We arrived in Quito on a rainy afternoon, we only had that evening to check it out because we were headed for the galapagos the next day. Lots of action happening in the streets because the south American football cup was on, Chilean team vs an Ecuadorean team. We wondered around the old town and then headed to the new town area to check out the bars and cheer on Ecuador, unfortunately they lost.
Headed to our ultimate destination the next day, the Galapagos. Quite a rigorous customs and check station to make sure we were not bringing any plants or animals. Arrived at the tiny little airport in Baltra and had to catch a bus, boat, taxi to our little hostel on Santa Cruz. The environment surrounding us was completely different to what we had imagined. Very arid terrain, surprising so many animals inhabited the islands. As soon as we arrived we headed out to find out what day tours we could organize and what diving we could. The lonely planet said we needed at least 2-3 days to get days trips organised, but we organized it in one afternoon with a fab cheap travel agent called joybe tours.
Considering we only had 5 nights there we needed to maximize our time as best as possible. The first day we headed out to this island called floreana. This island is more historic, but we also got to see our first red marine iguanas... That's right, little iguanas that swim in the ocean. They eat the algae on the bottom of the ocean and their skin turns red, they look like little dinosaurs. We also went to this sanctuary where there were loads of giant tortoises, they were huge! All they did was sit around and eat. That afternoon we went snorkeling and saw a few rays and turtles. The water was quite chilly compared to the lovely caribbean waters we had been experiencing. That night we indulged in a few beers and watched a local game of volleyball as the sun set.
The next day we split from Amber and Tristan for the day and went diving. It was very different from the diving we had experienced. The currents were very strong and you don't see coral you just see big marine animals. We were taken out on a luxury diving boat which was a nice change to some of the crappy boats we had been using in central America, including our own chef and areas to sun bake. We saw a huge school of hammerheads, eagle rays, manta rays, loads and loads of turtles, and a school of barracuda that just surrounded us, we could barely see anything else around us and they didn't care at all... It was so amazing. We met back up with amber and Tristan and exchanged our diving stories.
The next day we headed out to Isabella island. This is one of the bigger islands and has is well known for the animals there. We saw a school of about 60-70 white tip reef sharks sleeping in a small cove, hundreds of iguanas, sea lions, turtles, flamingos, blue footed boobys. Our snorkeling was the highlight though because we saw about 20 turtles sleeping, and came across 3 young male sea lions who were wrestling with each other and being very playful, and when we arrived they put on a show for us. When chad dived down at one point, one of the sea lions playfully charged at him and spat water in his face and then did circles around us. The snorkelling was just as good as the diving.
Our last day was spent doing some relaxing and exploring around Santa Cruz. We visited an underground lava tunnel, a giant tortoise farm, and hired surfboards in the afternoon and surfed at Tortuga beach in some small but fun waves.
Galapagos was one of our favorite places and well worth the extra money to get there, so we highly recommend it to anyone travelling in that neck of the woods!