Advertisement
Published: October 28th 2007
ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE
The Galapagos TORTUGAWe arrived at the airport to be greeted by a Galaxy travel agent who helped us check in our bags and get our tickets, and thank god she did as South American domestic airports are not as easy to navigate as English ones, without her we would have been lost! When we finally got on the plane the confusion continued as it came over the intercom we were flying to Guyaquil in Ecuador and no mention of Baltra in the Galapagos, our destination?! In a bit of a panic I hastily asked the air stewardess if we were on the right plane, where she explained to me that we stopped in Guyaquil for 20 minutes to pick up more passengers to go on to the Galapagos - why didnt they just say that in the first place!
Anyway......2 or so hours later we arrived in Baltra and were met by a member of the crew from the boat - although at the time we did not know this, but he had his ´Galaxy´T-shirt on so we thought he probably would take us to the right place! He collected our bags for us and then we began a journey that consisted
of a bus, a ferry boat and then a taxi. It hadnt really been explained to us where we were going and the communication was a little disjointed as he didnt speak English and our Spanish was not really up to scartch, still we trusted the guy and eventually we arrived at a farm. This was a little confusing as we thought we were going to the boat and there was no sign of anyone else, the place was dead. Still the guy gestured to us to sit down at a table where we proceeded to be served a 3 course lunch, at this point we thought that he cant be kidnapping us and hopefully in time all would become clear! After a tasty lunch we heard voices from afar and were met by our ámigos´that would be on our boat;they had been walking in the highlands looking at the giant tortoises. We also met our guide, Sara and eventually we were able to relax a little as she showed us the tortoises and explained what we would be doing for the rest of the day. The tortoises were huge, much bigger than I imagined but they seemed to be
quite agile and moved around faster than I had expected. We took loads of pictures so will add them to this as soon as we can.
We were introduced to the other members of our group who consisted of 2 Austrian guys, 2 Irish girls, an Australian couple, a Dutch couple and an American, so all in all we were a pretty mixed bunch! Everyone seemed very friendly though and we started to chat away as we boarded another bus to go into town in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island. Once there Steve and I decided that we might as well do a bit of shopping and bought ourselves a waterproof jacket and sunglasses, we do know how to treat ourselves!!!!
Finally it was time to board our boat so we hopped into a dinghy and made our way to the Galaxy Yacht. Neither of us could believe it when we got on board, we had struck gold!! The bar and dinding area was all decked out in varnished wood with a bartender on hand to serve our every need and when we got to our cabin we (or rather Steve) were delighted to find little chocolates
on our bed and a lovely room with a hot shower and fully flushing toilet!! Not only that, there was a sun deck at the top of the boat with sun loungers to lay out on whilst sailing out to sea. That night we were served another 3 course meal and got to know a bit more about the Austrian guys, before getting an early night to be fresh for the next day - in fact everyone was in bed by about 9pm, sailing is actually quite tiring!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.165s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 53; dbt: 0.1123s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
grandad and sylvia
non-member comment
galapagos
thanx for our card.lovely of you to send it to us.you are obviously having a lovely time.rather you than me says sylvia!!!just been getting all the up to date info on your blogg at amanda's.we are here to celebrate kieran's 13th birthday.we look forward to your next installment!