Category: South America

For Sunday, our final morning on the ship, we were “bags out at 6:30” with breakfast at that time as well, for a 7:30am departure.

We took our normal corner of the patio.

We had the longest Zodiac ride of the trip to get to Santa Cruz Island.

Seeing the parking lot full of buses, cars, and noise was a little jolting, actually, after 4 days in paradise and not seeing anything made by humans that wasn’t on the water.

We were headed to the highlands of Santa Cruz, shown way in the background of this photo. Once we got there, below, the terrain changed to rain forest.

We were headed to a private ranch where the family runs a restaurant and lodge. The made us put on rubber boots because there are fire ants everywhere.

Why we were here? Giant tortoises. Tortoises are legendary in the Galapagos, known as the architect of the island, similar to elephants being the architect of the jungle in Africa. They are the largest land animal here, have plenty of resources and no predators, so that’s what allows them to get so big. The name even comes from them: the original explorers who came across the islands were fascinated by them and thought their large shells looked like horse saddles, and movement, although slow, looked like galloping. The name stuck. These two were on the side of the road when our busses pulled up. And when we got ready to walk around a bit, they started coming towards us.

That’s my foot there. He just kept coming towards me and finally Omar asked me to step back; one of the rules of all the islands is to keep 6 feet away from all wild life.

These 3 provided a great deal of entertainment for our group.

Not sure what he was sniffing. Or why.

Above and below: practicing some of the photography tips we got from Ramiro.

There are 3 tortioses around the muddy pond: the one dead center, one huge on in the water – no, that’s not a rock – and another in that nook left of center.

We gathered at 9:30 for a light brunch.

Ash had fruit, i had a bean ceviche and chicken and veggie skewers.

We got back in the busses for the 30 minute ride to the docks, then crammed into a ferry for a 5-minute ride to Baltra Island, where the airport is.

From there it was about 8 minutes to the airport. Roberta said “depends on how often we have to stop for iguana.” At first, I thought she was kidding. Nope. We had to stop 3 times. Once she got off the bus and chased him off the road.

Our last selfie of the trip, taken at the airport lounge.

The airport here is essentially just one gate that handles all 9 flights that come in and out of here. It’s all tarmac stuff, but they open up the back so it goes faster.

We had an uneventful flight to Guayaquil and are staying at the same hotel we were in Tuesday night. We got there about 5pm – note we lost an hour on the way in, Galapagos being Mountain Time and Ecuador Central.

We got settled in our room and were not looking forward to “bags out at 3am” which was needed for our 6am flight to Miami tomorrow, which most of the group is on. As we were leaving to walk around a bit before dinner, American Airlines notified us the flight is delayed 4.5 hours. We were So Happy about that as we’d intentionally planned a 7 hour layover. So rather than go into South Beach for lunch, which we’d discussed as an option, we will have just 2-3 hours to kill probably. Less hassle for us. Then we have a direct, first-class flight to Sacramento, arriving about 10:45pm Monday. As we talked with others, many were in the same boat and aren’t too messed up by the delay. So now, it’s “bags out at 6:30am” and that’s Much Better.

We went back to the same restaurant we had dinner at on Tuesday. I had the above as an appetizer – the description was “spicy beef filled crispy pastry.” How could I resist?

Ash had a shrimp ceviche…

…and garlic pasta with shrimp for his main.

I had the ribeye with a mushroom risotto. I’d come into this trip thinking I was going to be my beef on, thinking these parts were like Brazil or Argentina. Shows you what I know. Being coastal, Peru and Ecuador are heavily seafood based, if you hadn’t noticed. So it was a nice way for me to end it. I’m kind fished out.

With that, I’m going to close with my traditional “Final Thoughts” for this trip, and boy, this one will be tough.

