Galapagos now please!

After our wonderful week in Cuenca, Ecuador, we took an all day harrowing car ride to the city of Guayaquil, our last mainland stop before our flight to Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos. The day included Cajas National Park (a national park up at 14000 feet where we hiked in beautiful mountains pushed up by techtonic plates, with clear blue lagoons nestled within). This was followed by 3 hours of driving along the side of the Andes mountains as we descending back to sea level.

During this time, we encountered a fairly recent enormous land slide (7 months ago) that took out the main road (already fairly treacherous looking) and basically required the roads be rerouted along a very steep and narrow slope with no guardrail. To boot, add in the crazy fog, rain that leaked through on to Brian’s and my heads in the car and I’ll just say I was questioning my choices for all of us in the subsequent hour or two. In addition to all of that, apparently Guayaquil is a big cartel hub and the news was filled with assasination footage captured on security cameras.

After a quick flight from Guayaquil to Santa Cruz Island, our next leg of our adventure awaited! 💕

—————

What was the 4 Sellers traveling …is now 5. Meeting up with auntie Gigi has been such an easy transition (for us at least - she has to put up with a lot more than we do)!

Oh Santa Cruz, Galapagos - similar to your wild and diverse landscape, we have been enamored by the unreal wildlife! We’ve seen marine iguanas swimming between us at Tortuga Bay, sea lions chillin on benches sleeping, 10-20 black tipped reef sharks right next to the pier, giant tortoises fighting for dominance (check out the picture Katie took!), and enormous pelicans diving into the water right next to us to eat some delicious fish.

There is so much to see and learn - Charles Darwin was here about 200 years ago, studying adaptation and natural selection: How the iguanas now swim like sea lions, the birds have adapted their beaks to better survive the varying landscape, and giant tortoises can raise up their legs and necks and now have the ability to eat leaves higher up on bushes, similar to the idea behind the giraffe’s neck.

The girls have loved seeing all these incredible animals and landscapes. I’ve never seen their faces with so many surprised “O” shaped mouth expressions with all the animals everywhere! It’s been fun to watch through their eyes!

We’ve loved Santa Cruz Island but I am really looking forward to our next stop: San Cristobal island, the oldest inhabited Galapagos island, tomorrow for our last bit of Ecuadorian and South American adventure! Two hour boat ride first thing in the morning - I’ve heard it can be really choppy so we’ll see how it goes!Read more