16/10/09 - I'm on a Boat

After getting up at 4am and trying to gather my things together by the light of my phone so as not to wake anyone (next time I'll remember to leave my headtorch out) I headed downstairs to get the Carpedm car to the airport. Here I met Joy, a woman from Holland who as it turned out was doing the same tour as me on the same boat, the Flamingo.

When we got to the airport the driver, Ivan, took a picture of us standing in front of his car which I imagine will be added to the wall in the Carpedm shop. There are hundreds of pictures of the travellers who took his car all over the wall.

Even though the flight to the Galapagos Islands was in two parts it didn't take very long so we arrived some time before noon. At the airport we met up with our tourguide Marcos as well as three other people who were doing the same tour; Joe from Australia, and Sera and Jessica from Colorado. A short bus jouney later we arrived at the docks where we were greeted by a group of sea lions.
As you can tell from the photograph they were ecstatic to see us.

On the Flamingo we met the five other poeple who were doing the tour with us. Patrick and Sandy from Switzerland, and Amir, Omri and Doron from Israel. The accomodation was two to a cabin with an en suite bathroom and I ended up staying with Doron. The image below is from the deck and from left to right there is Joe, Jessica (behind the pillar) and Sera.

Once we had unpacked we ate lunch which turned out to be excellent. My expectations of the food I'd be eating as a backpacker have turned out to be completely wrong so far. I've yet to have a meal that wasn't good (except for those on the planes).

After lunch we were shown around the first island of our tour called Santa Cruz. There are a lot of different animals and birds around the islands and I shall try to go into some detail about a few of them later on but for now here is an image of a land iguana.

Snorkelling came after the island and it is harder than expected in choppy water so it'll take some time for me to get used to it. My hope is to be competent at taking underwater pictures by the end as opposed to being competent (incredibly so I might add) at inhaling salt water.

In the evening we went out to the town for a while and we got to experience a boat ride in complete darkness. The view of the stars was amazing. I've never seen them so clearly before. I could get used to this.