The Galapagos Islands, a land unto themselves

Hola amigos,

The Galapagos Islands are amazing, so, so very cool!!!!! We saw so many animals and within like 30cm of us.

I was swimming with sea lions, penguins, two swam with me for a little while before darting off in the water near Chinese Hat Island, sea turtles, saw one like within 20cm of my face feeding on algae in the water in Post Office Bay after we had deposited our postcards and picked up some to deliver, sting rays (spotted eagle rays and golden rays in large schools), white tipped reef sharks within a couple of metres, marine iguanas both in the water and warming themselves on the rocks.

When we were onland we were with land iguanas, blue footed boobies, albatross, sea lions, and giant tortoises and many more species that now escape me.

The Galapagos Islands are THE BEST PLACE EVER!!!!!!

The boat that we travelled between islands on was called the Yolita II, a luxury first class boat that we booked like four days before it left at a bargain price, :). Our guides changed halfway through, the first one was a dick that even the crew had a hard time pretending to get aling with which made life interesting. However the second one who we had for our last 4 days, Washington, was pretty cool. He made the boat much more fun and relaxed. I asked about the chances of seeing some dolphins, he said that it was not so likely during the daylight hours and he gave me a dolphin watch instead.


The giant tortoises were also really cool, we saw them at a local farm on teh first day gorging themeselves on all the grass and plants they could find. On the last day before we flew out we spent the morning at the Charles Darwin Research Centre, where we saw Lonesome George, the last of his subspecies from one of the islands, which is pretty sad. i can let you know though he is living last days up in style with two ladies of another subspecies in his inclosure to keep him company.

We really didn´t want to leave the islands, however the movement of the sea did get to me by the last couple of nights, so being off the boat is kind of nice. I definitely reccommend that if anyone gets the chance to come to the Galapagos Islands the money that you pay is nothing in comparison to the priceless experiences that await you!!!!

We are in Cuenca at the moment (pronounced Quenca), a really cool city in the south of Ecuador. Bron and Jane have bought Panama hats which were super fun to buy. We also found like the best ice cream ever from a place called Freddo something something, I have already had 3 scoops today, mmmmmmmmmm (good icecream is hard to find in south america it seems and this is only the second place to tempt me into having it :)).

Tomorrow we are probably going to set off to Peru, so that will make for a large quantity of time on the bus. We were trapped on one last night heading into Cuenca, on mountainous sections of a national park, a section of single road and masses of traffice made the trip take like 2 more hours ontop on the 4ish that it was already going to take. We had to pull out some emergency chocolate and road the sugar high whilst listening to awesome disco hits from the 70´s and 80´s playing on the bus system. Once we arrived at like 9pm we had awesome pizza though near our hostel for dinner at like 10pm, which made it all better.