Galapagos 1 - Santa Cruz

I’d been very worried about luggage limits as by camera bag is over all hand luggage limits so when we checked in for our flight to the Galapagos I stuck two cameras and large lenses around my neck and hoped for the best.  In actual fact our plane was an Airbus 320 and no one seemed remotely interested in baggage size.

The flight to Galapagos had a 40 min stopover in Guayaquil and then about 2 hours to the Islands, Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador (although not the capital) and is on the River Guaya with lots of low lying areas

Some of the islands, which are considerably larger then I’d imagined, and of course very barren – obvious really as they are volcanic.

There were several annoying people onboard, you know the sort; can’t work out where their seat is, block the aisle trying to put an oversize bag in an already full locker, make the stewardess repeat the food options even though they must have heard her saying it to the 8 people seated in front, recline their seat on a ½ hour flight etc. and we fervently hoped weren’t fellow Beluga passengers - Flight 5 and my tolerance is wearing thin.

Anyway we duly landed on Baltra and cleared our hand luggage through (searched again) then waited for our bags.  All bags are brought to a special area, set out on racks and then a police dog goes up and down, trained I assume for various banned items; plants, seeds, soil, animals (islanders are known to smuggle cats and dogs in as pets).  This photo is taken with my latest camera - a waterproof Lumix specially for underwater pictures (hope they're better than this one!)

We met our guide Juan and 9 fellow passengers and yes, two of those we spotted on the plane are destined to be in very close proximity to us for the next 7 days.  Everyone was bundled on to a very old bus and taken about 10 mins to a ferry across to Santa Cruz (2 mins) and as soon as we were out if the bus we saw pelicans, marine iguana and sally lightfoot crabs.  It’s going to be challenging photographically as the wind is quite strong and of course the birds keep moving.  I’m hoping to see all these creatures in much better surroundings and “doing” something but for now I’ll be content with just recording that I’ve seen them.

From there we had a minibus up into the highlands to look for Galapagos Giant Tortoise and we certainly found some.  Like most animals, tortoises keep to age old trails and a very nice restaurant had been set up on this farmer’s land to take advantage of this.

After that we drove to Puerto Ayora and visited the Charles Darwin Research Centre which amongst other things has a breeding programme for Giant Tortoise and also Lonesome George, the last of his species who died 2 years ago (and is back having spent the last 16 months being stuffed in California)

This little fellow was quite cute and had lovely colouring.

Land Iguana but in captivity to it doesn’t really count!

Lava lizards; male larger, female reddish colouring.

We then wandered back through this rather nice little town and watched the brown pelicans and heron trying to steal the newly caught fish at the market.  Sea Lions joined in too with the hope of getting a free meal.

This one was getting a refreshing hose down from one of the fish gutters.

Seems the very scary marine iguanas are never far away - I’m sure the Orks in The Lord of the Rings were modelled on these creatures.

I could have stayed forever watching them all but Ian was keen for a beer.  At 5pm we met up with the others at the end of town where Ecu Ball was being played; the Ecuadorian version of the game which only has 3 players per side.  It’s also the area where the locals congregate in the evenings and just have fun.

Various boats were bobbing around waiting for their passengers and we transferred by panga onto our home for the next 7 nights M/Y Beluga.  This yacht has 8 berths so a maximum capacity of 16 guests, 1 guide, 7 crew but even nicer for us as we are just 11.  8 English (although 2 live in Texas), a couple from France but she’s originally from Ecuador and an Australian girl now living in New York – a nice group I think (except perhaps 1 :))