Flamingos and Turtles and Sharks...oh my!

I am nearing the end of my 4 weeks on the Galapagos Islands - sigh! I volunteered for 3 weeks with Jatun Sacha in the highlands of San Cristobal Island. The main purpose of the station is to remove the invasive plants (mainly mora = blackberry) and replant endemic plants (scalesia). There were an awesome bunch of volunteers and I had a lot of fun and learn lots about Galapagos conservation. AND I am insect bite free! Yeah! I also ate (unaware at the time) donkey meat. I don't recommend it.

LOW POINT
The first Wednesday here I fell sick with giardia and remained sick for 3 weeks! I didn't eat for 2 weeks and had to go to the San Cristobal "Hospital" twice. The first time they put me on an IV for dehydration, and pumped me up with pain killers and antibiotics. The second time I went back to the hospital after a week of feeling no better and found out I had now had gastroenteritis (from a reaction to the antibiotics). Sigh! So with another jab of pain killers and a new batch of pills I was told not to eat fried foods, eggs, citrus foods (basically everything we eat at the station). So I decided to leave the station (1 week early) and spend my last week on Santa Cruz trying to get better. Mission accomplished.

HIGH POINTS
So after that depressing saga - here are the good points of the trip. Luckily these FAR out way the bad.

I went on a 4 day tour of the islands with some of the other volunteers. The islands are amazing and are all so different. We explored Floreana, Isabela, Santa Cruz, and Santa Fe Islands. Saw Giant Tortoises (for which the Galapagos Islands are named after), including the famous "Lonesome George" - the last known survivor of his subspecies (from Pinta Island) at the Charles Darwin Research Station. We also got to see a lot of other fauna including blue-footed boobies, marine and land iguanas, sea turtles, white-tipped reef sharks, flamingos, a lot of sea lions, lava lizards, Darwin finches (birds which helped Darwin formulate his theory of natural selection), pelicans, frigate birds, humpback whales, and more! We packed in a lot of stuff - snorkelling, horse riding, visiting volcanos, craters, lava tunnels and pirate caves!

I went diving twice (total of 4 dives) to Kicker Rock (off San Cristobal) and Gordon Rocks (off Santa Cruz). Saw loads of fish, turtles, stingrays, sea lions, moray eels etc etc. Unfortunately I didn´t get to see any hammerhead sharks, but the dives were amazing anyway.

I can´t really convey in words how awesome the Galapagos Islands are so I´ll let the photos speak for themselves. I have taken A LOT of photos - so was hard to choose only a few for this blog!

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Part of trip: South America

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