The excitement was at fever pitch as we rose early that morning heading to Guayaquil's international airport. It was the first time in a long time that I was as giddy as 7-year old full up with Coca-Cola. Over the months that I have been travelling, everything that I have seen and experienced has been amazing but your eyes tend to get lazy to the things that you see, where some of the places look similar to something that you may have seen weeks previous. But this time, it was different. I had only read about it, saw some photos of them and watched the odd David Attenborough documentary on these amazing islands, but after shelling out a small fortuune and at the same time not knowing what exactly we were really going to see, I couldn't wait to set foot on the Galapagos Islands.

The flight from Guayaquil to one of the two main airports within the archipelago called to Baltra took about two hours or so and setting foot in that arrivals hall was so surreal. I'm blessed to have visited the islands but you always wanted more as I found myself muttering bad things about the young children in the arrivals hall who being brought to these islands to be participating in a National Geographic expedition. I was bulling before I even left the airport! These small kids, come on, they'll remember nothing in years to come, too much money I say, but then again I shouldnt be jealous as the galapagos is not a zoo, theres fantastic wildlife everywhere but there's a certain amount of luck as I later found out to spotting these animals, so I kept my jealous mouth shut.

Baltra airport is built on a small island, previously used by the yanks as a refuelling point during WW2, so to get to the main island close by called Santa Cruz, we had to take a small ferry that crossed the shallow turquoise waters to where the buses left. Hoards of tourist jumped on any available buses that brought us the hour and fifteen minutes across the highlands of the island into the port town of Puerto Ayora. Our boat wasn't sailing for another two days, so we got into a pickup truck (taxi's on the island) up to our hostel for the next two days, a place called Galapagos Best Home Stay. The hostels eccentric owner, Kevin, originally from the states but married to a local women was our host. The way he spoke wasn't fluid at all, but spoken more like in sections with a high pitched affirmation at the end of each sentence. It was like as if English wasn't his first language and he had just learnt certain phrases that he could use with us, hoping we wouldn't ask a question in return. Anyways, the place was very clean and comfortable and just a short distance from the centre of the little town. One of the nice touches that Kevin gave to his guests, was that he gave a free walking tour of Puerto Ayora, telling us the best places to eat both expensive and cheap and where he hides when his wife comes looking for him when he's not at mass! The pub, the fecker! Along by the port, where the fishermen came in for the day lay a filleting station where, well, where the fish were filleted. It seems to have the same daily residents there day in, day out, the big huge sea lion and his smaller mate, the ten or so pelicans, baby marine iguana's basking in the sun, the vibrant sally light-footed crabs clinging to the port walls and this was all just down at the port, we weren't even started yet! The best thing about it is that these creatures are so docile, there are within feet of you and its up to you to stay two metres from them as they have no problem coming into your two metre zone, thats for sure!

The Charles Darwin centre is one of the main draws on the island, a short walk from the port where the most famous of the giant tortoises lived up until last year, Lonesome George sadly passing away from old age believe it or not, with some estimating that he was more over 100 years of age. The really sad thing about this though is, that after multiple times of trying of stimulate his sexual affections for another female tortoise, was that the Pinta Island tortoise is now extinct as we know it. The centre itself has many other tortoises in captive breeding to ensure that this doesnt happen again but its a long, slow, ongoing process with many, many knock backs in fertility, a bit like the Chinese panda's.

