Estrella del Mar Hotel Santa Cruz

... islands to be created.Landing on Isabela was a bit of a culture shock after the bustle of Puerto Ayora. The town (more like a village) is tiny and centred along one sandy road next to a huge sandy beach. It's extremely chilled out and peaceful. I found a cheap room with hot water so everything was good.

Much like San Cristobal, there is not much to do on Isabela without going on a tour. There is, however, a Charles Darwin-type tortoise breeding centre. The trail that leads to the ...

... days to explore the two big islands that the tour missed. We took a ¨ferry¨to Isabela (a small boat with 16 passengers that rocked and tumbled through the two hour voyage....blech!) and enjoyed exploring the sleepy village there. Unfortunately, Nathan had to give up on seeing the Flightless Cormorant, a Galapagos specialty, as we couldn´t go to their beach on a daytrip. We did, however, saddle up for a ...

We got up early this morning and had our last meal with Pepe before getting on our boat to head over to Santa Cruz. Because of its central location and size Santa Cruz has the largest population of people living on it. Our boat, which was a speed boat with two huge motors took a few hours to travel from one island to the next and was pretty choppy, adding to the adventure. But, thanks to the wrist bands ...

... couldn´t sit in the bus stop as sea lions were lying on the seats. We flew back to Guayaquil then caught a 6 hour bus to Bahia, the road was littered with plastic, it made me never want to buy plastic again. We passed so many shacks made of bamboo and rice fields. Along the way was a town where every shop sold rice and then a town where every shop sold pillows, it was so bizarre. I then had the best nights sleep in my Auntie´s Apartment in Bahia.

... it. Big big chunks of coral. The rock formation was very strange, you could see exactly what the lava had done. There were lots of sea lions here and we even came across a couple play fighting, i hope, it was pretty vicious. I have far far too many photos of sea lions.

We started sailing that night and i had not such a great night sleep, for some reason i am getting so tired so early, even at midday reading i start falling asleep and by 7:30 i need bed pretty bad.

This morning we had breakfast and dropped our bags off for the cruise ship, there are 16 of us on the cruise. We went to darwins research centre and saw lonesome george (the last tortise of his species) and other large tortises. We met up with the cruise ship for lunch, our rooms are tiny and i'm terrified there will be a fire and i'll be stuck down below deck. The cruise guy took us up to the top of the island ...

... couple of minutes.and had lunch with the poeple we will be with for the next 4 days.



The boat was nice, not too small, and the people are all pretty young. im in a room with this short haired girl from norway, or somewhere similar. My runs only got worse. We then did a bus trip up to see tortises in the wild and also go through a tunnel mad by lava, this one was huge and ...

... ve been searching for them and finally find them its pretty cool. We also saw a lot more fish aswell. When we got back on the boat there was a bit of a vomit fest. 3 of the guys vomited, one partially on the other while he was sleeping. HA! It was pretty funny. Once we got back we found a nice burger place and got some real food, im missing nz cheese, the white tasteless stuff they have here is awful! Then to bed, good day.

... snorkeling gear with us, and for the next activity headed out towards an islet from the beach in order to do some sea-life watching. Getting used to snorkeling, I was swimming around the island, intently searching for good snaps to take with my underwater camera. The rewards of this visit were exceptionally large numbers of parrot fish huddled around a rock, small eels and blue starfish. Back to the ship for a short siesta, and then an afternoon walk into the ...