Bachas Beach (Day 1)

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We woke up very excited and got trusty Antonio to take us to the airport, got scanned for seeds and plants (not weapons) and got on our flight.
The flight took about 2 hours and we were surprised to get a chicken salad during it which was nice. The air hostesses on this flight were top notch 5/6. Not much else happened on this flight apart from getting gassed out by insect repellant just before landing.We landed and were shipped onto a bus with our luggage joining us when we got to the boat. It took about 20 minutes to get from the airport to the dock where we encountered our first taste of animals, sea lions chilling out on a bench, Sally lightfoot crabs, jellyfish and blue footed boobies.
A small boat took us to our boat the Guantanamera a 2 storey boat which had been refurbished from being a dive boat. Onboard was Alix (the bartender and waiter) Johan (our English/Spanish/German/partly FrenchSpeaking guide) Diego (the vice captain and driver of 1 of the 2 boats) Eugenio (the chef who was extremely good especially considering the size of the kitchen) Vicenta (the captain who looked abit like Pele) and 2-3 other deck hands.
We had a quick brief from Johan about the rules of the galapagos then we were shown our cabins.The cabins were a set of bunk beds with a wet room en suite, the staff had rolled up our towels and sheets to make the room look nice and to be honest it was alot nicer than I expected. We had a meal after we had dropped our bags I our cabins fresh Tuna steaks, veg and rice (very nice).
Our first landing was Bachas beach in North Seymour where we went up the beach seeing hundreds of Sally lightfoot crabs and alot of Marine Iguanas. Johan took us to a lagoon where we were very lucky to see 3 flamingoes gathering food. We were very lucky because flamigoes were out of season and should have migrated to the Caribbean by now. After this we walked back to our landing spot seeing a white tip shark from the beach very close to shore. We then did about 40 minutes of snorkeling/beachtime (wasn't too happy about getting in the water after the shark sighting but found some balls) didn't see much snorkelling a couple of fish that was about it.
We then headed back to the boat where the chef had put mini pizza breads on and fresh water melon juice. We had an hour and then it was teatime, we had beef stew, rice and dried plantane and fresh fruit to finish.After tea the crew got all their uniforms on and we had a welcome drink of what tasted like coconut milk, white rum and cinnamon, I joined in on the salut then slyly tipped mine over the edge of the boat (eurggh). After this we went to sleeping until the captain started the engine (around 2am) then not getting much sleep after that.

Muchos love

Brown

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