1. I’ll start with Peru since I’d intended to do this when the portion of the trip was over but ran out of time. What I appreciated most about that trip was the history. We learned a lot about the people who were here for thousands of years before the Incas, and also about how cultures were morphed once the Spanish Catholics arrived and tried to convert everyone. In the cathedral in Cusco, where we couldn’t take photos, we spent a good deal of time studying a version of The Last Supper that hung there. Instead of bread and wine, it was guinea pig, corn, and papaya. As someone who was raised as an “it can only be THIS way” Catholic, I found this amusing and refreshing. My spiritual worldview today supports that idea that, yes, we all have different gods, because god interacts with us in ways that will make sense to US, not necessarily everyone. I appreciated how this supported that.
2. The Galapagos experience was a revelation. It’s hard to describe the impact of 97% of these islands being a national park and therefore protected. Everything is wild, and all human interaction is designed for minimal impact and to not interrupt what nature does so beautifully, without any judgment as to what’s good or bad. It just is, it’s just nature doing it’s thing, and the experience here is heavily science-based. The naturalists have to file daily reports on what they saw, upload photos, etc., to keep the cataloging going. As a result of this, new species are identified all the time. Because evolution is constant.
   • Something I haven’t talked about yet: the park system tightly controls visitors. First of all, as an individual, you can’t just book a flight to the Islands, a hotel on Santa Cruz (the only island likely to have them) and go out exploring. You Have to be With A Guide at all times. It’s required. The hotels will do some day trips but you won’t get the full experience that way. So boats it is, and the park system limits to total number (80-100 max). Each one has to be registered, and the park system determines where they can go and how long they can be there, to manage how many people are in one place at one time. So if you’re Jonathan, the Expedition Leader, you plan your outings on the itinerary set by the park system.
3. I had this moment on Darwin Bay yesterday where I teared up, I was so moved by the natural beauty of the water and the wildlife that was Everywhere and did not care that we were there. Since it’s been under protection for over 200 years, and there were never any big settlements on the majority of the islands – in fact, explorers thought they were worthless – the wildlife doesn’t know that we could be potential predators because they’ve never experienced us that way. Very different from our experience in Africa.
4. I’m glad that I snorkeled. I hadn’t decided that I would until our intro briefing when Jonathan said, multiple times, that 50% of the experience occurs underwater. I may or may not ever do it again.
5. Once again, the tour company was phenomenal. This trip wasn’t cheap but, having experienced this level of expertise in Africa, we knew it would be worth it. And it was. On 3 fronts:
   • Logistically this was a more complicated trip. Five flights if I counted right, plus lots of bureaucracy to get on the island so lots of paperwork, fees, etc. And all you do is show up. The “bags out” thing is so you don’t have to drag your luggage around, they do it for you. Even checked it for us. We showed up at the airport this morning, Adriana gave us our boarding pass and we got on the plane. Simple. And they brought it to our room this evening, just like that have every other place we’ve stayed on this trip.
   • Educationally, this was even more overwhelming than the Africa trip. So Much Information Shared Every Day starting in Cusco. It’s both appreciated and exhausting. The woman who met us at the airport today, on the bus to the hotel was telling us more than we ever cared to know about Guayaquil, and I just wanted to scream “shut up already, we don’t care!” Because, speaking for me and Ash, we are pretty done. (And it doesn’t help that now I’m sick, picked up a cold yesterday and today is much worse. Yay.) But in general, the education you get I appreciate so much.
   • The quality of the food was better here. The food at the safari lodges was very geared for Amercian tourists who might not be all that adventurous. So we didn’t feel like we got a feel for what the locals ate. Here, in both Peru and in Ecuador, real attempts were made to introduce us to knew things which of course we love.
6. This is getting long so I’ll end with this: the air in the Galapagos was Amazing. I’ve never experienced anything like it, and it’s hard to describe. But I noticed it as soon as we walked out of the airport. I’ve never had a breeze feel this good – an interesting combination of warm and cool. It might be because of the cooler waters that it’s known for mixed with the warmer air – it was 79 today, Fall-coming-into-Winter. Whatever it is, I loved it. It made relaxing on the observation deck of the boat heavenly.

And that, my friends, is enough out of me for one trip. Did you enjoy it? We loved having you a long as always.

I had never heard of a caldera until we got here Saturday morning. But that’s where we were: a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses. And the water that fills it here on Genovesa Island is called Charles Darwin Bay.

Genovesa is a very small island in the north of the archipelago, and the furthest distance we’ve traveled. Last night about 8:40pm we crossed the equator for the first time. This just gives you context of where we are relative to the rest. Below is larger…

and shows the shape of the island. We spent the entire day in the bay where on prior days we’d always moved on to another spot at lunchtime.

