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The advice we managed to scrounge from other tourists about how to do Galapagos Islands on the cheap ( ie not pay +US $2000 each) was to buy a last minute air ticket from Guayaquil to Galapogos and then once on the main island (Santa Cruz) buy a last min ticket on a cruise ship (well catamaran).
We climbed off the bus at 7am and dragged our wet backpacks (bus was as waterproof as a Landrover!) to the airport and discovered 3 airlines were flying that morning. The cheapest is completely sold out! And the next available airline was an extra US$100 each (LAN airlines)...so we decided to wait on the standby list of airline el cheapo, and we were in luck! There were only 2 other ladies in front of me...until...I realized the first lady had 7, I repeat SEVEN kids with her! That is preposterous! What is this a school tour?! Is she gonna take all of them with her! They should ration the tickets, max 2 or 4 per person! Aghh what are our chances...We waited and waited, LAN ticket sales were closing in a few short minutes... oooooooh, should we hang tight or cough up the $ 100? With 7 min to go the lady gave me a voucher for 2 spare seats. To me she instructed 'you go ticket counter and pay', to Tim she said 'you go scan luggage, pay tax. GO GO GO!' - clearly she has watched too many CSI movies.
With our even heavier wet backpacks we ran around the airport like blue arsed flies and made it through the gate together with the lady and her 7 brats! How do you like that!
On the island we picked up another back packing couple who had the same idea as us, so we teamed up and approached tour operator after tour operator for a last min cruise offer but no one was coming to the back packers party. The ferry to island San Cristobal (where the cruise ships departed) left in 15 min. Feeling a little defeated we flopped back in the chair at this grotty 'shop' where a guy had agreed to let us store our bags for free. The woman there approaches us, 'you looking for cheap holiday? Ok I sell for you 4 day 3 night cruise leaving now now now' (sigh enough with the CSI effects). It was a pretty good rate and well the cheapest we had been offered all day, but only 2 spaces available... We looked over at the other couple but they had been side tracked by some other fast talking salesman, so we signed the contract and it was a flurry of paper work, phone calls to the ferry to wait for us, a bicycle race between the guy and Tim to the ATM to withdraw the cash while the woman jumped up on the chair reaching for fins and googles mounted on the wall and throwing them at me from over her shoulder...' what size you, this one, ok good!' without even waiting for a response from me. Tim and the man arrived back richer, paid the woman, the other backpackers were smug with their negotiations and everyone was happy. The end. Not quite! We ran down to the ferry with the man carrying my back pack...haha he looked as though he was going to burst a foofy valve. We're on board, heading for our cruise. Yay :)
We climbed on board just in time for a very hearty scrumptious dinner with dessert and headed for bed in our private cabin! Not quite the roughing it we had been used to.
The next morning we did a land tour on island Espanola. (south galapagos) the animal life here was fantastic!! As the rubber ducks pulled up on the sand the sea lions dived and tossed in the water right next to us, we were stepping over land and marine iguanas basking in the sun lying in our path, seagulls were like low flying duck above our heads and blue footed boobies marched on the path right past us! I couldn't believe how many animals we saw and how tame they were. The main reason for this is these animals have very few natural predators and humans have only been allowed to the islands as tourists taking pics or as naturalists usually involved in feeding and breeding programs.
Each afternoon we snorkelled but my absolute favourite was at island Floreana, corona de Diablo (devils crown). Besides the fact that we saw whited tipped reef shark, turtles, sting rays, tropical fish, we saw sea lions and they saw us! A baby sea lion swam up to the group twitching it's nose, 2 of us dived down and it followed us, twirling and spinning around us like an acrobat in water! Soon the whole group was diving down and more and more sea lions came to play! The babies were especially cute and inquisitive as their snout came so close to your nose you could have easily head butted the thing.
On our last afternoon we visited post office bay. For years whalers would leave items in a huge emptied tortoise shell as a collection and drop off point, nowadays people leave letters with the idea that someone else from your country will pick up your letter and post it for you. So with any luck you will get your letters when the next set of South Africans pass through :) we picked up 2 to post. (vaalies!)
