After breakfast we met with our trek guide Sudarshan who is also taking us to today’s visit to Shivapuri National Park. It took about one hour to drive there but that’s when confusion started. First we stopped at a point on the road going up and Sudarshan said some people hike from this point but he said we could also drive further up in the jeep if we wished. Luckily as it turned out, we opted to drive further up and we started our hike at around 10:30am. Our impression was that the hike to the top would take about 2.5 hours and then 1.5 hours down so we were happy with that but the reality turned out to be much longer than that. The first part was walking gradually upwards on a dirt track but ... read more

None of us managed to sleep very well on the first leg. They served us dinner and then woke us about an hour too early for breakfast. But we didn’t feel too bad for our 3 hour wait before the next leg. It was actually a relief to got off the plane and we found some massage chairs which didn’t work for us but were quite comfy so we sat there before it was time to board. Free airport interent made the ti,e go quickly. I managed to get more sleep on the second leg which meant the 5 hour flight went very quickly. The meal was also better on the second leg but was also at a weird time being like a brunch. I had read that you should sit on the right side of ... read more

After breakfast we asked the porter to collect our bags and got onto the airport shuttle at 09:00 as scheduled. The Holiday Inn is practically in the airport so we were in the departure lounge within 5 minutes. There was just one other guest in the mini-bus but the driver even took our big bags and went with us to the bag drop area. It was then we found out that our flight was delayed by 3 hours to 14:30 which was annoying as we could have planned something better to do than wait in the airport for 5.5 hours. The only plus was that it would reduce our waiting time in Santiago by 3 hours. So we took the opportunity to spend the remaining US dollars we had and bought some nice chocolate to give ... read more

Up earlier than usual at about 04:35 as the boat had re-started on it’s way presumably to Daphne Major for a scheduled last activity circumnavigating the volcano island. I couldn’t get back to sleep but we both got up at the scheduled time of 05:45 to go to the top of the Nemo I to watch the birds. At 07:00 was the usual breakfast before last minute packing to have our bags ready by 08:00 for the transfer to shore. We bid farewell to Christof and Nicole, Florian and Miriam who were staying on the islands a bit longer and the rest of us hopped on the airport bus. We had a fair bit time to kill so we all did some last minute gift shopping before boarding our 10:08 flight. We were the only ones ... read more

Overnight we had smoothly navigated to Punta Espinoza, another dry-landing spot on Fernandina Island which is just next to Isabela Island. This location was the land of a thousand iguanas, plus we saw many playful sea lions as well. It was an amazing sight to see so many iguanas all huddled together on various rocks near the shore. After returning to the boat there was a snorkeling session near the rocky shore and the conditions were challenging. Unfortunately, Daisy ran into trouble when she got caught in a reef with waves crashing in. Fabian had warned everyone to get out but Daisy didn’t manage to get out in time and was thrown around onto the rocks and injured her thigh quite badly and cut her foot. Luckily, Florian and Rob saw her and managed to pull ... read more