Day Thirty Four - Galapagos

We were up this morning at 3am to catch our taxi to the airport at 3:45. Our lift turned up fifteen minutes early, which worked out well as he was a very old shakey slow driver so we only just arrived at the airport in time!!

Because we were going to the Galapagos, we had to go through a separate bag check to ensure you weren't bringing anything in that could affect the ecosystem. We queued here for a while and paid $20 for our transit cards each. Once through check in, we went through another security check, and me and my bag got taken into a private room for investigation!! Seeing as my Spanish is terrible and Brendan wasn't allowed in with me, this was a bit scary. The lady chuckled when she pulled out Lily (our travel pillow cuddly toy!) and emptied my whole bag before deeming us safe!!

On the plane, we flew from Quito to Guayaquil and waited for 45 minutes on the plane whilst it refuelled and reboarded other passengers and then we left for Baltra airport in the Galapagos.

As our flight was so early in the morning, we had to wait an age for the rest of the group to arrive! Our guide finally greeted us and told us we could leave our stuff with him and grab some food from the canteen.

We got a chicken empanada each and I asked for some mayonnaise for mine. I squirted a huge dollop onto my plate and tucked in!! After about three mouthfuls, I heard some giggling behind me and something graze my ponytail. As I reached behind me to check my head, a tiny bird divebombed straight into my plate - more specifically into the huge pile of mayonnaise!! We stared at it for a couple of seconds in shock, expecting it to jump up and fly off but it didn't. So Brendan gently picked it up and put it on the floor. It still just lay there, wings coated in mayonnaise unable to move. We had no clue what to do in this situation! Before we could do anything, a lady came up from a nearby stall, picked up the bird, spoke rudely to Brendan in Spanish and left. We were absolutely stunned by what had just happened. Of course I'd totally lost my appetite after seeing empanada a la finch, so we rapidly left the canteen, a bit miffed and not off to a great start in this unique beautiful ecosystem that is the Galapagos.

Back with our guide, the rest of our group had arrived, an Aussie couple from Sydney and another Aussie family with three children from Brisbane. We then got on a bus, a boat and another bus before we finally reached the town of Santa Cruz. From here we got a dinghy to our boat.

Wow. It was incredible. This boat was over three levels, with a huge sun deck on the top with a jacuzzi. We were shown to our room, and absolutely delighted to see we'd been upgraded to a double! We had a private bathroom and balcony and the room was amazing!!

Back down in the lounge, we sat down for our first briefing and met the rest of the group. Some others were already on the boat, a Brazilian family again with three children and a young German couple.

After lunch (which was really great - buffet style!) we got back in the dinghy and were taken back to shore where we walked as a group to the Charles Darwin Centre where there are giant tortoises and iguanas. We spent an hour looking around the centre, and then headed back towards the town, dropping in on the way to see the bone structure of a huge humpback whale and the beach of Santa Cruz. We were chatting to the Aussie family who were lovely very big into their birds and wildlife, which was great as they were all so enthusiastic and friendly!

Back in town, we saw a couple of sea lions hanging around the fish counters on the front as well as a pelican looking for food! We bumped into Sean who we'd met in Montanita which was really nice, and then headed back onto the boat.

We had a quick briefing before dinner, which again was really good. It's a buffet style with rice and salad and then lovely tuna curries or beef stirfries! By 7:45, we were whacked, having been up since 3am, so despite being called lightweights we headed up to bed to fall asleep immediately!!!