Blogs from Galápagos, Ecuador, South America - page 94

So I did what every other diver would do in my situation - blew a huge load of moolah for a once in a lifetime opportunity to dive in the Galapagos Islands. I decided it was high time to do my Advanced Open Water Course so after looking around I found somewhere I could do it. My instructor was called Macarron (this is the Spanish word for Macaroni apparently the nickname arose from a slight inclination for all foods Italian!) and he was really nice but also a litle crazy - always a good combination when you have to trust someone with your life 30 metres underwater! So all in all I did 7 dives - each one different - I got to do loads of stuff I hadn´t done before - including go into some ... read more

Cachalote means sperm whale in Spanish but the boat was far more elegant than it´s namesake. Our group of 16 passengers arrived on the keyside to be greeted by Galapagos sea lions idling on the benches and Cachalote, our beautiful motor/sailing vessel, moored just offshore. A couple of pangas (dinghies) raced out, lifejackets were distributed and within an hour of getting off the plane we were making ourselves comfortable in our floating home for the next seven days. Sailing around the islands, walking across the volcanic landscapes and watching and learning about the abundant and unusual wildlife of the Galapagos was to be one of the highlights of my travels. The Galapagos are composed of 50 volcanic islands set off the Ecuadorian coast. Although used for centuries by whalers and buccaneers, they were made famous by ... read more

Good Times to be Had by ALL! To finish off my 4 month trip blog, I have committed to writing this Galapagos Islands trip. The reason I can still give details is because I actually kept a diary of my galapagos trip like a prudent scout girl. It might sound like a documentary a bit but I will try to spice it up. Just for the record, the trip took place May 15-22, 2006. So according to my journal...here we go: Day 1 - Lobos Island From Quito, I flew to San Cristobal island. It is one of the two populated islands in the Galapagos. After waiting at the airport, I met my group and we headed or our ship which is called "Estrella Del Mar II". (which means star of the sea). After a small ... read more

I have a few minutes before my salsa class so here are a few photographic spoilers for the forthcoming mega-blog of the Galápagos. Disfrute... ... read more

Day 3 We had sailed to the island of Espanola overnight and started our morning with a hike on the islan. Shockingly the beach was full of Sea Lions! Maybe I haven´t been making it clear, but they are EVERYWHERE in Galapagos, and they are fantastic. Even though you get very used to seeing them, you never get tired of them. They are just funny! Here we saw the babies nursing from their moms. The babies that we saw were probably 3 feet long and they would just wiggle up to their moms who were (surprise, surprise) napping, and latch on. There were Iguanas everywhere on the rocks. They´re lying on top of each other and some rocks would have literally 10 Iguanas on it. We did see them walk around, but I never saw one ... read more