Another one of the great attractions to visit on Isla Santa Cruz is a visit to Tortuga bay. A half hour walk from the port down a lovely path through volcanic rock forests which leads to this beach in the bay. With the white powdery sand sticking between your toes and being accompanied with feroicous waves breaking off the nearby reefs, allows one to be so far away from reality you have to hit yourself with a bate to realise that this is actually real. At the end of the beach, we get a chance to get up close and personal with some adult marine iguana's who were, in a group, slowly making their way from the shade of the mangroves and dunes across the beach in front of us to have a dip into the clear blue water. Their slow movers on land as it is, not wanting to exert much energy upon themselves, so I took this as a great opportunity to get down onto the sand with them, of course two metres away, to get some great shots of them up real close as they hiss the salty water through their nostrils. Just past where we spent time with the marine iguana's there was this beautiful enclosed bay, as flat as a straight egde, hidden from the ferocity of the ocean waves was where we rented kayaks and paddled out into the bay to see what we could find and it wasnt before long when we hit jack pot. Close to the mangroves, where the water was shallow, three black tipped reef shakes swam and snaked their way under our kayaks. They were so close to us that when you looked in the water, the water went black with their colour, they were that close and in later inspection with my oar, the depth was less than a metre beneath us. Paddling on from that, the Galapagos's famed resident, the Blue Footed Boobie swan close by to us, dropping a big s***e in the water that floated away like a poached egg, the dirty yoke! See what I did there! Its all peaceful as we paddling into the middle of the quiet bay, you could hear a pin drop, if a pin made a sound landing on water, but then all of a sudden, we hear a burst of air coming from some direction. Nearly falling out of the kayak, we see a pacific green sea turtle doing his rounds just coming up for air to have a look. This place was teeming with wildlife and all I wanted to do was to just dive in with goggles on to see what was going on underneath. And just to top it off, a manta ray just passing us by. Sher why not. Whilst we were there in that enclosed bay for less than an hour and we had already seen so much and we hadnt even started our 8-day sailing trip. All we wanted was more, more and more!t

Back at Puerto Ayora, not wanting to waste time, we got into a water taxi that brought us to an inaccessible park of the island so that we could hike the short distance to Las Grietas, which is a huge fissue in the rocks made so during a volcanic eruption many years ago. Las Grietas is a great place to go to do some cliff jumping into the clear, fresh water below. Having zero upper body strenght, I dont know how I managed it, but maybe climbing trees with Harry O'Doherty many years ago as a child allowed me to get to the highest point. In a professional judges mind, my entry would have been penalised, having executed a ¾ twist, somersault and pike perfectly but the entry, even the judges could see that I had nearly ruptured my bottom with the impact. I gingerly swam on my back to the safety of the rocks to nurse my rear in preparation for my second attempt later that day.

The day had come, the day that we were to start our sailing trip around the western and northern islands of the archipelago. We made it back to the airport at Baltra as that was where the group was gathering from as some were flying in directly from the mainland on the first day of sailing. There we met our group, the local Javier, a young but experienced fully qualified naturalist guide who was to accompany us everywhere over the next eight days. The group as we stood were, again, from all over, Myself and Karly, Sitar and Sam (Aus), Joel (US), Teresa (Can), Laura (UK), Juliana (Br), Maddie, Nadine, Bernard, Andrea, Ruddy, Christina (Ger) and Suzanne from (Au), a good bunch of people all around the same age. After a breifing on board our new vessel called the Guantanamera and meeting all the crew on board, lunch was served and we were off to our first Island for the afternoon called Las Bachas, a small beach on Santa Cruz island where we were free to go snorkelling with the amazing fishes there or to just walk the beach watching the sally light-footed crabs man their territory along the rocks. Or then you had the ghost crabs walking sideways along the sand into their little networks of underground passages once one of us tourists come to close or if you didnt like that, you could watch the Galapagos heron stalk the sand dunes where the pacific green sea turtles lay their nests, having a good nose around trying to find some freshly laid eggs to feast on. The water was teaming with sea life aswell from turtles and marine iguana's doing their thing or just watching the brightly coloured parrot fishes, damselfish, blue chined parrot fish, orange side trigger fish and many more smaller indistinguisable fishes going about their daily business! Thanks on board fish directory, otherwise I wouldnt have a bulls notion what they were!

