We left our hostel in Quito at 5.30 to catch our flight to San Cristobal. Once at the airport we discovered it was $110 to enter the Galapagos National Park.This unexpected charge annoyed us all a little but if only we had known what the rest of the day had in store for us we wouldn't have bothered to complain…

Taking off was very exciting; we were going to the Galapagos!Our excitement was slightly dampened when we read the flight times in the onboard magazine and it dawned on us that we could possibly be flying to the wrong island!Calum was not convinced; surely there couldn't be a mistake like that?! We landed in the Galapagos and asked a member of staff "Donde estamos?"The confused security man replied "Santa Cruz". s***.

Luckily Ania's Spanish was good enough to suss out options for getting to the right island.We could either take a 2hour bus journey, followed by a 2 hour boat ride and then yet another bus journey or take a $400 aero-taxi.We opted for the more glamorous option, an 8 seater toy plane.

Finally we arrived in San Cristobal, where Maria, a local student, was waiting to meet us.She didn't seem to mind us arriving 4 hours late and found it amusing that Jorge had thought there was only one airport on the Galapagos.She took us to "Casa de Nelly", our home for the next two months.After dropping off our bags and meeting Nelly, Maria showed us around and told us which were the good places to eat, and which were the cheap but dirty.Or was it nice but dirty?She warned us of the "cold" temperatures, the average at this time of year is only 22oC.Despite this cold climate, we went home to cover ourselves in some 50+ sun cream and headed out to get a big bottle of water.On the way there Calum noticed sunburn on his legs but then remembered he'd been wearing trousers all day.On closer inspection and after a phone call to Dr Dad, we thought it was probably best to head to the hospital.After learning some interesting Spanish we went to the pharmacy to get an assortment of drugs.The day's events had been too much for Calum so he retired to Casa de Nelly.We ate chicken and plantain chips (Patacones), the perfect end to our first day walking in Darwin's footsteps...