On the very last morning we made our way back to Santa Cruz island and visited the Darwin centre and met lonely George - a huge and very old tortoise and the only one of his kind. To me all the giant tortoises looked the same but apparently they're different!
So after standing at the port with the other 6 cruise goers and a mountain of luggage the 8 of us decided to catch a ferry to island Isabela but not before visiting Tortuga Bay (turtle bay)! It was a 3 km walk through some pretty thick vegetation before emerging onto a beautiful long beach with white sand and crystal blue water. Wow! It was beautiful and full of life! The black rocks were covered in marine iguanas, pelicans were bobbing in the waves like beach balls and in the shallow waves 30 to 50cm sharks were swimming in the surf! Yes! I totally waded out there and tried to catch them on film, occasionally one would come to close and get washed all the way up and squirm and wriggle like crazy to get back into the receding sea. We walked a bit further and found a calm lagoon with small eagle rays peacefully flying through the water. That's where we decided to take a dip before rushing back for our ferry!
On island Isabela we used our group discount for just about everything - accommodation in Puerto Villamil, a snorkeling tour to Los Tuneles, walking tour to volcano Sierra negro, diving and even breakfast! The snorkeling at LosTuneles was great! The volcanic rock formed a series of rock pools which are all really shallow - between plinth and neck deep and as you may have guessed from the name, all connected through 'tunnels'. (more like bridges that we snorkeled under to get from pool to pool.) The hi light of this marine Mecca were the dozens of white tipped reef shark, we must have seen about 12 to 14 in total which measured up to 1 meter in length. Amongst them were huge turtles which glided right past us in what seemed like an eternal state of bliss. The 'cool duuuude' turtles from Nemo are a good reflection of the large turtles we met here! The boat ride out there was just as exciting - we spotted hammerhead sharks and HUGE manta rays. The group consensus is that the manta ray was anywhere between 4 to 4.5m wide!! It was HUGE- wider than our boat! So awesome to see, pictures just don't do it justice!
The last day on island Isabela we had a dive booked to island Tortuga (not to be confused with Tortuga bay at island santa cruz) and then a ferry back to Santa cruz to catch the flight back to Guayaquil. Dive cancelled!! What! I was so disappointed. How could we have come all this way and NOT dive!!! *pout* , *cry*, *tantrum* !*#! :(
So as a birthday prezie we changed our flight to 2 days later and dived once at island Santa Cruz at Gordon Rocks - a promise of schools of hammerheads. Gordon rocks is known for thermo clines, where you have currents of hot 27degree water with cold 14 degree water and our dive was exactly that! Surprisingly the viz and sea life was comparable to Sodwana Bay- well less tropical fish and coral and more large sea life, such as more turtles, hammerhead sharks, reef shark, eagle rays, sting rays, lobsters too! Unfortunately we never saw the promised schools of 30 to 40 hammerheads, just 2 or 3 circling above us, but it was still cool to see these funny creatures.
Dive done, Nooww I'm ready to leave Galapagos a happy girl :). But we still had one afternoon free! So we rented bicycles and visited the giant tortoise reserve, Rancho Primicias, just outside Santa Rosa town. (approx 20km from Puerto Ayora where we were staying) We walked around the thick grass spotting tortoises munching on fallen guavas. I forgot to mention both islands Santa Cruz and Isabela are like guava orchards with guava trees laden with guavas available for any willing fruit picker to help themselves...and I did - thank you. I have a brilliant pic with a giant tortoise with guava all over his face just like a 5 year old with chocolate all over his hands and face- it was so cute I couldn't help myself but continue to pick guavas from the surrounding trees and feed the tortoise like a Tamagotchi (remember those electronic pets?) I hope the tortoise doesn't pop like the electronic pets did from over feeding. We also saw a large tortoise squashing this smaller tortoise by sitting on it with its shell, the 2 shells clunking together like 2 rocks...oh my word I couldn't believe it - the bigger one is trying to kill the little one! A tour guide came past with his British brigade marching behind and he explained the mating ritual - a really bad design if you ask me.
Although Galapagos is an expensive place, especially with Ecuador adopting the US dollar as their currency, it was totally worth it - a sea donkeys paradise! (a term we learnt from our israeli cruise goers)
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