8 day Galapagos Cruise
Trip Start
May 11, 2005
1
193
259
Trip End
Ongoing
Galapagos Islands,
Ecuador
Monday, September 10, 2007
For the next 8 days I saw a shit-load of wildlife and I mean a shit-load! Basically our routine was eat breakfast, tour an island, snorkel, eat lunch, motor to another location, tour that island, eat dinner and go to bed. We did this for 8 days and it never got old!
In theory this entry could be huge so in effort to be brief since I put up 125 photos, I will just go over the highlights.
Snorkeling with Seal lions and Penguins was awesome
penguine
! The sea lions would nip my flippers, wrestle with each other and would play like puppies. The penguins would swim right up to us and then dart away quick as a fish. The bull sea lions would swim right by us and give us the eyeball. It was super scary because the bulls are huge and could bite through us like butter! The were tons of huge sea turtles and we were able to swim along side them. One time when no one was looking I took a ride on one, I know its bad but I could not resist. These turtles are super powerfully so when they get scared they take off... if your holding on its quite a ride! I also saw a ton on sting rays and sharks. Our guide knows where this one shark lives and brought us to his cave. When we dove down he was sharing his cave with an enormous sting ray. Our guide pulled the shark out of the cave by its tail. I guess this shark is always there and they have named him Pedro. The ocean here is teaming with life so every time I got in the water I saw something fantastic.- Other cool stuff was watching blue footed boobies, masked boobies, albatross and frigate birds do their mating dances. I got pictures of all the dances. I never did get pictures of the penguins because I only saw them when I was snorkeling!
- Other cool stuff was watching a huge stingray jump out of the water to clean its back, watching dolphins surf the wake of our boat, Seeing bull sea lions fight for females, watching sea turtles mating, hanging out with huge land tortoises and seeing a ton of sharks
seal
.I feel sorry for people that got on our boat that did 4 or 5 day cruises because they did not see as much as us 8 dayers. So if you ever go to the Galapagos do the 8 day boat tour!
After our cruise ended, I went to another island (Isabella) that is not visited as much to hang out for 3 days. Here I climbed a volcano and checked out the wildlife without a tour.
I think I was extremely lucky to see as much wildlife as I did, especially the frigate bird with his huge red balloon. My advice to anyone thinking about coming here is to defiantly drop the doe and come!