While we still wanted to have a more laid back day, we did get up in time to do the 6:15am kayak excursion. They only had so many kayaks, so you had to sign up for them, and they asked you not to go if you’d gone already. The prior trips had always had empty spots so for this last trip they’d opened it up to anyone whether you’d gone before or not, so Friday night I’d made sure we were first on the list. And we were the only “new” ones to come out.

We just kayaked around the bay, staying close to the cliffs on the right side. We didn’t see too much but it was relaxing. Requisite selfie below.

We got back to the ship and breakfast was at 7:30am. At 8:30am we went back out again. Here’s Ash at the board where we have to tell them we’ve left the boat and came back. Each cabin has a little peg next to it for however many occupants are in it. If, once all excursions are supposed to be back (there are often multiple things happening at once) and not all pegs are to the left, you will get paged to make sure you’re actually there. This is especially true after the morning excursions since we typically move somewhere else at lunchtime, and they don’t want to leave anyone behind.

This time we went to the beach for a wildlife walk. It was a short walk but we spent over an hour there, there was so much to see. It was a wet landing, as shown above. We had 4 Zodiacs out for this one, I think nearly everyone participated.

Jonathan, the Expedition Leader, told us there would be a lot of birds today and he was right. This video is my attempt to capture a bit of that in the sky above us.

What made this was unique was the different kinds of birds we’d see, how up close we got, and how many of them had chicks. And that they didn’t seem to care we were there, which anymore wasn’t all that unique. I’d posted a photo of this guy with the red around the eyes the other day, but didn’t know what it was: the Galapagos seagull. Endemic to this area, they are the only seagulls that feed at night. See the closeup below.

And a little later we encountered one with her chick.

A red-footed booby with her chick, identifiable by the blue beak. Here’s a little video of these two with Omar talking in the background. It’s amazing how different they look at birth – white feathers instead of brown, black beak instead of blue. Omar said it would take a year for the colors to change.

Another red-footed booby, above and blow, this one with white and black feathers.

The above photo shows how close we were to these birds, the white one sitting on an egg. Below, a closer shot from the front angle.

The white is a Nazca booby, and the black are frigatebirds.

Here are more frigatebirds; we saw them a lot today. That front one is male, the red pouch essentially being a mating call. Darwin called them the condors of the coean because they have exceptionally large wingspans, the largest wingspan-to-body–weight ratio of any bird in the world. They are also famous for stealing food from other birds.

A quick photo of Ash.

I almost stepped on this sea lion!

I was fascinated by the scenery at the beach line, with all the different colors of water and the ships in the background.

This is Omar. I don’t think I’ve seen him or his brother, Ramiro, wear shoes while out, only on the ship (when in required uniform, say for dinner). Doesn’t matter how flat or rocky it is, including the lava field which was very hot.

This sea lion is OUT. I haven’t a clip of a baby trying to wake this momma but haven’t been able to upload it. Sadly, videos have been a challenge on this trip (and I don’t know why!).

The colors of the water are just stunning. Here’s another video to try to capture the beauty of this place. Glad this one worked!

We got back to the ship around 10:30. We visited with some other passengers for a bit, then Ash went to the cabin to nap and/or watch TV, I came up here to the observation deck to take advantage of being outside. I love the air here. Below was my view.

Lunch was at 12:30, and it had an Ecuadorian theme. Note the bowl in the middle there with banana chips, popcorn, and chose corn nut things we like.

This salad was simple and incredible.

Ash had more salad with fish for his main. I had suckling pig, hominy, potato croquette.

This dessert was a tres leches cake, a fig, a shortbread cookie sandwich with coconut and caramel inside. Before lunch we’d had our “departure lecture” on all the things that needed to happen yesterday to get ready to leave, and how today would flow. Which is a little complicated but will leave that for tomorrow’s blog. So we spent some time doing that stuff until it was time to go out again at 3:45pm.

We went to Prince Philip’s Steps at the southeast end of the island, and area named after his visit here in the 70’s.

You got a nice view of the entire caldera from there.

More frigatebirds, that top one giving you an idea of the wingspan mentioned earlier.

This is a Nazca booby, the 3rd in this family of seabirds. This particular breed always lays two eggs, 5 days apart from each other. If the first one is doing well by the time the 2nd one is born, the parents ignore the second one and it eventually dies. It’s just an extra in case for some reason the first one doesn’t make it, but they don’t have enough resources to raise two chicks at one time.

