Galapagos Islands, Ecuador: 29th Jan 10

This morning we drove to the highlands where we walked through the countryside to see some giant tortoises in the wild.


That was the end of the ‘cruise’ for Matt and I so we said goodbye to our fellow travelers and headed to the scuba dive center.


Our friend Sharazed, who dives regularly told us that scuba diving on the Galapagos Islands is the holy grail for all divers - it’s renowned as one of the best places in the world for diving.


Unfortunately Matt had been suffering from sea sickness and the bumpy boat ride to the dive site finished him off so he decided to opt out. So it was just me and the instructor (and his excellent camera) – I have to say, it was fab.


We dived off a small island called Caamano, off the big island of Santa Cruz – seeing hundreds of brightly coloured fish – some of them were big, over a foot across, and in massive shoals – others were tiny, poking their heads out of barnacles – and were less than 1 centimetre long.


After a few minutes I was surprised to see a 7 foot shark swim really close by! We then came across a whole family of sea lions – I counted 8 to start with, but others were attracted to the bubbles from our scuba gear and came to check us out. At one point there were 15 Sea Lions swimming above us and taking it in turns to come and have a closer look – they were all different sizes, from a small baby to a huge big daddy - WOW!


After the dive we walked through the town and came across a most bizarre sight. At the side of the road the local fishermen had set up stall to sell their fish – and standing with them were 15 huge pelicans, trying to grab hold of the guts! It was really amazing – then 2 Sea Lions trundled along and started helping themselves to the cast-off fish parts – one even having the cheek to stand up and start munching right next to one of the fishermen – such cheekiness, we were gobsmacked!



So this was the end of our Galapagos experience – without doubt one of the highlights of our trip. We’ve swam every day with sea lions, we’ve seen some amazing animals – it’s felt like being in a BBC wildlife programme at times, all that was missing was a bit of narration from Mr. Attenborough.

We’ve also met some fab people, Leslie and Tony from Toronto, Lou and Lois from Manhattan, the other Americans: Mike, Marleen, Lance, Terri and the fabulous Judith, plus the 2 Swedes, Haakan and his wife(I never was good at names!) – all really good company. Tomorrow we’re flying back to the mainland to continue our travels through the rest of South America!

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador: 28th Jan 10

This morning we went to visit a Giant Tortoise breeding facility, where we saw 10 of the remaining species of Giant Tortoise. There were originally 15 species, but 4 have been wiped out, mainly by pigs and goats introduced to the islands in the 18th century. We didn’t see 11th species – as there is only one tortoise remaining. He is called ‘Lonesome George’ and is the last of his kind – quite sad really!







Later in the morning we took a walk around a small volcanic island where we saw some small penguins and loads more iguanas. We also visited a sort of ravine where white-tipped sharks go to rest in the shallow waters. We could clearly see 2 sharks, each about 5 foot long, chilling out! We also saw some rays swimming along.



In the afternoon we went snorkeling again, this time the visibility wasn’t great, but we swam along the volcanic ravines – quite spooky having cliffs falling into the water on either side of you. We saw some fish, but no sharks this time – shame! On returning to the boat we realized there was a Sea Lion swimming around between the 2 hulls (the Archipell 2 being a catamaran). I jumped in the water along with our new friend Tony and we went to check it out. The light is really eerie under the boat, and the Sea Lion was amazing – really frenetic – he’d jump out of the water to look at us then bomb around and under us at lightning speed – it was really hard to keep up with where he was - a very exhilarating experience!

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador: 27th Jan 10

We started today by travelling to a small island and visiting a lava cave – it was really dark, so we all had to bring torches, lower ourselves down using ropes to steady us and wade through freezing water. Fun! After that we snorkeled off a beach for a while but the visibility wasn’t very good.



Later in the morning we sailed to the Devil’s Crown, a circle of volcanic rocks jutting out of the sea, and again we snorkeled. This time it was much better - as soon as we got into the water we were surrounded by a huge school of fish – all about a foot long, literally thousands of them!



After swimming on a little longer a sea lion swam up to us and started playing. Luckily we had our under-water camera with us this time, so I managed to get a good shot of the Sea Lion and Matt checking each other out! It swam around us for ages, having a whale of a time (excuse the pun!)




In the afternoon we sailed to another island, and visited a colony of flamingoes on a lagoon, and saw dozens of turtles swimming off the beach. We love the Galapagos Islands!