This is crossover day, so there are people leaving and joining the ship, and we get a period of quiet for a few hours on a very empty boat. First up though,(that was a 7.30am call for the Frigates), was a trip to the lovely soft sands of Santa Cruz where we saw more turtle trails, egg holes in the sand and some pink flamingos. The water here was lovely, no waves, clear, fantastic fish again, including small puffer/box fish in the shallows. Siena got her feet wet,...

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...

We actually slept the whole night - I fell asleep while Alan was reviewing the pictures of the day -and thatwas 9pm! Another 6.45am wake up call and whilst the anchor dropping at 6am had woken Alan, Sienaand me, Finn and Derry were still well out of it - but at last we seem to be on Ecuadorian time! We set off for James (Santiago) Island at 8am and landed on the black sand beach then set off on another walk. This was a walk of rock pools through the lava rocks (...

Day 2 A bad night for sleep - the seas were very rough and although no one was ill there were an awful lot of interruptions, with a lot of room swapping and not much slumber. The kids enjoyed the sensation of trying to walk and get breakfast with the ship moving so much. Pics tell it all, tortoises (not often seen in the wild), californian sea lions, iguanas, crabs, herons, marine iguanas, finches, landed in Urvina Bay where the swell was quite severe - made fo...

The kids were very excited flying over the islands trying to spot them; they've handled the flights really well, especially since the longest one they'd ever had previously has been an hour and a half! Landing in the Galapagos, we certainly felt a bit out of place wearing raincoats, jumpers, long trousers and walking boots! It was hot, sunny and 30 degrees! The airport is as you might expect, quite primitive. But it's a busy one, handling quite a few landings e...