltra to drop half our co-sailors at the airport (they had done their 8 days) and we were due to pick up 10 more, but only 2 arrived so we were going to be a small crew for the last 4 days, that was until the evening when an Ecuadorian family of 4 joined us for 2 days, they were ok, but changed the dynamic of the trip a little bit which was a bit of a shame.

Each evening Ivan would give us a briefing of the activities and animals we would see the following day. That evening we found it funny to change Ivan’s white board adding a few funny things, such as adding whale shark and tourists to the bottom of the list the wildlife we were going to see, and adding happy hour with Ivan to the day’s activities. He found this rather amusing too.

Day 6 - Genovesa

Genovesa is a very new island,  a sunken volcano with part missing, now in the shape of a horseshoe, but Ivan calls this the best island in the world. We started off the day with a short boat trip across the centre of what used to be the volcano, all the way along the cliffs we saw birdlife, the Tropical bird being the most notable as well as some fur seals, which we would not see again. At the top of the cliff we started looking at the birdlife and we witnessed a full on fight between 2 Red Footed Boobies over territory, the one finally extracting itself from the other’s grip only to plunge into a lava crevice never to be seen again. A very dramatic start to the day and the girls weren't so happy with the result!

The rest of the walk was much more sedate as we observed the birds going about their business. We saw Red Footed Boobies, Nasca Boobies, Storm Petrels, Frigate birds all with nests and babies and a rare glimpse of the short-eared owl, we also saw numerous other smaller birds too many to mention.  

When we got back to the boat we headed out snorkelling straight away, the water was beautiful and the visibility was good. We stuck to the edge of the cliffs as the water gets very deep very quickly due to being in the middle of an old volcano. We mostly just saw fish and one barbed ray, but it was fun anyway.

After lunch we were off to see a few more birds, we saw lots of night herons, Galapagos Gulls, lots more Red Footed Boobies, Nasca Boobies, Frigate birds, all with young ones. The best thing about the afternoon was the view across the bay of the whole island. All in all another great day.

Galapagos Gulls

Crowned Heron

Us and the magnificient view across Genevesa

Some sea lions posing with our boats in the background

Day 7 - Bartolone and Black Turtle Cove

The next morning we had to hike up an old volcanic island (Bartolome island), there is pretty much nothing on this very small island except lava lizards and a few small snakes. There is however a magnificent view from the top of the mountain of the surrounding islands and of a volcanic rock formation, it is the iconic view that you see on postcards of the Galapagos!

Picture perfect Bartolome Island



The elusive Galapagos penguin

More beautiful views from Bartolome

Our next activity was snorkelling at Bartolome, this was our last snorkel and was really great, the visibility was amazing. There was apparently a shark at the start of the dive, but luckily for us Tess didn’t see the shark otherwise her last snorkel may have been extremely short! We saw loads of fish, starfish of various colours and a few rays. It was a great finish to the snorkelling on our trip!

We had an early lunch on the yacht and then headed about two and a half hours towards Santa Cruz island. There we headed into a mangrove forest on the small boats and we were able to chill in the boats as the turtles went about their business around us. In another section there were loads of little black tipped reef sharks that were swimming around our little boats. Another very cool experience.

That evening as we headed to our last island all 8 of us remaining on the boat were just chilling, chatting and having a few drinks. We were all so relaxed and talking about how lucky we were to be able to be on the Galapagos islands and to have seen all that we had seen, it was such a great evening! Our last evening on the boat would be at anchor which was a pleasant change.

Day 8 – The Plazas and back to Puerto Ayora

The last morning of our cruise started at 6am where we went for a walk on South Plaza. This island is known for its land, marine and hybrid iguanas. We were lucky enough to see all of these on our short walk. The scenery is also really beautiful and there are loads of birds on the one side of the island. After this short visit we boarded the yacht and headed back to Puerto Ayora to finish the cruise.

Land Iguana

Puerto Ayora harbour

The last bit of our time on the islands was very chilled and we caught up with mails, facebook, blogging, laundry and all the other mundane things that need to be done from time to time.

The Galapagos Islands have been such a highlight on our trip. We will forever remember the animals and birds who let you get so close its better than a zoo, the amazing landscapes and scenery that is both stunningly beautiful and archaic at times and the great friends we made on our trip to the islands. A truly once in a lifetime opportunity and experience!