What’s everyone looking at? A short-eared owl, this one in the shadows of a ravine. We ended up seeing 3 on this walk but they were so far away, well camouflaged then sitting in shade on top of that, made it very difficult to get a good photo of them.

The view from the top of the steps. Probably the steepest climb we did the whole trip, but it was pretty flat after that.

Our last sunset on the ship.

Ramiro put together a slideshow of everyone’s favorite photos, which he’d collected during that afternoon period mentioned above. I submitted 5 and they were all included.

Dinner started with a carrot and ginger soup. A little too much ginger for our tastes but otherwise good.

Ash had the fish on a Cesar salad. I had beef and Enrique threw a few scallops on the side. That rice and corn dish was amazing.

This was a puff pastry with a chocolate filling, whipped cream, nuts and caramel on top. Pretty tasty.

The tour ends today. We leave the ship after breakfast, have one more excursion, and then head to the airport. Will cover all that tomorrow.

We decided on a much slower pace for Friday, to skip some things and just relax.

But we still got up when they had coffee out at 6am and caught the tail end of the sunrise. We visited with some people for a bit, then went back to the cabin and I finished Thursday’s blog. We headed back up to breakfast after that.

We had moved again overnight and the scenery had changed all around us. This is the view to the back of the ship.

And at the front, you could see Isla Sombrero China, or the Chinese Hat. Or, Pizza Hut, as Ramiro was joking about. Clearly the name comes from the shape of the island. This is a tiny island off the coast of the much larger island of Santiago, which is really the island you’re seeing in the clip of the map below.

We continued to hang out until our first outing at 10:45am. We went up to the observation deck and I tried out the hammock. This was a new level of relaxation for me, just completely sucking all ambition out of me. A simple hammock in a lightly swaying boat? Give me a break. I rocked away listening to an audiobook on my headphones.

And of course, Ash got a photo.

At 10:45 we went down to get our activity in, which was a glass-bottom Zodiac boat ride. Because it’s covered and doesn’t fit under the back of the ship where we get on and off where the stairs are, we’re taken to it in a regular one and then we transfer by slipping over the side of one and into another, as the guys above are about to do.

The glass bottom! It’s pretty clear water so you can see fairly well.

Requisite selfie.

Everyone just looking down the whole time.

We saw lots (and lots) of star fish, above, and various schools of fish as seen below. Ramiro was our naturalist – that’s his bare feet you see 2 photos above standing on the glass rim, and told us a horrible story about how the star fish eat. I can’t even repeat it but something in the neighborhood of having no mouth and their stomachs come out and envelope what they’re going to take in. I said “sounds like a horror movie” to which he replied, “yes, they are truly monsters.” Lovely.

We went back to our room to drop off our life jackets when we returned and were greeted by Julianna, the Wellnesss Specialist who did the stretching the day before, and would also be doing my massage at 12:30pm. She gave me a robe with the above note which she was about to leave in our room (remember from day 1 – no locked doors): “Dear Steve, I’m confirming your massage. I will meet you at the spa at 12:30. Julianna.” The spa was a small cabin at the other end of our hallway so I wouldn’t even have far to go.

At 11:30am, Adriana, the naturalist who had helped me snorkel the day before, gave an interesting lecture on Charles Darwin. Makes me want to go find a biography and maybe read On the Origin of Species, which, if you don’t know, was heavily influenced by his Galapagos experience.

I left this a little early to make it to my 12:30 massage appointment on time. It was a good one and she spent a lot of time on my left thigh which was still all kinked up from that hike down from Machu Picchu to Agua Calientes on Sunday.

Ash had arranged for the crew to hold some lunch back for me. The main, above, was Andean roast chicken with a spicy rice and fried plantains.

The dessert was a rice pudding topped with whipped cream, caramel, chocolate flakes, and these dots of a cherry sauce. Ash knew I would like it and asked for two. He was right. Probably my favorite dessert of the whole trip.

This is Enrique, who had arranged the late lunch for me, and has been our waiter most of the trip since we usually sit in the same area.

Since we were eating so late we had the entire patio area to ourselves but ate inside so the crew could continue clearing out there. The ship had moved again. After lunch we went to part 2 of Ramiro’s photography class and learned a lot of great stuff. Whether we can break old habits will be another story.

