Grand Hotel Lobo de Mar Puerto Ayora

... 5 females. Before he started that arrangement the population was 400. It now stands at 1800.<br><br>Saw 'unhappy males' and 'unhappy females' of various species (those who only have their own gender for company) but also saw loads of really, really cute baby tortoises.<br><br>The adult male tortoises are much, much bigger than the females, about 1.5 metres in length and weighing up to 180kg! The ones we saw were about 180 years old - no wonder they had such wonderfully wrinkly, papery ...

... I had caught up with the madly retreating wife, we saw another one. This one was swimming no more than 15 feet from us, but took no notice despite Catherine&#8217;s noisily hyperventilating! It turned out later on that they were harmless - at least during the day - so our guide told us...<br> There were, however, other dangers on the islands of a more prosaic nature. On our third trip out, Jane, one of our fellow passengers, had her hand drawn into the ...

... an hour before heading back to the port. As we left Garapatoa I noticed two turtles seemingly stuck together floating on the crest of the waves about 1km out from the beach. It was mating season. We came so close to them we were lucky not to run them over.<br><br>We got back to port about 2pm. I was happy to be early as today was the day of football world cup qualifiers. Ecuador were playing home, in Quito, to Uruguay and if they won, or even drew, they had a ...

... attractive looking swimming hole but decided now not to walk to Tortuga Bay. We went instead to the harbor front, caught a water taxi for $1.50 for all of us, and got dropped off at the pathway to Las Grietas. We walked 200metres to where we knew was a beach and shallow swimming bay where we stayed for about an hour. We returned, caught the water taxi, back to our apartment. As we passed a restaurant next to the harbor front a couple ...

... at each to see the animals and plants and then back to the boat. only once did we get off in a town (Puerto Ayora) and that was only for a few hours as well. I had just finished a semester studying abroad in el continente (mainland ecuador) and i remember reverse culture shock settling in on the boat through the Galapagos because my friend and I were thrown in with 12 English speaking white tourists from North America and ...

Today we arrived at Lobos island, the nursery of sea lions. The sea lions would come to this island to breed their young. The strongest alpha male dominate the crowd and get the chance to mate with all the females. Their are so many sea lions even still borns. <br><br> Last night my roommate was coughing all night so I think I caught the cold from her and my throat was quite uncomfortable even to a degree to ...

... s nothing more strange than swimming as hard as you can towards a shark, only to realize you&#8217;ve gotten too close and then desperately trying to backpedal under water as it heads towards you. <br><br> After that we swam to where the penguins were hanging out and ended up seeing a huge turtle, which, with the tide literally almost ran into us in the narrow channel. It was all we could do ...

... who was a mechanic for an airline there. His advise was to stay. So after almost an hour less than half the original passengers of the plane finally took off for their destination. Unfortunately all the delay meant Matt missed his first afternoon of his cruse to see green sea turtles as did the other 8 people on the tour. The following day Matt emerged from his private cabin to see the first island he was to explore. As soon as the tour landed on the island animals ...

... horse and mine separated from the rest so i had a long and lonely ride back. (on a side note...i have a lot of respect for guys who ride horses regularly...i dont think God intended it for us but oh well). After the volcano we took a boat ride and saw the warm water penguins and a ton of birds and such...we then went snorkeling but the water was mirky from the changing of the tides. We were with an Australian couple who was awesome. Combined they had been ...

175 years after Chucky Darwin developed his theories of evolution in the Galapagos Islands aboard the infamous vessel, The Beagle, Jon and I come to the same little corner of the world to follow in his famous footsteps. After Medellin, we spent 1 night in the Ecuador capitol, Quito. A breakfast consisting of a loaded hot dog had me feeling horrible on the flight with a case of what Mexicans call ¨"Montezuma Revenge". The upset stomach and close proximity to another individual ...