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Published: April 16th 2008
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An animal lovers dream, I spent my last days in Ecuador relaxing in the alternate universe that is the Galapagos Islands! Of course, as usual, half of my trip was spent underwater, so unfortunately there are no pics to share of that! You will have to trust me that it was AWESOME! Of course my goal of the dives was to see the coveted Hammerhead sharks....they are on every postcard, diving tshirt, and souviner for sale in the Galapagos, and DARN IT ALL, I only saw the tail of one as he swam away, which DOESNT COUNT! I really wanted a Galapagos Dive shirt, but couldn´t buy one since they all had hammerheads on them and that would just be blasphemy! BUT, I did see many other awesome things! There were three dive highlights: Morays swimming, Sea lions frolicking, and a HUGE OL´ MANTA RAY in that order of AWESOMENESS! As you know from previous dive stories, the moray eels are one of my favorite, but they are always hiding their snake-like bodies in dark cave holes and coral walls!! Well, here, I saw 2 freely swimming with about 2 meters of snakey bodies flowing through the water! As a matter
of fact, one was distracting my attention and when I turned to look the other way, a galagpagos shark was only about 1 meter from me, swimming right at me! AAAAAHHHH°! Of course, he turned at the last second and went around me, but as you can imagine, the sharks always take your breathe away! Second awesomeness of the dives were the sealions! They were CRAZY curious, just frolicking, swimming, flipping, twisting all around us the entire time! What AMAZING swimmers and underwater gymnasts! They wanted us to show off our moves, and kept flipping and twisting around us divers trying to encourage us to play! They were so strong and graceful, with HUGE eyes sizing us up! Finally, on my last dive, we had about a 4 meter diameter manta ray seek us out and circle the group for at least 10 minutes! I´m talking fire engine truck HUGE just going round and around and around with the gracefulness and awe of anything I´ve ever seen on this planet! Very super amazing!!!!! Also, in between dives, we spotted a pod of galapágos dolphins LEAPING and FLIPPING their hearts out, so we all jumped in with our snorkels and were
able to witness their strength and gracefulness first hand! Being in the water, we could hear their familiar songs and see pods of about 10 at a time swim soooooo fast and smooth underneath us, then converge and FLIP out of the water just ahead of us! AMAZING!
Nothing could have compared to my underwater experiences, but the land animals sure did their best! I spent another 3 days on Isabel island hiking and seeing the best of the iguanas, giant tortoises, and the 2nd largest volcanic crater on the planet! On this island, I also met many fun people from SF, denmark, and norway! Yay, more international friends! (Actually, I ran into the couple from denmark again in bolivia! Crazy!) The islands of the Galapagos are sooo interesting for so many reasons. First and foremost, its absolutely awesome the way the animals live in harmony with the people, they are sooo not afraid of humans, and are happy to share paradise with them! Also, they are so isolated and young geologically that alot of them look like they should be the face of another planet! An island will have red rock outcroppings, black sand beaches, and one cacti.
Or a white sand beach, black cliffs, and a couple hundred sealions lounging at the base barking their heads off! Its incredible! But as awesome and beautiful as the islands were, I´d have to say the real action here was underwater! AMAZING!
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Aunt Sassy
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Inhabited?
And here I thought that the Galapago islands were uninhabited! At least the Discover Channel led me to believe that. Your cousins will be jealous cuz they love watching the Galapago series on TV and you get it LIVE! So cool!