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Monday morning, David drove me down to the Quito Airport bright and early.  I then had an incredibly disorganized and confusing check-in process, but was able to get on board without any real problems.  The flight was short, but they still served a meal (which was my first airline meal in years… oddly enough, I don’t miss it). We arrived at the small airport, where someone from my boat, the Merak, was supposed to be waiting for me.  After a good long period of wandering around, I finally bumped into my boat’s group.

Holding the sign for the Merak was Cesar, who would be our guide for the next 5 days. Cesar, who prefers to go by Che-che, was born and raised in the Galapagos, in the town of Puerto Ayora. He’s a short, 50-something, funny man with inpecable knowledge of the geography, geology, and biology of the Galapagos, and an excellent grasp of English (even if his delivery was often Spanglish). Waiting with him was the rest of the passengers: Stefania (Italian) and Danny (Belgian), Andrea (Canadian), Will (Australian), and Jen (Canadian). After some quick introductions, we hopped on a bus which took us to a dock (our first glimpse of Sea Lions and Iguanas), where we boarded the dinghy, that (finally) took us aboard the Merak.

After the first of many delicious, freshly made meals, we headed off for Playa Bachas, for our first real taste of Galapagos wildlife. On our short dinghy journey from the boat to the beach, we saw a few Sea Turtles bobbing around the surface of the water. Immediately after landing on the beach, we were practically swarmed by iguanas, lava lizards, sally lightfoot crabs, and pelicans. We walked for a few minutes to a small lagoon, where a few flamingos, an American oystercatcher and a heron were hanging around. About an hour into the journey, I’d already lost count of the number of different species we’d seen. After we walked around a bit, we had our first snorkeling outing, spotting parrotfish, eels, trumpetfish, star fish, and plenty of others. That night we were treated to an amazing sunset and an equally dazzling full moon over the ocean.

On Tuesday, we woke up early and walked around Mosquera, a very small island, home to a large population of sea lions. We watched them at play, we watched the young pups (some as young as a few weeks) nurse, and we watched the big males protect their territory. Mosquera also gave our first look at the bizarre and hillarious-to-say-outloud blue-footed booby.

We then hit the road (err… sea) for a few hours and traveled to Santa Fe Island.  Santa Fe has a very different landscape to the sandy and rocky beaches we had seen so far. It is home to a dry, almost desert like climate. There’s even a cactus forest on the island, full of prickly pear (different, but related to the prickly pear we know and love from the desert southwest of the USA). It’s also home to the aptly named Santa Fe Land Iguanas, including one we saw climbing into a tree to get some tasty leaves. We also had another snorkeling outing which overall was not great (mostly due to overactive waves and murky, sandy water), but did include a close encounter with a white-tip reef shark.

We traveled overnight and woke up at Punta Suarez, on Española Island, a rocky beach home to a huge marine iguana population. These guys were swimming around the beach, laying out in the sun, climbing over rocks, and generally not caring that a bunch of tourists were walking by snapping thousands of pictures of them. Fun fact: The Galapagos Islands are the only place where you can find marine iguanas.  After hiking around the area, we snorkled in some of the clearest, calmest water I’d ever been in.  As soon as I got in the water, a large male sea lion swam directly under me, almost close enough to touch (but of course, that’s a big Galapagos no-no).  A short boat journey took us to the other side of Española, to Gardner Bay.  We hiked for a few hours here, seeing plenty more marine iguanas, as well as nesting sites for blue-footed boobies, Nazca boobies and Albatross.  Also sighted was the Galapagos hawk, who must have had a field day with all the baby birds about.

We set sail and arrived that evening at Floreana Island.  In the morning, after spotting a few penguins swimming around for food, we went to Post Office Bay.  Here, there’s a barrel full of post cards in what amounts to a tourist-operated postal service. You look through the post cards, grab one addressed to somewhere near where you live, and when you return home, you drop the post card off at its intended destination. Unfortunately, I couldn’t participate, as I didn’t have a postcard to write, nor were there any NY-bound cards in the barrel (even if there were, the recipient would be waiting some indeterminate amount of time before I could get it to them).

A bit past the post office was a small volcanic cave that we ventured into for a hundred meters or so, before it started becoming a water cave out to the ocean. No wildlife, and we ended up only spending a few minutes in there, but a cool, dark cave is always a good time.  We then went to another spot on the island, called Cormorant Point (so-called for absolutely no reason, as it is not home to the Cormorant). A short hike took us past another flamingo lagoon (this one home to a far larger population than the last), past a bunch of lava rocks, and onto one of the nicest white sand beaches I’ve ever seen.

We then had the most amazing snorkeling trip around Corona del Diablo (and I’ve had some good one’s on this trip, since all the way back in Belize, about a million years ago).  Corona del Diablo (Devil’s Crown) is a bunch of large rocks roughly forming a circle, and looking vaguely like a dark, spiky, crown.  Around the edges, and in the middle are a bunch of small, distinct eco-systems, with all kinds of different plant and animal (and those odd marine creatures where you’re not sure if they’re plant, animal or both). Another white-tip shark, this time, in crystal clear view, and for a moment, swimming directly at me, was the highlight.  I just have to thank that penguin that came swimming by and took the shark’s attention away from me.

We set sail and traveled for a few hours until we arrived at Punta Ayora. Che-che got a chance to go home to his family for a bit, while we got a chance to reconnect with civilization for a few hours.  We walked around the town (which Che-che claims has grown from 120 people when he was growing up there to the 13,000 or so who live there today), saw the fish market (where Danny and Stephania bought a couple of nice looking lobsters for Galo, our cook, to add to the dinner menu), and had a few beers before returning to the boat.  After a great dinner (and a made-from-scratch cake, with the words ‘Feliz Viaje, Amigos’ frosted onto it – no easy task in a small sailboat kitchen), we stayed up drinking a few more beers, and chatting late into the night (when you’re out on a boat, with few lights, and few diversions, it’s hard to stay up more than a few hours past sunset – so ‘late’ here means 10PM).

This morning, we had a great French toast breakfast, and headed off to the Charles Darwin Station, a tortoise refuge in Puerto Ayora.  We got to see some baby tortoises, some juveniles almost ready to be reintroduced into the wild, and some adults who permanently live at the Charles Darwin Station.  The most famous resident is Lonesome George, who is the last surviving member of his species. He’s over 100 years old, and despite the Station’s best efforts, he hasn’t been able to mate with any of the females they’ve put in the habitat with him.  The current two females, from Wolf Volcano on Isabella Island are genetically most similar to George’s species, but no luck so far.  As for our visit, George stayed mostly hidden, only showing the very top of his shell to us. I suppose I probably could have just put up a photo of one of the other tortoises and just told you that it was George, but I like to be honest.  So here are some very non-George tortoises.

After the Charles Darwin Station, we were shuttled over to the airport and sent on our merry way. A quick, uneventful flight later I was back in Quito.  Today was mostly spent going through photos and, frankly, writing this entry.  If you made it all the way to the end, congrats.  If you just came to look at pictures, I highly recommend going to facebook for the full Galapagos album (even if you’re one of the 4 people left in the world who isn’t a facebook member).