OK so one of us needed to get ill - hopefully this is as bad as it gets (but I have my suspicions otherwise) but I was bedbound for the day - food, water or something wiped me out. Luckily just one day.

We left Alan to his bed (and hopefully some sleep) to visit Puerto Ayoras - home to 15,000 people and the Charles Darwin Centre. We arrived in the port through a myriad of boats anchored in the bay and got straight on the bus (although all Oscar wanted to do was stay in the kids playground right next to the bus stop). A 5 minute trip in the bus took us to the Darwin Research Centre where they run programs to protect the Galapagos wildlife through breeding tortoises & iguanas and encouraging locals to grow local fauna rather than import new plants.

We saw 1 & 2 year old tortoises which will be returned to their respective islands when 4-5 years old. We also saw lonesome George (the last tortoise from Pinta island) and Super Diego who was largely responsible for the growth of his species population from 15 to 1500 after he was 'discovered' in San Diego zoo and brought back to the Galapagos to show the 2 remaining males how to mate.

Then, after seeing a few land iguanas in the breeding programme, we were left to our own devices and deemed responsible enough to walk back through the town (down 1 street) to meet back at the dock at 11.30am. We stopped at the Darwin Centre shop to buy the obligatory T-shirts and post cards, then the kids couldn't resist the first 2 or 3 shops selling wooden tortoises and blue footed booby pens. This all took so long that Siena and Finn became concerned we would miss the zodiacs back to the ship and be abandoned - so any further browsing was disapproved of (represented by 2 children sitting outside the shop in question tutting and looking very cross). We did see some jewellery made from Spanish 'pieces of eight' which Finn was very interested in, but most shops sold the same thing and it all became quite samey.

A languid 15 minutes was spent at the harbour, meeting up with the Gardners and allowing everyone else to scramble to be on the next zodiac - we didn't quite understand what the rush was all about so as usual all the frigates took the last zodiac back and let the rest of the cruisers fight for the earlier boats!

It was my (alan) turn in the afternoon, feeling well enough to go with Finn and Siena to take a bus ride for 45 minutes to visit a huge lava hole - 3-4 metres high, high inland on Santa Cruz - then on to the National Park to see giant tortoises in the wild. They are quite cute but don't do very much ! We returned to the Legend with a grapefruit freshly picked from a tree - yes it's 'take only photos, leave only footprints' here but apparently it's OK to eat the local flora!

Back in the harbour, which seems quite run down by comparison to what you normally see in the UK or mainland Europe, it is still weird to see the crabs, pelicans and sea lions just hanging out around all the population! Everybody drives either mopeds or open 4wd trucks with 4-5 people hanging out in the back! There are 15000 people living on this island, and it seems very laid back, with most of the money coming in through the tourist boats alighting every day. So it's much more expensive here than on mainland Ecuador. And they have 2 football stadia, though I doubt they get packed very often - and I'm not sure how often Ecuadorian teams fly over for matches!

Back on board, business as usual for the evening, I was wiped out with my gentle excursion but managed to watch the briefing and this week's video of the cruise which was, naturally, for sale! Then we all crashed out and got a good night's sleep before a painfully early 6.15 wake up call !