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!