Blogs from San Cristóbal Island, Galápagos, Ecuador, South America

Our last full day in Galapagos and it really is a full day. We start with a steep walk up the volcanic Punta Pitt on Isla Cristobal. we are rewarded with plenty of photo opportunities of the Red and Blue footed boobies. This is quite a busy spot with lots of tourists. We have been spoilt up until now by having each stop more or less to ourselves. We find these intruders rude and noisy. On the way back I see the very rare Blue Footed Australian Booby and it’s smaller mate with darker plumage - also known as Wayne and Narelle. The landscape is striking with high, very steep volcanic rocks, stark flat areas and a few scrubby bushes. After we clamber back down to the golden beach, it is time for another snorkel. The ... read more

Ah Galapagos, the place has always held a fascination for me; the diversity of land and marine animals, volcanoes, land of Darwin's origins of Evolution and the sheer remoteness, what's not to like?? This has always been in my top ten of must sees, and now it was time to explore... The conventional way to see the Galapagos is aboard a boat and cruising from spot to spot, but after seeing how bloody expensive this option was we decided to island hop our way around...while not seeing as much perhaps there was still plenty of opportunity for wildlife watching and best of all at our own pace (after speaking to several travelers over the course of our trip we discovered that the cruises were indeed pretty cool and that last minute opportunities were available at a ... read more

unserem letzten frühstück an bord der “treasure of galapagos” folgt ein ausflug ins hiesige interpretationszentrum. wie genau das denn jetzt mit el niño, den wasservermengungen und den auslösen dazu (vornehmlich wir!), vor sich geht, lernen wir dort. unser gepäck wird ans dock gebracht und schon sind wir wieder auf uns gestellt. ein letzter kaffee mit unserer liebgewonnenen schiffsgruppe (die engländer ausgenommen) und wir beziehen unser erfreulich schönes hostel, casa gosen. das kleine städtlein, in dem wir hier die nächsten zwei tage verbringen, beheimatet ein paar tausend menschen und einen flughafen. viele schöne strände sind nur wenige gehminuten rechts und links am ufer entlang zu finden. einer davon ist playa loberia. am weg entlang der schwarzen lava-felsen sonnen sich die größten land-iguana, die wir bislang gesehen haben. dunkel glänzend mit vermeintlich versc... read more

Today’s events were a bit more low-key, but still started early. Feeling badly about constantly hounding the kids to be on time for all the outings, we gave them the option of opting out of today’s activities. Both initially insisted they would skip the morning activity to sleep in, but at the last minute decided to pull it together and join us. This pattern was repeated for the afternoon activity as well, making us feel a little bit more confident that we hadn’t been torturing them. We visited the island of San Cristobal, one of the oldest and most mature islands and home to one of the few human settlements on the islands. Unlike most of the islands, there are natural reserves of fresh water here (due to the more mature landscape’s ability to retain the ... read more

Today we had our first day of rain, even though this is considered the rainiest month of the year. It actually came as somewhat of a relief as we had suffered some painful sunburn at the beach the other day. We went on a full day snorkeling tour nevertheless, and boarded the boat at about 0900. We had another fantastic national park guide, Raul, who gave us a multitude of information throughout the day. Our first stop was Isla Lobos where we saw many frigates and blue foot boobies. We stopped for a snorkel along the rocky shore and were soon being buzzed by sea lions who were dive bombing us, doing flips and other acrobatics under water. Our anxiety was up from the incident the previous day, but our guide reassured us that these sea ... read more