The Galapagos

Another Finch

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You can see the difference

Galapagos Tortoise

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These giant tortoise are the largest living tortoise, Galapago means tortoise in Spanish. A breeding programme is making great progress in helping these endangered animals make a comeback. Sailors and pirates would load them onto their ships while still alive and butcher them for meat while at sea. This type of activity, hunting in general and introduced species, loss of habitat have seen the tortoises totally wiped out from some islands.

Lizards

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Therea are various small lizards, and many subspecies. Lava lizards were the most common on our walks.

Translation....watch out for iguanas

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The Galapagos are also famous for their Iguana's, the marine iguanas are the only seagoing iguanas in teh world.

Sub Species

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These black iguana's are a sub species of iguana, but we can't remember if it was marine or not...we think it was.

Land Iguanas

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Land Iguana's are similar in size to marine iguanas, but are yellowish in colour, and eat cactus.

Clearly a marine iguana

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So this is clearly a marine iguana, they have a very distinct tail used for swimming, they are at home in the ocean, and dive to eat sea weed/kelp. Colours are usually red and black but change throughout the year.

Bow Riding

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Dolphins can often be seen racing at the front of boats staying just ahead of the boat. We were fortunate enought to see this as a pod of around 12 dolphins raced, jumped and dived in front of our boat for around 20 mins. It looked like dolphin chicken...the bravest dolphin getting in front of the boat and racing it! Awesome.

Sally Lightfoot

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The Sally Lightfoot crabs were everywhere, don't know if they're edible or not...but there were millions!