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.
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