San Cristobal, Galapagos

A livelong dream comes true in the early morning: boarding the plane that will bring us to the Galapagos islands!
The islands have never been connected to the mainland, and the volcanoes literally created them out of the sea, once pure volcanic rocks without plants or animals in the center of three ocean currents bringing, warm, cold and very cold water from three directions. whatever plant or animal arrived over the next million of years with those currents and survived and settled here developed independently from their species on the continent (as we probably all remember from biology class ;-). due to the lack of human settlers, the animals have no instinctive fear of man and one can get even closer than in a zoo, plus seeing them in their natural environment.
After having arrived, the second day, we hiked through the amazing lava fields that form the islands to a beach. beautiful and completely empty...the entire beach for ourselves. well, not quite: We had to share the beach with a colony of land iguanas, sea lions and pelicans and the water with sea turtles and stingrays. after two days, we set the sails for Santa Cruz island...to see if we'd manage to find a last minute affordable cruise around the archipelago.Читать далее