Back on board, dinner was served and each and every meal was great during the whole eight days of sailing, with a wide variety of salads, rice or pasta, a veggie dish and a meat dish, complete with desert. We couldnt have asked for more if we wanted it. Dinner was normally served around 7ish and when we were finished we used to have a briefing on top deck where Javier would explain things that we saw today, where we were sailing tonight when we slept and what we would be seeing and doing tomorrow and this was all explained on a large projector screen. A really professional job and we all so happy that we had chosen this boat over others. Everything had been to plan and it was what we had expected and more during the course of the first day.

The sea that first night were rough as we headed north towards the island of Genovesa. I decided to not take one of the complimentary sea sickness tablets that we on offer as I usually have a tough stomach but it wasnt my stomach that was at me, it was more or less the side to side constant motion that had me woken for the majority of the night. After breakfast, we headed out in the panga's (dingy's) to the beach there where we would go for a 2hr hike along the beach to see what we could see. The sea at this stage hadnt given up, it was as choppy as ever and the lingering dark cloud above didnt make the rest of the day look to promising. At least it wasnt raining and I wouldnt get wet, or thats atleast what I thought. So as we were just pulling onto the beach, you had to reverse the panga into the shoreline to make it easier to get out, but we turned at the wrong moment, hitting a massive wave that absolutely drenched me and my camera that I hadnt protected. I was furious but in the end it was own fault, so now I'm without some camera functions including movie mode, the detramony to my own ignorance, you dont mess with the sea. Anyways on dry land, we saw young sea lions suckling on their mothers, the one loud territorial male making his presence known with all his b****es around him. Up in the trees or general shrubbery, we saw lots of nazca boobies, red-footed boobies, great frigates which have only 400 pairs in existance, lava gulls (my fav) which are the rarest bird species on earth, yellow waublers and more! It was a visual feast as we walked the small trail ignoring all conversations taking as many photographic memories as we could from it.

It was then back on the boat for a snack and to jump into our wetsuits for some snorkelling and I must say I was gooing for it at this stage, as this island is the most common location in the archipelago to spot the mysterious hammerhead shark. As I mentioned, the weather was gak, so the visibility was poor and the closer we got to the rocky outcrop that line the side of the island, you'd easily get washed up on the rocks if you weren't careful. Its important to note that Genovesa and all the islands of the Galapagos are volcanic islands, once a volcano or maybe an overspill of lava. Genovesa is a collapsed volcano, where the bay is probably 60% of what the crator looked like eons ago and which was now falling into the ocean. We were unfortunate not to spot any hammerheads that day but what we still saw was better than anything you'd see in Lough Rea on a damp Sunday after mass. The water was icy cold, even through the wet suits, so after an hour or so of looking over your shoulder for the hammerheads, we were back on boat for lunch and to get changed into normal clothes once again to go to El Barranco on Genovesa for an afternoon walk. I must say it wasnt my most favourite of places, it was a barren outcrop on the top where you could see the ocean all the way to the horizon and up there, the inhabitants were mainly the Nazca boobies closeby for what I saw, doing their dance to attract the females, the red-footed boobies, the seldom seen Small Eared Galapagos owl, who's colours are the same as the brown/orange dried out rock that covers El Barranco and, oh yeah, 1,000,000 estimated sea birds that were too far away to identify.