The view out our cabin window changes typically twice a day – movement at lunch time and at night.

At 4:15, we took a ride to a lava field for a hike that Jonathan, the Expedition Leader, didn’t sell well at all. He was extra cautious about how uneven it would be, and how hot it would be, with suggestions around extra water, good shoes, don’t go if balance is a problem for you, etc. Like he was trying to talk you out of it. (He does an announcement about each activity 15 minutes before with reminders about what it is, what to take, etc.) And only two boats went over, just 20 people so less than half. But we really enjoyed it. This was probably my favorite hike because it was so different. And none of us that it was all that difficult.

But it was beautiful, like walking on another planet. This lava is from an eruption in 1897 – so ecologically seconds ago on an island that’s millions of years old. It expanded the island by like 20% at the time. There were so many different ways the lava cooled that impacted the way it looked, leaving lots of patterns you could identify over time.

This area had been cooled and then somehow collapsed leaving this sort of bed that Roberta, our naturalist on this trip, and one of the travelers, decided to lie on. Roberta encouraged others to do it but no one else took her up on it. Delaney, at 24, is the youngest in this group is pretty much game for anything.

Looking back, you see our boat on the far left, another boat to the right of center, and an interesting rock formation jutting up out of the edge of the land on the right. We’ll get very close to that later.

The hills are not black because they were pre 1897 and not impacted by the last flow. It had come around from the other side of the island where the volcano is, we actually never saw it. This is Santiago Island, the 3rd largest of the archipelago.

I’d seen a lizard when we first got off the Zodiac but no other life until about a mile in we saw some weeds.

By this point we had worked our way to older lava – all the red is dried ash from an eruption much longer ago. And more life had sprung up, but not much.

We turned back towards the water and came across more lava from the last eruption, and you can clearly see the line where it was stopped by the hills.

Ash taking photos of us taking photos. That’s Julissa on the left, a nurse we got to know way back at Machu Picchu.

We made it back to the Zodiac and then went for a ride along the coast line of the island to see what we could see. The big score of the day for this location would have been penguins. And on that front we did well, sighting 18 of them over about half a mile.

These were the first 3 we encountered. Galapagos penguins are the only ones that exist in the tropics, made possible by the cold water here which is one of the things that makes this region so unique.

You can see how close they let us get.

This group of 4 was the second siting. Below is a zoomed shot.

We made our way around to that big flat rock and actually went into that little cove, then around it towards a beach area.

This little guy was molting and not happy to see us. Roberta said it’s a very uncomfortable process where they can’t get in the water for 3 weeks. He kept turning from us like he didn’t want to be seen so I was lucky to get this shot.

The beach was covered in crabs.

The last penguin we focused on before we made our way back.

It was about 5:40 and the sun was starting to go down. That’s our ship right of center.

That’s the 2nd group of us on the left (10 to a boat) and this gives you an idea of how big that rock is.

Dinner was amberjack fish with wonderful mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. We both had it.

A white chocolate mousse with a strawberry coating, blackberry sauce, and passion fruit caviar.

At 8:45pm, Adriana did a star-gazing lesson on the observation deck. It was the first night that was clear enough to see anything. I didn’t think my iPhone could capture much but it did a decent job.

I couldn’t tell what I was capturing since I couldn’t see anything through my camera screen, it was pitch black.

As always, the big dipper was the clearest thing in the sky.

Not a bad way to end a relaxing day. Today is our last full day on the tour and they’ve promised us quite a show as far as animals go, so will see how all that goes.

This is for Thursday, May 30. Our first outing started early, so we went down for coffee at 5:45am.

And caught a beautiful sunrise. This was 5:56am.

We meet in the lobby for all of our outings, and they had coffee and fruit ready for us.

Off the coast of Santa Cruz Island, the one with the most people on it (although we haven’t seen any of that) are two tiny islands called North Plaza and South Plaza. This morning, we were headed to South Plaza.

I’ve shown these cacti before but this morning we got the story about why they grow they way they grow. In a word, tortoises. The giant tortoises here got to be the size they are because this cactus was so plentiful. Over the years, the cacti evolved to grow higher so they tortoises couldn’t reach them so easily.

