North Seymour & Baltra

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North Seymour
It was our last morning in the Galapagos, so we squeezed a pre-breakfast trek around North Seymour, before heading for the airport. Here the main attraction was the Magnificent Frigate Birds, the males displaying their huge bright red inflated sacs to impress the ladies. At this island, we could get a much closer view of the action than from the sky. There were lots of Blue-Footed Boobies tooting goodbye to us and we envied the sleepy sea lions, still unconscious at such an early hour. We said bye bye to the islands and left the boat at the port in Baltra, where comically a family of sea lions had commandered all the benches. When a lady tried to sit down on the end of one bench, the big daddy snoozing at the other end, roared at her to get off! Our luggage arrived and we boarded a shuttle bus to the airport, where a bunch of snooty old ladies shouted at us in the clipped English accents to "get orf their private bus!". Charming! It was just a public airport bus and we were all standing as they sat, so Rach retorted "Why? Aren´t we good enough to share the same bus as you? It´s just an airport bus for everyone!" We felt sorry for the guide that had just had to put up with them for the last week.

Airport Chaos
The usual airport chaos ensued as we arrived in good time for our flight at noon, to be informed we had missed out 9.30am flight (eh? whatever!) and would be flying at 2pm instead, but direct to Quito. This was the same scenerio for everyone on the AeroGal flight. Eventually we got on the plane and set off. Halfway through the flight, the pilot announced we might have to detour to Guayquil after all, due to bad weather in Quito, to which news there was nearly a mutiny! Fortunately, the weather improved dramatically, or so it seemed, and we landed in Quito as planned. Rather disconcertingly we were greeted by the sight of a crashed plane at the end of the runway. The plane had crashed on the previous Friday, experiencing problems with the wheels on landing, so the plane had skidded the whole length of the runway and emergency runway. Fortunately, there were no fatalities and only a few people hurt in the incident. Scary stuff though!

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Photos

Male Frigate Bird
Red chest on display

Oi! What you looking at?
Shaun and a sea lion checking each other out

It´s my bench!
No old grannies are sitting on my bench

Airport Departure Lounge
Waiting for the plane

marta loving the dolphin!
god damn crazy american!!!

Comments

[Jones]

& dream of sheep
Garn, I forgot how small that sheep is until I saw it with Jase and the sleepy sea lion.