Hotel Albemarle Isabela

Today we had breakfast at the hotel and then rode another bumpy boat ride to our next destination, Isabella Island. It took about 2 ½ hours, again by small boat with two large motors.. Isabella Island only has about 2300 inhabitants, and it feels really exotic. As we came in we saw Pinguinos (Penguins) sitting atop black lava rock, and old fishing boats. The town itself is on the beach and all ...

Well we sat down to discuss what to do next with our travels and it did not take long to decide we needed a change of scenery from South America. We have really enjoyed traveling through SA but we both feel as if we have exhausted ourselves with Incas, Pan pipes and chicken and rice for BL&D so with time and money starting to look a bit tight we have decided to miss out Central America as we feel we are not in the right frame of mind to appreciate similar sights and ...

... me to say that the boat had had an accident and was no longer in operation - so they had moved us to a different ship.  Turns out it was quite an upgrade and we ended up going 5 star!  After a week of camping hot showers and chocolates on our pillows were great! I'll let the photos speak for themselves about what we saw. When we returned to Quito we spent ...

... all of our dumb questions and even asked us some of her own (¨Why do you both have such light color skin and hair¨) haha. Our first stop was the Flamingo lake....we were lucky enough to see about 10 or so and snapped a ton of photos....and also learned that when they are not in the Galapagos they fly all the way to California for 2 months and come back! Pretty cool. We had the rest of the afternoon as free time so we headed to a small peir to watch the ...

I left Quito on the 6th January and flew to the island of Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. I spent one night there then got a boat to the island of Isabela, where I am staying for the rest of the month. Whilst on Santa Cruz we went to visit the Charles Darwin research station, where the famous tortoise "Lonesome George" lives. For anyone who hasn´t seen the documentaries about him, he is the only surviving ...

Monday afternoon, four of us hired bikes and headed up the trail to the wall of tears which was built in the 50´s (I think) by convicts. There´s numerous viewpoints and lagoons on the way. The first challenge was turning the bike in the street - the piles of sand made that somewhat tricky and I came off a couple of times. It didn't help that I had slipped and fallen in the tortoise pool in the morning and had a tender behind. (It got ...

... one was just having a snooze a few feet in front. I finally got to swim with a sea lion - well one passed me by, but it was the closest I had come. There was also a bit of a traffic jam when a turtle was trying to swim passed me down a narrow passage - it was so close. There were loads of other fish - large, small, black, pink, turquoise. All in all a good morning out.

Bartolome Dry landing on the island which looks like the lunar surface. Black or red are the main colours. It never rains here and vegetation is sparse. We had a nice view of the rock pinacle on one side and of the lava channels and veins of the volcanos that have created the island. One of the prettiest things to grow here is the lava cactus. The colours of the lava is also amazing reds, pinks, greens, oranges and black. From here we ...

I love it here. Life has just slowed down to the most relaxing pace. The toughest decision on most days is whether to go to the beach or snorkeling. That is of course after I have taught English for a few hours in the morning. You arrive at the harbour and are welcomed by the sealions who are just hanging around on the fishing boats....hanging onto the rocks are numerous crabs and you don´t have to look far to find the marine iguanas sitting ...