A visit to the galapagos Islands...

This is a post where we go back in time... I saw in the news this week that Lonesome George had passed away, he was the last known tortoise of his sub species, he was housed with a stunner of a tortoise from a neighboring island but sadly George didn't find her attractive and so he passed away without producing an heir.

My husband and I (we weren't married back then) lived in Ecuador for 6 months and then spent 5 months traveling around Peru and Bolivia. One of the places we managed to visit was the Galapagos Islands and yes, it is as amazing as you imagine it to be.

That said, the trip was a disaster of sorts, we booked the tour with friends of our landlords who had started a travel agency, one of them had been a Galapagos tour guide for years and gave us loads of great information. But... when we landed out there, there was no one to meet us at the airport so we ended up taking a lift into town. When we found the place where our tour was supposed to go from, the guy had no idea who were were! We had already paid up front for a week long cruise. After calling Juan it transpired that the agent they had used had done a runner with ours (and their) money! Luckily, Juan talked to the chap at the office were at and he let us join his mini cruise.

So, we ended up spending longer on the main island and despite all the problems we had a great time. You can get really close to the animals, they don't get spooked at all but you are not allowed to touch them, although how tempting is it to pick up this sea lion cub and give him a cuddle?

We swam with the sea lion bachelors, they are great fun and swim right up to your face, blow bubbles at you and swim off and we had a pelican that seemed to live on the ship.On the cruise we would travel at night and wake up at a new island each morning then go ashore and explore.

The post office below is where you leave your postcard, no stamps and then the visitors look through the pile, if they live near one of the addresses they are supposed to take it back with them and deliver it - I'm not sure how well the system works!

When we decided to go to the Galapagos, Juan advised us on the best time to go so it was mating season for many of the birds and animals, we were lucky enough to see blue footed and masked boobies and albatross and their enormous fluffy babies.

That is our ship below, looks lovely. It wasn't. Had terrible wood worm and did as promised, it did have a bar but it wasn't stocked! The food was pretty dismal too even the meals in the jungle in Bolivia were better.

I suppose it all adds to the story, we had a fantastic time and I would LOVE to take Ebi-kun some day, for now he will have to do with the photos and my stories!

PS. I have a free Galapagos download here.