Death Metal No More!

I just got sent this picture of me playing in my last gig with Savage's Torment. I think musical differences were the reason it didn't work, but hey I got to improve my spanish and get to see alot more of Bogota that normal gringos do! Lets put it down to experience and who else can say they were in a Colombian death metal band and played two gigs in Bogota! Chimba!!!

Quito...on return from the Galapagos...

So,after the adventure that was the Galapagos Islands, we spent a few more days in and around Quito.
Namely the older part of town, where a lot of original spanish architecture remains.
Quito is a beautiful city, much better laid out than Bogota, and no where near as big.
It has a variety and welath of old buildings and churches to look at, not to mention the hotel that we stayed in in the old town.
Apparently is was once owned by the first president of Ecuador, you can tell, it is gorgeous, the price also shows it!
So, here are some pictures of our wanderings through Quito, watch out for the Teleferico pics, where you can climb up in a cable car up to 4100 metres!
Also, La Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world) or the equator for you and I. We had a great time here.
Enjoy,
Saffron and Tim.


Waiting for the Telefericoo take us up to 4100 metres to view Quito from up high.











We then came back down to earth again and took a bus to La Mitad del Mundo the equator line where they had two different parks and monuments to the equator one plotted without GPS which is 30 meters out and the other which is spot on 5 minutes down the road from the official and wrong large monument! Enjoy the soppy pic of us kissing between northern and southern hemisphere and then Saff trying to balance an egg on a nail on the real equator line!












After we came back from the centre of the world we walked around the old town of Quito for the next two days taking in the beauty of the old colonial part of Quito and stayed in a swanky hotel! On the saturday night we went for dinner at Boca de Lobo a quite jazzy eatery! Enjoy!




Anyone for Tang?















Check out our hotel below pretty swish eh? Standard posing procedure!


And finally Boca de Lobo! Jazz!

The Galapagos Islands

Saturday 4th October, we boarded a flight for Quito, stayed one night in Quito and then flew out early Sunday morning to the Galapagos Islands.
Believe it or not, there is actually a run way and everything on the Island Of Baltra, which is where we flew into.
From there, our guide Juan (one of the coolest people ever, and with a great array of funny sayings!) picked us up and transported us on bus to the port where we were put onto the little dinghy (after being greeted by a bunch of lazy sea lions enjoying the sun!) and plonked us onto the boat (or would you call it a sail ship?) and we were off straight away!
Our trip took us around baltra Island, to a little cove calledbalck turtle cove, where we saw sea turtles, pelicans, blue footed boobies (this coined the phrase 'booby diving!' by Juan-who got very excited whenever he saw one diving), we also saw angel sting ray's, lots of birdies and other animals.





We sailed around to Rabida Island the next day, where we pulled up to a perfectly red sanded beach where sea lions were resting. there was the cutest baby sea lion,and lots of other mum's around too. we took a quick tour of coast only about a 25 minute walk, and then returned to the beach to snorkle with fishies and other beasties that were along the rocks.
As soon as we got in (bearing in mind that saff had never used a snorkle before, and we both had to use flippers!), the greatbig daddy bull seal reared his ugly head and started barking at us!
So Juan the guide, started shouting on the shore,swim left, no, swim right!
So by this time we had both panicked and both swam back to shore and took the flippers off, which are more restrcitive to snorkel with at first, and got out and watched the other people from our boat panic as he swam toward them too!
After all this we got back on the boat and sailed for a long time over to another island ready for the next day,
We woke up in bartolome Island, where we climbed up to a peak and looked out over the whole of the island.
(this is the picture with two beaches either side of a volcanic peak). Here we had a good look over the volcanic structure of the islands, and you can really see where the lava has flowed and settled and cooled. It has left some pretty cool structures.
we snorkled around the edge of one of the beaches, again being followed by the daddy sea lion bull.
We swam with penguins here, and with sea lions. From here, we sailed a few hours to Sombrero chino (chinese hat) island.
here we saw sea iguanas jumping and swimming in the sea, they looked like crocodiles!
we also saw lots more sea lions and birds.



























The next day (wednesday) was a really early start and we shifted across to Isla plaza, and plaza sur. Here we saw more land iguanas and other animals.
this was one of the last stops, because we then went onto the final port, where we visited the Darwin station, and saw the Giant land Tortoise Lonesome George, who was actually taken by Darwin and is still alive!
He took another tour around the Island Santa Cruz, including giant lava flow tunnels, and a huge collapsedlava crater.
That was really cool.
Enjoy the pictures.
I will publish the Quito pictures separately!
Saff and Tim.