A yellow land iguana on a rock in the lower third of the photo in case you can’t see him. But I like how he blends into the landscape which is why I included so much in it.

This guy just hanging out in the middle of the path. And unfazed by us.

Another one under that huge cactus tree completely unfazed by the tourists taking photos.

Here’s a closeup of this guy. They get their yellow color from eating the flowers of the cactus.

These cages hold baby cacti that were planted by conservationists. They normally don’t interfere with the ecology, but this was but this was a correction of something they’d done decades ago before they knew better. They actually planted more cactus thinking they were helping the iguanas, but then the iguanas did so well that they overran the island and completely ate all of the cactus from this part of it. So now they are attempting to correct that by caging the cactus. They will be in these cages for about 50 years, which is how long it will take for them to get to a size that will help ensure survival. They were planted in 2000, so this project is called Project 2050.

A family of sea lions.

Showing some of the terrain we walked. It was a pretty mild hike, this was about the biggest drop there was. See the shipped circled in the background.

This photo doesn’t really capture how red these guys eyes are.

We got back to the ship and had breakfast around 8:15. That egg at the bottom on the tortilla is huevos rancheros.

Ash was still very tired so he took a nap in the room, and I went up to the observation deck. There was a warm breeze that was so comforting, this was the most relaxed I’d been in a while. Ash joined me at 10:30 for some yoga on the opposite side of this deck. The leader, Julianna, was very good, and put together a great class for this audience – mostly people 60’s and above, some who had never done yoga before. Having not done any yoga since we left, and I usually go at least twice a week, it felt amazing.

By 11:30am the skies had cleared a bit, and the water turned this incredible blue.

Ramiro did this class on photography which was incredibly helpful, especially showing us settings on our phones that none of us knew were there. All of the naturalists are pretty much photographers as well and are constantly sending photos back to the scientific community. Evolution continues and they still discover new stuff.

We got a nice table in the corner of the patio for lunch (and sat in the same place for dinner).

Pumpkin soup with roasted corn, so completely delicious. This trip has turned me into a pumpkin soup fan.

Ash had the broccoli soufflé.

I had roast chicken. This meal all game from Galapaguenians – the folks who live here and produce locally.

A passion fruit mousse with chocolate cookies that were so good Ash asked for more.

This is Omar, Ramiro’s brother, who gave an entertaining presentation after lunch about the human history of the islands, going back thousands of years. They are 3rd generation natural history scientists. One of the reasons that the islands weren’t all that inhabited by people is there are no land animals for food, it rains 6 months a year, and the soil isn’t great for farming. So although both Spain and England had claims here since the late 1500’s, nothing ever really took hold, and the Islands have been free since 1822. Something I knew but he reminded me of: the first airport built here was by the US military in 1942 as another base in the Pacific. Since the war never got to South America it wasn’t used much and after the war was turned over the to Ecuador government.

After this was the next snorkeling outing. Ash stayed in the cabin, and I went out. Just the name of the outing freaked me out: deep water snorkeling. Which just means your feet won’t touch bottom.

I let everyone get out of the Zodiac before me. Adriana, the naturalist with us, stayed with me and helped me get into the water. First time with flippers, etc. I stayed for about 20 minutes at the most. Again, so focused on the process of breathing and relaxing it was hard to enjoy. Someone started screaming – through the mouthpiece of the mask so it sounded like they were drowning – and it freaked me out a bit (turns out it was just excitement over a sea lion) and I got tired and went back to the Zodiac.

But the water was beautiful and I enjoyed watching everyone else enjoy it. Below, a school of eagle spotted rays.

We headed back to the ship about 3:45pm, and left again for a hiking excursion about 4:30pm. This time Ash joined.

As we were approaching the beach for a wet landing, we came across blue-footed boobies – known for, well, blue feet as hopefully you can see, and they’re webbed feet at that. They are known for diving to catch fish, which you can see some of in this video.

And a video of couple of sea lions who greeted us on the beach.

Looking back at the bay where we landed for the hike. This was also where the previous snorkeling happened.

The snorkeling and afternoon hike occurred on and around Sante Fe island, a tiny one off of Santa Cruz but further away than where we were in the morning.

Ramiro was our naturalist again. I’m kinda fascinated with getting photos with our boat in them somewhere.