We sailed eight hours overnight after dinner to our next location, the island of Barthelome. Barthelome is the only island in the Galapagos that isnt inhabited by any species, bar the seldom seen Galapagos hawk which we didnt see there that day. Basically its a massive out crop, barren as be damned but it has a superb view of the island in front of us called Isla Del Santiago which is probably the most famous photo of the Galapagos if you were ever to Google it. That day was overcast so the colours didnt really pop, I went up and down the rock and got the mediocre shots I wanted and walked back down to the small little dock to catch the panga back to the boat, stepping over a sleeping sea lion who was in my way. The late mornings activities were yet more snorkelling in the calm, cold waters of Sullivan Bay off the coast of Isla Del Santiago. This dip in the water treated us to amazing starfish which were beautifuly alined along the sea bottom, an eagle ray waving by us, a pufferfish, a playful sea lion who darted in and all around us and then to be passed by at somewhat like 30mph, a penguin fishing for lunch, if you dont mind. Those little fella's go so so fast! We then went by panga to another bay but I was tired at this stage so stayed on dry land only to be buried completely in the sand by some of the group with only my snorkle visable to allow me to breath! Later that evening, back on board, we sailed during that afternoon to the island of Isabella sitting up shot gun at the front watching large tuna's jumping from the hull of the boat and male frigates above us flying with us all the way, as the sun went down for the evening. Pure and utter bliss!

On Isabela, we pulled up at a town called Puerto Villamil and went to visit the wetlands. We had an option to visit the highlands and the dormant volcano of Cerro Negra and the wild giant tortoises that live there but the visibilty in the distance was poor and that meant nothing but rain. So down at the wetlands, the rock strewn coast was littered with many, many marine iguana's that are so great to capture on camera, some crabs, lava tunnels and endemic flora to the island. Just off the main road, we said we'd go looking for some wild giant tortoises and eagle eye'd P spots one right away, munching in the dense undergrowth. We went to have a look at him and it was great to see one up close and personal in its local environment, away from the captive breeding centres, that are necessary on the other islands. However, later that day, we did visit yet another one of these centres, this one housing over 800 giant tortoises ranging in ages from embryo's in small bottles to the big daddy's and mammy's who walked gently around their paddocks. A much nicer environment for some reason at this centre compared to the Charles Darwain centre as we saw more, with more detail and we now had a better understanding of what these centres are all about. That night after dinner, we set sail for our next stopping point, Elizabeth Bay on Isabela's west coast.

Elizabeth Bay was a panga visit with no place to pull over and step onto land. It was more a short visit to view what could be seen on the tall rocky cliffs. At this stage, we're seeing some of the regulars but one of the ones we hadnt seen yet was the flightless cormorant, one of two flightless birds that I know of, after the ostrich, of course that I had to inform Javier about! The green mangroves that we then motored through were so quiet, the water was calm, the clouds had cleared giving great light and this made it great to see the pacific green turtle and its cousin, the seldom seen hawksbill turtle casually floating by underneath our panga's. Back on board, we set sail for the short distance to Urbina Bay and we were greeted with a school of dolphins swimming right at the hull and in the distance I could see dorsil fins of a pod of whales which I immediately thought were orca's but later turned out to be minky whales. Whatever species they were, they were amazing to see! The waters of Urbina Bay were freezing and it was choppy, but what made this bay so surreal was that it was absolutely full of pacific green sea turtles munching dinner off the rocks submerged underneath the water. The water wasnt clear so we didnt know until the last minute that we were right in front of one, two, three, four turtles all dining away. I managed to see one swim away from me, a male it turned out to be, and as I swam over him quite close, I could see that he was actually longer in length and bigger in width than I was with my arms stretched out. Gentle giants of the deep I thought. The beaches of Urbina Bay was like a graveyard for the marine world where raised corral died, skeletons of ancient fish littered the sand and unfortunately a shell of a giant tortoise that had come to die could be seen there. Whilst walking along the path, we came across three land iguana's, these boys being super rare to see. Like the marine iguana's only larger, coloured in the most brilliant burnt yellow of colours. Their not as curious as the marine iguana's so we had to stay our distance to ensure that they wouldnt sneak away and not give us the photo op's that we all wanted.

