2 Aussie Renegades: A 10 year old little girl's dreams come true: the Galapagos

We arrived at about 10am on Sunday from chilly Quito and were thrust into... a desert... I wasn't surprised, I knew what to expect at the airport, but the 10 year old inside of me was disappointed. There was no stepping off the plane onto black recently laid volcanic rock, or a thick jungle, this wasn't a documentary and I was David Attenborough. There was just dry dusty land with large volcanic rocks strewn about and what I assume is a Galapagos prickly pear.
Customs is a lot like Australia. It sounds like they're going to take away your toothpaste because it has some small suggestion that the factory was near a insect infested tree. They even bring out the alsation sniffer dogs. But no one so much as peeked in our bags even though we had most boxes ticked to declare things.
There are two airports in the Galapagos, we landed on Baltra island, which only has the airport on it and a ferry terminal to Santa Cruz Island. After making it to the shore it is a 40minute drive to the town of Puerto Ayora, where most of the tourist action is. Unfortunately we are here in peak tourist time and I hate everyone here because they don't love it as much as me and haven't wanted to come here as long as me. Especially the kids. I hate the kids... End petty rant. We both were feeling a bit under the weather on our first day and were hoping we weren't about to get a healthy dose of travelers diarrhea...

Day 1 of our galapagos cruise involved heading all the way back to the airport to meet our guide and sail up to North Seymour Island. Baltra, where the airport is, is also called South Seymour. We began by snorkeling. We saw a tonne of fish, I won't bore you with the names. After lunch we went a shore to walk through the frigate bird and blue-footed booby colonies. Nothing will prepare you for how close you can get to the animals. Or how close they come to you. It's amazing.

Overnight we headed North to Isla Genovesa. In the morning we walked up prince Philips steps (so named because he fell down them once) to see Nazca and red footed boobies. Again there were heaps of birds everywhere. We saw 3 owls which is rare. After a snack we snorkeled near the cliff and saw many many fish again. In the afternoon we went to Darwin bay on Genovesa and mainly looked at Darwin finches (totally everywhere by the way, as in you have to shoo them when eating lunch on the beach). There were sea lions on the beach as well (also in plague proportions here) and they came swimming with us. This was our first sighting of white tip sharks. There were about 8 of them resting on the bottom of the ocean near where we snorkeled. That night was a crossing of deep water and everyone got sea sick, including some of the crew!

On day 3 we walked up a volcano before doing some more snorkeling at Isla Bartolome. This time we were with galapagos penguins, that are a little bigger than fairy penguins, and we got super close to some sea lions. Totally amazing to be so close to them!

The last day of our cruise started at the Chales Darwin research station back on Santa Cruz. It was our first sight of giant tortoises. I have read the station is a bit sad. It's the same as any zoo like setting. Except with animals that move slower than snails. Apparently the breeding program for tortoises is going so well they are thinking of stopping. Baby tortoises are super cute by the way.

More to come on the Galapagos in the next post.

Much love
Meg (see below for booby photos)