Another well-hidden iguana. Unless we come across something really spectacular, this might be my last iguana pic. They are everywhere and I think you’ve seen enough! This is where we learned that they get their yellow color from the cacti flower.

Pretty grasshopper – mostly black with some red on his back and green and yellow markings.

Ash balancing himself on a rock on the beach. He’d sort of accidentally used my walking sticks on the morning hike when I’d asked him to hold them while I was getting a photo and then forgot he had them. Now I think he likes them, he got his own (which you can borrow here) when he got on the Zodiac for this hike, which they kept promising would be very rocky. And it was.

We ended up on different beach than we’d started on, and there was a whole colony of sea lions there, above and below.

We were in the lounge again at 6:30pm for our daily briefing, and Jorge, the bartender, made us virgin pina coladas.

Dinner was a BBQ buffet on the patio. A spicy cole slaw which I really enjoyed, a very fresh avocado and tomato salad, pork ribs, tuna, Italian sausage, and grilled vegetables.

A flan for dessert. That egg looking thing is cake, not ice cream.

This ship has an “open bridge policy” which means you can just walk on in any time you want. The entrance is very close to our room since we are at the front of the ship.

Ash wanted the whole “top of the world” experience and, much to my surprise, they were happy to oblige, above and below.

I was amused at how small the steering wheel was.

A photo of a blue footed booby in our hallway.

And that, my friends, was our day. It was very full but lots of fun. We are planning to be much more relaxed today. This is vacation, right?

We were both up early and easily made our 6:30am “bags out” call. Breakfast was in the courtyard outside our room. We left for the airport about 7:45am for a 10am flight to the Galapagos islands – 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, about an hour and 40-minute flight.

I found this photo of the islands taken from the International Space Station and thought it was pretty cool. Isabela is the biggest. Santa Cruz, bottom left and mostly under clouds, has about 20k of the 33k population which resides here. 97% of the islands are part of a National Park managed by Ecuador.

The Galapagos has the world’s first ecological airport, built around 2012. Much of the construction used recycled material. The roof over the walkway behind Ash is made of solar panels. All of the energy used at the airport is renewable. Etc., etc. There were signs all along the walkway giving these and many other details.

We were taken by bus to a dock where we would meet up with our ship.

That’s our ship in the distance.

We donned life jackets and went over in Zodiacs 12 people at a time.

Welcome to the National Geographic Islander II.

As we were walking to our room I was already so impressed with the quality of the boat, even of the hallway, including the beautiful art. I was reminded of how shocked we were at the accommodation we had on the Africa safari last year with NatGeo and not sure why I would expect anything different here.

What a dump! We’d seen photos of this in the brochure but being in it and seeing the outside made it real and fabulous. They quickly pushed the beds together and made it up as a king.

The TV has some nice options on it, including the daily program, which we’ve already found helpful (cuz it’s a lot!).

Nice bathroom of course.

Everyone’s names are on the door. And all the doors are kept open. You can lock them of course for privacy when you’re in your cabin. Otherwise, no locks. It’s primarily so the staff can do what they need to do easily. They’ve already been in here twice today to take away towels, leave chocolates, etc. And there’s a safe, too, if you want to lock stuff up.

There are lots of stairs it seems – 5 decks total, and stairs on both ends. We are on Deck 3 – same as the Spa (notice the sign on the right). I already booked a massage for Friday afternoon.

Lunch was to be on the patio – they already had the salads out. We sat at one of those tables for 6 outside with some friends we’ve been hanging out with.

All of the staff has been super helpful and friendly. And don’t mind posting for photos, like the guy holding up the fish on the right.

This is the Cove Lounge on the 4th deck, where all of our briefings are held. We had 3 here today.

The 5th deck is observation and one side of it has hammocks, which Ash is trying out above.

The other side has a pool. With all of the other activities available I doubt we’ll use it, but the water was nice and warm, and is ocean water.

We had our first briefing at Noon for about an hour. This is Alexa in the center, the Hotel Manager aka Cruise Director. She’s been with Lindblad, the NatGeo partner who runs the tours, for 25 years. This partnership has been around for 20 years. She gave us the rundown on hotel staff, how daily operations work on board, etc. And the safety briefing, with a little “abandon ship” exercise to the lifeboats.

