Day Thirty Five - Galapagos

It was an interesting sleep on the boat last night. At around 3am, we felt the engines start up and we began travelling again for 3 hours to our next destination. It was a very comfy bed, but we did rock a little when the boat was moving.

We woke up properly at 6:45 ready for breakfast at 7. It was great, we had salad (???) and eggs and sausages and toast and jam.

After breakfast, we got ready for a dinghy ride around a small island called Eden Island. It is completely uninhabited by humans, and is home to lots of wildlife. We saw many blue footed boobies by their nests as well as pelicans. We must have spent about twenty minutes watching a pelican circling a small lagoon and dive bombing in to catchy fish in his large beak. Other birds would then follow and sit on his head and grab the fish that the pelican missed. At this same lagoon, we saw a penguin which was apparently very rare to see them in this particular area. It was a very inquisitive penguin, swimming right up to the boats and pecking at the dinghy, our cameras and even one of the kids fingers!!

Back on the main boat, we got ready for snorkelling. We snorkelled from off the side of the dinghys by one of the islands' coasts. There were hundred of beautiful coloured fish, I followed a school of maybe one or two hundred! I got a bit of a shock when a sealion swam right towards me and then shot past me and panicked a bit but it was amazing!! We had an hour snorkelling which got a bit cold towards the end, and we headed back for some lunch.

After another amazing lunch, we had a couple of hours to chill on the boat. The sun was shining and it was very warm so we went and sat on the top deck and sunbathed for a while!

At half past two, we got back on the dinghys to go to a place called Dragon Hill on Santa Cruz Island. It was beautiful! It was a beach which then turned into a rocky pathed island covered with marine iguanas chilling by the water, brightly coloured crabs and lots of birds such as mockingbirds and finches. We had a wander around this island for a couple of hours, Hansel pointing out things in the landscape and birds and animals we would definitely have missed. It was stunning.

Back on the boat, we went up to watch the sunset around 6ish. Wow. The skies were clear with a bit of low cloud lighting up bright orange when the sun dipped below it. A few of the other couples were there also and it was a lovely thing to experience.

Tonight we met the rest of the crew from the boat who worked below the decks, had a briefing with Hansel about the following day and had another lovely dinner. We made it a bit longer tonight, chatting with the other guys on our boat, before finally flaking out around 8:30!