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Published: March 11th 2008
Blue footed boobies!
What a lovely pair of boobies! Hee hee hee!Wow! The Galapagos Islands were truly amazing and one of the highlights of my trip so far! I did get the nervous shakes when I had to hand over a month's budget for an 8 day trip, but it was definitley worth every penny! Many thanks to the people who gave me birthday and Christmas money which went towards my Galapagos fund!
You can get so close to all the animals in the Galapagos, whether on the land or in the water. One of the things I was most looking forward to seeing was the famous bird- the blue footed boobie. Mainly because I kept seeing tshirts everywhere saying 'I love boobies' on them, which a picture of their feet. Of course, I had to buy one for amusement value. I actually had a photo of me taken near one with it on, but it somehow has disappeared from my camera. Must have accidently deleted it- whoops!
One of my favourite things there were the sealions. On the shore they were soooo cute. The only strange thing was the sounds they made- lots of retching and coughing noises! Then when they were in the water they would dart around
you quickly as if they were playing with you. Slightly scary at first, but so amazing! We saw a few penguins too- at one point I was snorkelling alongside one for absolutely ages. It would swim a bit, then look at me, then go back to swimming. The sea turtles were also amazing. There are not really enough adjectives to describe how cool everything was!!
At the beginning of my trip to the islands I was taking photos of absolutely everything, but after a while you get really blase about everything- oh look, another 100 land iguanas, big deal!!!! They were really weird though. All lying on top of each other, basking in the sun (Charley, you would have hated it!!!)
I was very brave when there were sharks in the water and wasn't scared at all! They were white tipped sharks which stayed at the bottom of the ocean so we were always above them in the water. Think I would have been a lot more scared if they been swimming around me like the sea lions and penguins!!!
The boat I'd booked on for the 8 days was called 'Amigo', and I had a nice
group of people on with me. Nothing seems to be easy in my travelling life, and after 3 amazing days on the boat, everything started to go a bit wrong! The crew was changing over and said that there was a problem with the engine so we'd have to be transferred to another boat the next day. They boat was a much nicer one (yey) but because of the set itineries we'd have to visit some places we'd already been, and miss out some that we were supposed to go to (boo!) After a lot of complaining they gave us 2 options, either stay on the boat and put up with it, or go to another island to stay in a nice hotel and go on day trips. A honeymooning couple decided to go for the hotel option, but the rest of us wanted to stay on a boat, so decided we'd just have to put up with it. In fact, the next day we did lots of snorkelling around the places we'd visited already and it was probably the best day we had!
Anyway, despite being given the option to stay on the boat, 2 days later they
told us that we'd have to leave the boat anyway as it was booked up by other people!!!! After many complaint phone calls to travel agents we actually did leave to go to a hotel for 2 nights, being assured we'd receive some compensation from the boat companies. Despite the annoyance of moving from place to place, I still had an excellent time and saw so many cool things. Still waiting to hear back from all the travel agencies about getting money back. Will keep you posted!!!
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charley
non-member comment
oh my god soph, could you be loving the reptiles a bit more?!! Yuk!! Also, are you wearing your cleaning shorts in that jumping photo!!!!