Glorious Galapagos

As you can see the wildlife here is not as understated as it is at home. Frigate birds (or friggin' birds as we called them) come in two varieties - great and magnificent - and you can see that they really make an effort to impress. We first saw frigate birds in Brazil but here they nest and you can walk really close to them.  That's the theme of the wildlife - everything is so tame you have to watch your step to save standing on something. 

It's not so difficult to tell which of the boobies this is - we saw the two sorts of red footed, the Nazca and yes you guessed it - the blue footed boobies (they usually come in pairs - Ha Ha).

We flew up to Guayaquil from Lima but did not really see anything apart from the hotel because of a big demonstration in town which meant we couldn't go to the malecon but I don't think we missed much. Next morning we flew out to Baltra - the airport sits on a small island just off the top of Santa Cruz Island and we took the bumpity bus down to Puerto Ayora.  

Top Tip -If you had the time the cheapest way to get a cruise is to turn up here and just enquire if there are last minute berths - two people on our cruise did that and got a real bargain.  We walked along to Tortuga bay and swam in the mangrove lagoon and watched the birds before returning for a lobster dinner. The next morning I took the last opportunity for a run before being confined on board. Then back to meet up with the others on the boat - 2 Canadians and 8 Germans. 

There followed 8 days of island hopping and roughly 2,500 photos of spectacular scenery and amazing wildlife.  Each island is good for seeing different things and we were pretty lucky to spot the things we were supposed to. If you wanted to know what particular kind of beast it was (as above ) it is a pretty good bet just to say it is a Galapagos ........ or a Darwin's ........ Hence a Galapagos penguin or  Galapagos hawk.

 Below is one of the loveliest birds but difficult to photograph - the red billed tropic bird with its beautiful  dangling tail ......

Landings tended to be for a morning walk and an afternoon walk with a chance to snorkel on 4 days. It certainly is a slower pace and you got into the habit of just standing, ambling and gawking. Despite the slow pace you also feel the need to sleep a lot - although that may have something ot do with the large amounts of (very good) food we had. After each trip ashore there were snacks such as banana fritters or pancakes with various juices just to make sure we put on lots of weight.

One of the exemplars of this lifestyle is the sea lion.  There were hundreds of these and their life seems to consist of sunning themselves on the beach, feeding and playing in the surf.  The only stressed looking ones were the big males who constantly patrolled in the water and honked to keep other males away.  The babies were really cute and it was just the right season to see them tiny - the hawk above was hanging around to enjoy the rest of the placenta on the ground.

There were two itineraries our boat follows - the first one mainly around Isabella on the West side which is the largest island and involved more time on land - and the one we did visiting more islands to teh East and South. We ended up in a few long overnight sails which on two occasions were VERY rough, therefore:

Top Tip 2 - take along scopolamine patches which you stick behind your ear for 72 hours and prevent sea sickness.  They worked for us.  

This ugly looking bugger is a waved albatross chick and we saw the parents doing a groovy courtship dance - they apparently mate for life. I took along the DVD of Master and Commander and when they got to the Galapagos islands in the film I realised the shots were of the very place we'd been that day. Spooky. 

This was taken on the last morning - turtles coupling in a mangrove lagoon - making use of every last minute we were off at 6am to visit the lagoon and saw turtles, sharks and two types of ray- then back to the boat for a last breakfast.  

Swimming with sea lions was great as well - such a contrast to see them swoop and glide in the water instead of galloomphing around on the land.  The Giant Tortoises versus turtles are even more contrasting. Turtles in the water look like they are flying whereas tortoises move with almost glacial serenity chewing as they go.

So if you can visit the Galapagos then do so - you won't regret it.