Flipper

Dolphins seemed to like our boat and we even got a visit from a school of Pilot Whales too! Here’s a little vid I took here…

Galapagos Animals!

The animals are all there waiting for you on their islands and you can’t help but bump into them. Literally sometimes. Some you need luck for, and we certainly seemed to have that! Sighting Hammer Head sharks is rare and we came across six of them while snorkelling. I only saw two. Whales and Dolphins seemed to love our boat too and we had three encounters.. more of that later.

OK for Sophie and Emily… here are some of the animals we saw!

Small World!

A few thousand miles and one of the most unique places on earth and who should we find but our friend from good old Brighton, Tam! We knew she would be here and she’d found out when our boat would be docking but as the day went on we realised the time was wrong. Tam was leaving Galapagos the next day and we were in danger of missing her. We really really wanted to meet up and bounded off up the town with the sketchiest of directions to find her hostel. She wasn’t in! Probably out to dinner we thought and spent the next 30 mins before we had to get back on our boat searching the bars and restaurants of Puerto Ayora trying to think where a Tam would be. No luck! We scribbled a message and stuffed it in her door. We made our way back to the dock and with literally 2 seconds to go before getting the dingy back to our boat, The Angelique, Tam came bounding down the quay! A few tears and hugs later and our guide had arranged to pick us up in the dungy at midnight giving us a good few hours out on the town. Yay!

Here we are in the Rock Bar in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz

We’re meeting Tam again in Bolivia. See you soon!

Galapagos

If I’ve ever felt spoilt on this trip it’s go to have been here. So hard to describe this amazing place so some pictures may be better…

That’s a Dolphin under the rigging!

It’s quite strange at first because you quickly find out that people do live on these islands, at least 4 of them have human populations albeit very small and contained outside of Santa Cruz. There are two ways you can see the Islands, by staying in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz and getting day trips out to various islands or by taking a boat trip which I think can be 4,5 or 8 days usually. We went for the 8 day trip which is pretty much the longest you can do and I’m so glad we did. Every day, just as you thought you couldn’t see anything better or stranger or more bizarre, there it was!

Luck is needed to see some of these amazing animals but mostly they are all just there waiting on their islands for you to stroll up to. Three unique things about this place I think, one is that fact that none of the animals, birds or fish have a fear of humans, each island (there are over 20) has different things on it, most unique to each island and lastly that there is such a difference in the landscapes of each island, you can go from tropical jungle to rocky outcrop to the most (and I really do mean most) idyllic white sand beach to 100 year old desolate lava flow\moonscape in the space of a days sailing.

We chose the Angelique (below) as our boat and I’d definitely recommend it even though it was noisy, smelt of diesel and the water pump failed! It had such character, the crew and cook were brilliant and it really looked the part.