San Cristobal, Galapagos

After a quite disruptive night (my uncle Göran came knocking on our door after we had fallen asleep to tell us there had been a change of flight time to an earlier one, some of the girls had managed to set the alarm clock to 12 am and i also managed to snooze it in my attempt to shut it off so it rang one more time 15 mins later plus we only had 3 beds so we chared the pretty narrow beds) the alarm woke us up att 6:25. We got dressed and had some breakfast before the taxis picked us up.

At the airport we got our bags scanned for organic material and had to fill in forms that we understood that we were about to enter a national park with strict regulations of what to bring and not. We also had to pay the foreigner's visitation fee á 20$/person before we got to go through the regular safety control.

We bought some chocolate at the taxfree. It's nice to bring some gifts back with us.

At the plane we discouvered we were placed at random except me and Viggo that sat together. The two girls sat two seats ahead of us. At the point when we were landing the poor gentleman sitting next to me were able to say in perfect swedish "Freja, sätt dig ner med huvudet framåt" (Freja, sit down with your head facing forward). No explaination needed. :)

The flight took 2 hours and when we decended out of the clouds the beautiful islands of Galapagos rose like green pearls from the blue ocean. We had recieved prints with our information of the stay and Bengt had managed to fill in his swedish residence info but we passed through security check without being questioned. A bus waited outside the building and drove us to the hotel where we had a cantena sort of lunch (no coffea included 😥).

After the lunch we headed out on the first excursion: a trip to el Centro de Interpretacion, a museum of natural selection. Our guide spoke no english so i had to translate for the swedish group. Part of the museum had english translated texts so we managed. After the museum we headed to the Playa Mann. It was a small but lovely beach full of friendly and curious fur seals. Bengt and the kids went in to swim and was joined by a couple of seals. The male ones made funny noises and there was a funky fishy smell in the air. Good fun!

We walked back through the town to the hotel. Everyone is tired.Read more