Day 7 - Fri 19/12/08

Up at 5.30 to get our taxi to Quito airport for our Galapagos flight. We sat next to a lovely german guy called George who had been mountain climbing and actually got to the summit of Cotopaxi which is something like 6000m! Once we landed in Baltra the transfer was a bit manic as it was a bus, then a boat, then another bus but it was very nice weather so no complaints. I think nearly everyone was in a group getting on one of the boats so we felt chuffed having got here on our own!Got to our hotel, the Red Mangrove which is lovely. We have a huge whitewashed stone room with a balcony overlooking the harbour where there are pelicans, frigates and herons flying around everywhere.

We wandered into town and booked two boat tours then headed to our nearest beach called the Charles Darwin beach where Tim did some snorkelling whilst I crashed out on the beach lapping up the sunshine along with several iguanas! It´s mad, these iguanas are completely oblivious to us and just wander around as they please. We got back and tried out the jacuzzi on the hotel´s deck but it wasn´t particularly hot! Still it had a nice view and yet more iguanas wandering around.

Day 8 - Sat 20/12/08

Hard to believe we´ve only been away for a week! Nice to know there´s another 2.5 weeks of this… J Had a fantastic breakfast - a full plate of tropical plate plus some pancakes. We were due to be picked up at 8.50 for our boat tour but by 9.10 no-one had come so we went down to the hotel where we´d booked the tour and were told that someone had been waiting at our hotel! Anyway, the woman rang around and 2 minutes later a woman turns up ushering us into a taxi (speaking no English) which hurries to the harbor and then she hails a water taxi and ushers us into that repeating 'el barco, el barco' by which we then understand that the taxi is taking us to the boat. We arrive at the boat and end up paying the water taxi guy $10 (I´m sure that was tourist price) so we make a mental note to take that off the price of the tour.

The trip was lovely although no-one on board spoke any English so we couldn´t understand any of the stuff the guide was telling everyone. We do our first snorkel and see lots of sealions, rays and lots and lots of fish so was a great first swim. We then saw lots of birds whilst cruising around the island as a lot of them nest in the rocks by the sea as they are fish eaters. Then we got off the boat and went for a walk inland slightly pass some interesting salt mines and giant cactuses and then to a water-filled crevice in the rocks called Las Grietas which again was another snorkeling opportunity although it was somewhat ruined by a large group of American students who were egging each other on to jump into the water from several metres up - with their teacher filming! Not sure any of them were actually interested in what was under the water and made our snorkeling somewhat tricky. After that we got back in the boat and headed back to town. Only after we´d got off the boat and walked off did we realize that we weren´t asked for any money - it looks like the agency you book with is supposed to take the cash but they never did with us! Still, we hadn´t been picked up and didn´t have a guide who could translate plus we´d paid an overinflated $10 for the water taxi so we thought that was justified!

After a quick shop for some snacks we headed to Tortuga (Turtle) Bay which is 3km from town on a paved path through yet more rocky scrubland. The first beach you come to is absolutely amazing - pure white sand for a kilometer with rolling waves that go out some way before getting deep. You can´t swim on this beach as the current are quite strong so its popular with surfers. There were more iguanas here also - wandering around the beach, going in for a swim, amazing. We walked to the second beach which is sheltered and perfect for snorkeling. We set up camp under a tree and ate our lunch and within a couple of minutes an army of finches descended to help us out with the crumbs - they were eating out of our hands! We then snorkeled for a bit looking for turtles or anything else but didn´t see much of note so crawled back out and had a wee siesta before heading off - very good timing because just as we left the American students turned up and ruined the peace!

Day 9 - Sun 21/12/08

Tim woke up at 5am this morning to watch the Quito vs Manchester United football game on TV whilst I stayed firmly dozing until it finished! Then we got up and went for a gentle 20min jog around town - nice way to wake up. We had booked a tour to Santa Fe island for today so headed downtown for that. This boat was a lot nicer than yesterday plus an English speaker was on board so we were happy! Our translator was called Javier, a young Ecuadorian guy who looked a little worse for wear; turned out he´d been watching the Quito vs Manchester United football game also so had been partying!

He was however very knowledgeable about the Galapagos and its wildlife and told us some interesting facts like, for example, marine iguanas are different colours depending on what colour algae they eat so some of them are more green, some more red etc. Also marine iguanas evolved here as a completely separate species as they needed to swim to get food and also they ended up with flatter faces to make it easier to scrape algae from the rocks.

We had our first snorkel just off Santa Fe where we were literally swimming with sea lions! They are very inquisitive and swim up really close before darting off which is a bit disconcerting as some of them are huge! Also saw some sting rays, very graceful creatures as well as lots of fish.We did some cruising round the rocks to see more birds also and saw lots of the famous blue-footed boobys as well as frigates, pelicans and gulls. After lunch on the boat we stopped at Garrapatero beach which was another lovely white sandy beach. Again, went for a walk inland and saw an old flamingo haunt which sadly has no more flamingos because, as Javier explained, the local people have a party on the beach every summer which then scares off the flamingos and some other animals. We do a bit more snorkeling in the sea and see lots more iguanas and huge orange crabs but nothing else of note. Then the boat heads back.

That afternoon we then headed to the Charles Darwin Research Center where the giant tortoises are being reared. They take the eggs from the wild tortoises and raise them in a ´nursery' for 2 years before they then go into 'training' for another 2 years which is an enclosure with lots of twigs, mud, not very obvious food etc in order to mimic conditions in the wild. Then they are taken back to their original island and reintroduced into the wild after being tagged etc. We then saw some actual giant tortoises and they are huge! Sadly Lonesome George now lives on another island but there was some info about him and the latest is that if he dies without managing to breed then he will be cloned in an attempt to keep his species from extinction.

Day 10 - Mon 22/12/08

Got up at 5.45 this morning in order to run to Tortuga Bay and back. We ran the 3.5km there from the hotel and had a little break to take in the amazing sunrise and empty beach before running back again. I was quite chuffed as haven´t managed to run that far in about 3 years and I felt fine. We then packed up and had our last breakfast - huge amounts of fruit and pancakes! Got to the airport fairly early so had fun watching the planes. Flight was fine and got back to Quito about 6pm before heading out for some food.