Galapagos Islands, Ecuador (Miles to Date: 14250)
When we arrived in Quito a couple of nights ago and were being transferred to our hotel the tour guide gave an overview of our itinerary in Ecuador. She got to the bit "and in the morning you will transfer to the Galapagos Islands " and Karen (and the children) were lost for words.
Anyway today we had an early transfer to the airport as we had to fly from Quito to the coastal city, Guayaquil, and then on to the Galapagos. The Galapagos are about 600 miles off and consist of 16 main islands and 6 smaller islands. The first Europeans to discover the Galapagos were the Spanish, but subsequently they were frequented by English pirates who used the islands to attack Spanish galleons carrying gold and then latterly by whalers operating in the Pacific Ocean. In 1835 HMS Beagle bought a young Charles Darwin to four of the Islands where he noticed the finches were unique from island to island – through this study Darwin developed his theory of natural selection explaining evolution, which was presented in his book “The Origin of Species”. Since this time Ecuador declared the Galapagos a National Park and in 1978 UNESCO recognised the islands as a World Heritage Site,
Our plane landed on Baltra Island, also known as South Seymour Island -all the islands have a dual identity. During World War II Baltra was established as a US Air Force base for patrolling the Pacific for enemy submarines. Today it is actually nothing more than a very barren island with a landing strip. The airport itself in miniscule and has limited facilities – the bags are bought off the plane and more or less dumped down – from which point it becomes a scrum to collect them.
We meet our guide and resident naturalist for the week, a local man called Washington. He helps us on to our bus which takes us down to the marina where we are to be transferred to our boat ,the Guantanamera, our home for the week. Jack and Emily are 
amused by the 5 or 6 sea lions that have invaded the dock and are happily lying across the benches preventing us mere humans from taking a seat. After a few minutes we are on the back of a motorized dinghy taking us across the magnificent blue green water. Our boat is quite modest – there are only 16 passengers on it and 5 crew. After a couple of minutes we set “sail” to our first stop Santa Cruz Island – about an hour away. En route we bask in the bright equatorial sun and our boat is closely patrolled by a handful of ever watchful, opportunistic Frigate birds.
When we arrived in Quito a couple of nights ago and were being transferred to our hotel the tour guide gave an overview of our itinerary in Ecuador. She got to the bit "and in the morning you will transfer to the Galapagos Islands " and Karen (and the children) were lost for words.
Anyway today we had an early transfer to the airport as we had to fly from Quito to the coastal city, Guayaquil, and then on to the Galapagos. The Galapagos are about 600 miles off and consist of 16 main islands and 6 smaller islands. The first Europeans to discover the Galapagos were the Spanish, but subsequently they were frequented by English pirates who used the islands to attack Spanish galleons carrying gold and then latterly by whalers operating in the Pacific Ocean. In 1835 HMS Beagle bought a young Charles Darwin to four of the Islands where he noticed the finches were unique from island to island – through this study Darwin developed his theory of natural selection explaining evolution, which was presented in his book “The Origin of Species”. Since this time Ecuador declared the Galapagos a National Park and in 1978 UNESCO recognised the islands as a World Heritage Site,
Our plane landed on Baltra Island, also known as South Seymour Island -all the islands have a dual identity. During World War II Baltra was established as a US Air Force base for patrolling the Pacific for enemy submarines. Today it is actually nothing more than a very barren island with a landing strip. The airport itself in miniscule and has limited facilities – the bags are bought off the plane and more or less dumped down – from which point it becomes a scrum to collect them.
We meet our guide and resident naturalist for the week, a local man called Washington. He helps us on to our bus which takes us down to the marina where we are to be transferred to our boat ,the Guantanamera, our home for the week. Jack and Emily are 
amused by the 5 or 6 sea lions that have invaded the dock and are happily lying across the benches preventing us mere humans from taking a seat. After a few minutes we are on the back of a motorized dinghy taking us across the magnificent blue green water. Our boat is quite modest – there are only 16 passengers on it and 5 crew. After a couple of minutes we set “sail” to our first stop Santa Cruz Island – about an hour away. En route we bask in the bright equatorial sun and our boat is closely patrolled by a handful of ever watchful, opportunistic Frigate birds.
We moor up and take some lunch, after which we do our first wet beach landing. This means a somewhat ungraceful scramble over the side of the inflatable dinghy into the water. Washington takes us on our first trek along the sandy beaches of a Galapagos Island. Our first encounters are with the indigenous sea iguanas and an amazing number of 
red crabs – which flit in and out of the rocks lining the beach. We also see the indentations in the sand made by nesting sea turtles. Our tour takes us a few feet in land where we find a brakish lagoon in which stands a solitary Galapagos flamingo (there are only 600 in total on the islands). To end our first excursion we don our wet suits and snorkelling equipment and wade out off the beach to swim amongst the rocks where we get to see some wonderful reef fish.All too soon it is time to return to the Guantanamera where we move off into a quiet bay for the evening.
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