Galapagos Islands

South America » Ecuador » Galápagos
June 20th 2010

Published: September 11th 2010

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Chris and Patty

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After Quito we went to what so far has been the highlight of the trip…. Galapagos Islands!!! People had mentioned that it was a great place but it wasn’t until you were face to face with iguanas (marine & land), turtles (massive land ones that weighed over 300 kgs and marine ones), numerous endemic species from the Islands like blue footed boobies (really cute bird with blue feet), flamingos, pelicans, playful sea lions, Galapagos penguins amongst many others. It’s amazing to see that animals are not scared of humans in fact you actually have to get out of their way, you can get really close and they don’t even flinch!! The National Park is really well kept and protected which is fantastic to see. We stayed 8 days on a boat and travelled to a different Island every day, some nights we would sail for 7-8 hrs to be nice and early at the next destination for a new adventure. The most incredible thing is that there is different fauna and flora in each island because they have adapted themselves to their surroundings (i.e. some islands have really tall cactus because the marine iguanas and turtles eat them while other islands

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don’t have these predators so the cacti is short). We were really lucky to have a great group of people on our boat “The Golondrina” for 5 days and then we got upgraded to a bigger boat for the remaining 3 days… bonus!! The food was fantastic and didn’t really help the extra kilos gained in Colombia since every meal on the boat had a starter, main and dessert… even breakfast!!! All in all it was a fabulous place to visit and if you like the ocean and wonderful wildlife we truly recommend it!!
We then flew to Guayaquil which is Ecuador’s biggest city and although the government has done a lot to make it a nice city, after Galapagos we just couldn’t find anything to take photos of so after a couple of days we ventured on an 18 hrs bus ride to Trujillo, Peru. The trip was surprisingly comfortable (Chris hardly fitted in the semi-bed seats but still managed to sleep 7 hrs) with 2 awful meals and the oldest movies you can imagine as entertainment. Trujillo is a nice city with great people and we feel a lot safer and relaxed after being in Quito and Guayaquil.