Galapagos Islands

The airport
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The last 5 days have been amazing!  The Galapagos Islands are truly an amazing place. I'm not sure where to begin really, but I guess I'll start with a small history of the islands.

The Galapagos Islands have had many of the same hardships as the rest of latin america, colonization, mistreatment of resources, etc.  And the Islands use to be the hiding place of pirates that whould wait for ships leaving to Spain to sail through there and steal the treasure.

Blue footed boobies
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In the 1950's the Galapagos land was divided up among many Ecuadorian's.  People started bringing farm animals and domestic pets in the 1970's-1980's and by the late 1990's many of the original inhabitants, tortousies for example, were becoming extinct.  That was when the land was declared a national park and the conservationist have been working year after year to bring the islands back to their original state...which is pretty much what we go to see.

Now about our trip. First off if you are going the the galapagos, don't expect a relaxing cruise vacation where you get drunk every day and wander into a town check it out and board the boat for more drinks and food.   On the Legend, (the second largest boat in the Galapagos, about 90 passengers) wake up was everyday at 6:45am, breakfast from 7:00am-8:00am, departure for morning activities at 8:30am, return to the ship at 11:00-11:30, lunch and siesta from 12:30-3:30, then departure for another activity, return at 6:00-6:30pm.  Dinner at 8:00pm then relax.

The first dock sea lion
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It sounds like a lot, especially for me getting up at 6:45am, but it was so much fun.  Everyday we went to a different island, some times 2, one in the morening and one at night.  activities were always a hike and a snorkel.  The hikes were more like walks most of the time, but some were like climbing Camelback(the easy part).   There is only one human inhabited island, Santa Cruz, which is where the Darwin Center is and most of the tortouises are.  So everyday we take a dingy, with our group of about 16 ppl, from the ship to an island with no one on it.  Just the wildlife, to list a few that we saw...marine iguanas, sea lions, crabs, blue footed boobies,  octopi, reef sharks, pelicans, etc.

On the way to the Legend
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As for our favorite experiences...

Mine was when we were snorkeling.  The water was freezing, very cold, but eventually it got warmer. There was a few fish and a lot of sea turtles, but the best was a sea lion.  We came across this sea lion that just loved our group. She was swimming all around us, playing. darting away and then swimming up close.  Sea lions are so graceful in the water and the fact that this one seems like she was having fun playing with us was awesome.  It was amazing.  I don{t have pictures now, because they were on the film, underwater camera, but I will post them when we have them developed.

Our cabin, nice!
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Michael's favorite point was also snorkeling.  It was the 3rd day of the trip and we just finished a long hike so the water was looking pretty good!  There were lots of fish and sea lions, but what he thought was awesome was the 3 foot reef shark.  There were about 5 or 6 of them in the water.  It was by far better than seeing them in an aquarium.

Besides all the activities, we really lucked out with a great group on board.  From what the staff told us usually there are a lot of older people (which there still were), but luckily our dinner table was fun and younger.  There were 4 Americans who travel together and work for american airlines, 2 Aussie's on honeymoon (who we are going to meet up with in Sydney) and a couple from the UK on Honeymoon. We all ended up hanging out every night at the pool bar or the main bar inside dancing and drinking.  They were all a lot of fun. One night there was a skit that the Staff hosts and Michael was in it, he was Prince of Tides...very funny.

Iguana
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I'm going to attempt to post some pictures, if I can't get them up there now I will add them in the near future.

Overall the Galapagos is an amazing place.  I would highly recommend going and I would hightly recommend the Legend and Klein Tours. A very well run operation.

So now we are back in Quito and we are off to the rainforest tomorrow. Happy Trails.