Galapagos - Santa Cruz

Next up was a real bucket list destination, the Galapagos Islands! I flew to Santa Cruz island via mainland Ecuador, and even on the bus from the airport to Puerto Ayora, the main town on the island, I saw marine birds, huge land iguanas, and a giant tortoise casually strolling the road. I knew at this point that it was going to be a special place!

Much of my first few says spent on Santa Cruz was spent trying to organise a last minute sleep on boat trip. But even time spent in the town is a marvel as there are hundreds of maine iguanas sunning themselves on the lava stone paving, but there are also countless sea lions, herons, pelican, crabs, and multiple other forms of wildlife right there in the town. The local beach also homes many sea lions that swim and sunbathe along with the tourists and locals. Any spare time that I had in Puerto Ayora was spent either chilling with the sea lions on the beach, or sat by the fishing boats watching the sea lions and pelican hoping for some scraps.

I also hiked out to Turtle Bay, a white sand beach famous for its turtles, and visited the Charles Darwin research centre for information on some of the conservation work being done in the area. Wanting to explore a bit further I went on a day boat trip to Santa Fe, a small island about an hour away from Santa Cruz. The Galapagos is in the middle of the Pacific, so once you get away from the shelter of the land, the water is pretty rough. We braved the waves and even though I got drenched, I wasn't sick so I saw that as a win. First we went around to look at some sea birds on the rocks, including red chested frigate birds, then we found a nice sheltered bay with a large sea lion colony. The water was bright turquoise and crystal clear so we did sime snorkelling; i saw turtles, rays, plenty of fish, plus swam with some of the sea lions that were chilling on the rocks.

Back on Santa Cruz I finally negotiated a deal for a space on a yacht, but I had a week or so to kill before it started so I went off to do some island hopping first...Leer más