And then we had lunch. A nice salad above…

with a buffet from which I chose roast turkey – some of the best I’ve had – with gravy, wahoo fish (no, I’m not kidding, and it was good), a decent bolognese and grilled vegetables which were surprisingly good.

Meet Jonathan, the Expedition Leader, who’s been with Lindblad for 19 years. He designs the activities. Alexa is responsible for everything on the boat, he’s responsible for everything off the boat. He gave us the rundown on why this place is so special. I took notes! It was a lot, as with all NatGeo things, so I’ll keep it brief but admit I found it pretty fascinating.

• The Galapagos is an archipelago which is a cluster of islands
• They were never part of a mainland; all came up out of volcano
• There are 4 different currents that flow through here mixing warm and cool water all the time (he referred to it as a washing machine!)
• They are the only tropical volcanic islands with cold water year round
• It has the most endemic species of any place on earth, meaning they don’t exist anywhere else
• Conversationists got here in the 1820’s before it got too civilized and put regulations in place to control and preserve
• 200,000 square miles of protected ocean
• Since the animals have never been threatened by civilization, they are “ecologically naive” – meaning they’re not afraid of us

From there we went down for snorkeling equipment fittings.

Ash in his mask. If you haven’t been snorkeling before (I hadn’t), you’re just sticking your face under the surface of the water so you can see what’s beneath it easily. That tube on the right stays above water and you breath through your mouth.

In an area they call the Marina, every passenger has their own hangers where you store – and dry out – your equipment between excursions. We are 301a and 301b.

Ready to go! Here’s what I’ve got: life jacket of course; an equipment bag with flippers, snorkeling mask, 2 towels, and smaller life jacket; a small day pack with bug spray, sunscreen, water.

We rode the Zodiacs to the beach for a “wet landing” meaning exactly that: you will get wet. So dress accordingly. Our first outing was a walk along a beach and then snorkeling lessons for those who needed them (I was the only newbie in our group of 12) and then beach snorkeling, the only time we would do that. All other times would be going into the water from the Zodiac. You can see the Zodiacs in the water – they wait close by in case someone needs to go back to the ship – with the ship in the distance.

And right away we saw our first endemic species: this iguana can swim. Doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. (He’s dead center in this photo but well-hidden against the rocks.)

A few feet away on the same rocks by the water was a crab colony.

There were hundreds of sea turtle egg nests along the ridge of the beach; these tracks are of the mama turtle, probably just from the day before.

I don’t know what kind of bird this is – something stork like apparently! – but it was just walking on by casually so I caught him. There were also lots of big black birds flying around, the guide said probably looking for turtle hatchlings. He said out of 10k births, only one will live to adulthood.

Not far from the beach was this pretty lagoon where 3 pink flamingos were hanging out. Did you know that they are actually white, and the pink color comes from eating shrimp?

I can’t believe I caught this amazing reflection. Just stunning.

Snorkeling was next. Ramiro, the guide, and Ash helped quite a bit. I’m more of an “on the water” person than an “in the water” person and it took me a bit to catch on but was mostly comfortable towards the end. I was so focused on the process and trying to relax into breathing that I wasn’t paying all that much attention to what I was seeing, but we definitely saw stuff. I enjoyed it and will do it again.

We got back to our room after 6pm and had to go for another briefing at 7, just enough time to shower and put on fresh clothes and relax a teeny bit. Jonathan led again and introduced more crew members. There are 57 total crew for 48 total guests. He also went over tomorrow’s itinerary. There are lots of options to cover a lot of tastes and capabilities, so it takes a while.

From there we went to dinner in the formal dining room, with the tables beautifully set.

Chicken and rice soup to start which was amazing. Great flavors and the peas and carrots were super fresh.

Ash had fish – neither of us remember the name now but pretty rare – and risotto, with grilled zucchini and carrots.

I had pork tenderloin with rice and black beans, and the same vegetables.

Passion fruit cheesecake for dessert.

So yes, I do have internet here. There’s a free version which they said would not be good if you needed to upload photos. Well, duh. There were 5mbps and 10mbps options up from that; I chose the 5 and that was more than fine. Faster than anything I’ve had on this entire trip. Happy to be in business!

Yesterday is a full day starting at 6:15am. We’re not going to do everything – it’s still vacation and we’d like to relax a bit here and there! – but come back to see how it went.