The galapogus - Tortuga bay and the Charles Darwin centre

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So finally in the galapagos and rediculously excited to be here!

As you can image my journey here had some kind of drama as always, and in true Polly Thompson style, I think I did well to get out of this one! Having slept all the way on the plane, I arrived to 35 degrees C of slightly dull looking island (Balta) very bleary eyed and was promptly asked to cough up the (expected) $100 park entrance fee. Because I knew about this prior to arrive I did make an attempt to withdraw cash from the airport with no luck, so assumed a card would be a perfectly acceptable method of payment...oh no! So with no money, they took my passport, gave me a reciept and said I wouldnt get it back till I gave them the money. Also quite inconveniently, they had a lack of cash machine anywhere near the airport which would result in me travelling for 2 hours to Santa Cruz and back to get the cash..gutted!

Hmmm so racking my brains, plan B came into play...Find a nice/generous looking person to loan me the small fund of $100 and pay them back as promptly as possible. Fortunately for me, plan B actually worked out. Steve, a fireman from the UK, who lives in NZ and has been travelling SA on a motorbike for 10 months, looked into my honnest/slightly desperate eyes and decided it was a genuine plea and helped me out - SWEET!

Having achieved entrance to the islands with passport fully retrieved, we set off towards Santa Cruz, grabbed a cab and headed for the nearest cash machine. Too my horror, it just did not want to give me any cash! In fact we tried three, and none were so kind as to deliever my request. Fortuantely steve was very calm "its fine, you can pay me back in a few days" thank God! Slightly concerned, we booked ourselves into a hostel and set foot around the town to discover whats going on. Fortunately, we found a new cash machine which did accept one of my three cards and finally I got cash - huge relief.

The next day we decided to rent snorkles and walk to Tortuga bay; a beatufil beach covered in white, very fine sand (that got everywhere). With an interesting selection of wildlife, mostly iguanas and intersting, very curious, little birds. Along with Pelecans and even caught a sighting of a turtle - extremely exciting for me!

Then in the afternoon we made it to the charles Darwin centre to see giant 100 year old turtles. Trust me, they looked their age haha. Their from legs also looked really odd, really fat at the base and really scrawney at the top, and they lay in positions that looked like they were double jointed, it was very bizare.

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