Casa del Lago Puerto Ayora

... got off the panga, we were confronted by LOADS of sea iguanas... and here the photographs began. Bolivar regaled us with many tales of his life (some wives, more hospitalisations), and in between he showed us the famous tortoise Lonely George- the only remaining member of his species who refuses to mate with a similar species. Bolivar is unsure whether this proves he is gay.<br><br>At the more *ahem* prolific end of the scale is Super Diego, another species of tortoise. This guy lives ...

... water by a nurturing sea lion who swam around her in the shallows grunting with encouragement as she moved into the water. The snorkelling led to seeing a whole host of colourful reef fish and a rather energetic penguin. A &#8216;thoughtful&#8217; crew member encouraged us to look into an underwater hole in the rocks. With one finger held to his lips, he said, &#8220;they are resting &#8221; and then pointed to white tipped sharks hovering beneath us. <br ...

... back with us to Santa Cruz where there was a hospital.<br><br>We stopped at Garapatoa and anchored in the bay next to the beach. The weather had turned cloudy and wasn&#8217;t quite as nice as before. The crew of our boat handed out lunch, a plastic tub of rice and fish, juice and helped us to shore. We walked up to the lake to see the flamingoes. Where we had seen just one before, now there were none, all on holiday I remarked.<br><br>We sat on the beach for ...

... exchange. Christie enquired how much they charged, $160 a night, your dreaming I thought, two nights here costs more than a month at that apartment we were going to look at. Christie said "well it did include breakfast", &#8220;it would have to be pretty good&#8221; I responded. I guess there are tourists out there happy to part with their money.<br><br>At this point we had a quick look at the nearby &#8220;laguna de Ninfas&#8221; not a ...

... blue footed boobies that, once again, dive bombed into the water so close by that you could almost reach out and touch them as they passed. We stayed barely 10 minutes before heading off to another snorkeling venue.<br><br>On the way we passed an underwater crater where another group were already snorkeling but we didn&#8217;t stop. We headed instead to a place called nnnn. Here we stopped for 30 minutes. This time only Jody and I went snorkeling ...

Yesterday we had finally taken the plunge a booked some trips to the other islands, today we were going to Floreana, or so we thought. We packed our day bags and headed to harbor front. We saw the captain of our boat who then shook his head and told us he didn't do the tour on Tuesdays. Horrified we returned to our tour operator. They were very apologetic as you would expect and said we could go tomorrow but that wasn&#8217;t possible as we had already booked a trip to Isabella ...

... was great sunshine. We went north along the coast and rode some seriously big waves for a while before arriving at a small sheltered bay. As we came intothe bay we saw our first sea turtle, it was huge. I put on a mask and snorkel and in I went. I was lucky to get a close view of the turtle as it swam right passed me, but it was swimming very fast. Unfortunately that was the only turtle viewing we were lucky enough to see. We went onto the ...

... ensure they cleared the rocks. Both Jody and Niamh pleaded to be able to follow and jump in but we declined and this encouraged us to leave. Watching someone else be foolish only encourages them that its ok.<br><br>We returned to the water taxi and then back to the harbor. We met up with Carolina and Santiago the lady and boy we had met at before the triathlon. We were invited to join them on an afternoon tour, which we did after lunch.<br><br>The boat ...

... lady standing at the turning point had no knowledge of who had completed what laps. She was not recording the number of times the competitors had done laps, she was just ushering competitors backup the hill regardless. It became even worse when some runners asked her how many laps they were supposed to do and she just shrugged her shoulders, she didn&#8217;t know. Some nearby spectators showed their bemusement at this lack of knowledge. We realized then how the 2nd place male ...

... my ankle (for those of you who have read my Inca post this is the source of one of my trifecta complaints), so for most of the tour I was hobbling and in serious pain. Despite that though the land turtles were facinating. Again they let you get real close and the baby ones were sooooo cute<br><br>No finches, sorry...<br><br>Not my favourite experience on the journey, but definitely still a once in a lifetime.<br><br> Vanessa