Santa Cruz, Galapagos

Arriving in the late morning at Santa Cruz, walking with our backpacks at 32 degrees under equator sun to find a hotel, proper brunch and a cruise for the next eight days. We found all of it...but when we found a good offer for a luxurious cruise, all we had hoped for, we remembered that we are on a backpacking trip, turned down the offer and decided to explore the islands on our own.
So after planning the week, we rented out bikes and forced ourselves up to the highland of the island to visit the famous giant turtles in their natural habitat...almost didn't make it, riding 20 km uphill, at 36 degrees and burning equator sun is serious sports (good that it was Isa's idea otherwise Ulf would have ended up hanging from a banana palm tree after this almost suicidal plan) .
But seeing the animals in the end...was absolutely amazing, they are incredibly huge!
taking the bike back was great fun, 20 km downhill in an amazing landscape is just fun, so we had time to go scientific and visited the Darwin research center with rare Galapagos species in breeding centers.
there we actually realized, that we had followed the young Darwin on his trip during our sabbatical: we had been like him in Tierra del fuego, sailed the beagle channel named after his ship, stayed in paragons at the bottom of mount Fitzroy, named after his captain, we survived like Darwin an earthquake in Chile (well, ours being ridiculous in comparison to his) and now meet him again in Galapagos (where even the wifi passwords in hostels are the dates of his arrival)Read more