The following morning was a bit different to the wake up call that I had become used to. We had sailed overnight and moored in a bay called Tagus Cove and there seemed to have been more boats arriving after we moored that night. One of the boats moored too close and at 6am with the underwater current, the boat swung into another, giving our boat a right cracking, breaking some of the upper railings from the deck. Nothing major but shocking all the same when your below deck not knowing whats going on. The hike we had on the mainland of Tagus cove wasnt great with dry vegatation, no animals only a seal who had come to die. The poor guy, the smell off him was terrible, so later on that day we sailed during the day to the island of Fernandina and Espinosa point for some better viewings. The weather was great when we landed and this was a great place to see animals that we hadnt seen before such as the Galapagos hawk, the largest colony of marine iguana's in the archipelago as they are endemic to the area, a beached turtle, sealion pups feeding on their mothers and a right whale carcass just washed up on shore. The wildlife there was as good underwater as it was on land, seeing such a different variety of wildlife including of course the pacific green sea turtles, massive diamond rays, a puffer fish and the rarely seen bull head shark! Amazing to see such a varied range of wildlife that I hadnt seen yet and the smallish bull head shark, well!

We had a long journey overnight to get to our next destination, Espuma Beach on the island of Santiago. There was no trail on land just a beautiful beach for us to wander along where we could see one of the main nesting areas for the pacific green sea turtle on the archipelago. When we were there, it had already been raided by herons presumably, seeing broken shells, a little dead turtle and an unincubated one. Poor little guys. On this beach, we had the best chance of getting shots of the Galapagos hawk. We were lucky enough to see a few of them just sitting pretty in the trees that lines the beach which made for once again great photos. To get back on board the boat, we could either wait for the panga to arrive or we could snorkel back. Four of us decided to snorkel around the shores and then back to the boat and we werent left disappointed. The four of us hung as a group in the water and what swam right under us was a 2 metre long white tipped reef shark, just waving around the in the current! Fantastic to see such a creature so up close and personal with me being in the same environment. Swimming with sharks. Done! After lunch we sailed 3hrs to another island called Rabida and of course we regailed our stories to the rest of the group about our shark encounter! We had a few more snorkelling chances, so I was hoping that everyone would get a chance to spot one of these creatures in the water themselves.

Rabida is a red sand beach, like the colour of a young red wine made so from the iron that comes from the lava rocks on the island. It was just teeming with wildlife once again with sea lions everywhere, american oyster catchers, the galapagos mocking bird, the Galapagos hawk, sally light-footed crabs and marine iguana's. For me, it was one of the best beaches to capture photographs and the contrast between the sand, the animals, the sky and sea were just simply amazing! We then got the chance to go back in the water for yet more snorkelling. The video of the week was then captured with all in a ten second window, a pacific green sea turtle munching in front of us, then seconds later a sea lion came to play and as I looked over my shoulder, a white tipped reef shark swam beneath us. Everyone had seen the shark this time and spirits we so high as we got back on board to take in what we had actually seen today.

It was an early start at 6am as it was the last day of our sailing trip around the Galapagos. We took the panga's in the freezing morning air to the white sand beaches of Mosquera, one of the smallest in the archipelago. It was a beautiful place to finish our trip as we watched sea lions basking in the morning sun as it broke over the horizon. I got some great snaps there too, some of my favourites of the whole trip, especially with one little inquisitive fella (sea lion) wanting to come up and basically sit on my lap!

It was sad to end such an amazing ten days. I had never thought that the Galapagos Islands were going to be this diverse, so abundant with wildlife and we were so lucky with some amazing weather. Its exactly what everyone says about it, there's no place like it on earth but its yet so difficult to explain. It was definately worth every last penny and I'd go again in the morning if i had a chance.

So to leave you heres a quote from the man himself about what it is the Galapagos Islands are all about, " I never dreamed that islands about 50 or 60 miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly equal height, would have been differently tenanted; but we shall soon see that this is the case. It is the fate of most voyagers, no sooner to discover what is most interesting in any locality, than they are hurried from it; but I ought, perhaps, to be thankful that I obtained sufficient materials to establish this most remarkable fact in the distribution of organic beings" Charles Darwin 1845.