11123 km Galapagos

On the 27th of October the day was finally there and I was of to the Galapagos. Waking up at 3.15 am, the hostal was very accomodating by making me a breakfast on this odd hour and they even brought me all the way to the airport. I also got to borrow the underwatercamera from the hostal. The people of Hostal Zentrum here in Quito have been great for the two weeks I stayed here.  

The trip to Galapagos went smoothly and around midday I was in the town of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz island. I relaxed ans strolled around a bit waiting for Maaike to arrive on the next day. When she arrived we spend the day walking around town and we visited the tortoise breeding centre on the island. Immediatly when you arrive on Galapagos it’s obvious that this is a very special place. There are animals walking and flying around everywhere and they have no fear of human beings at all. Marine iguana’s are sunbathing on the pavement, seelions are lying around sometimes claiming the park benches for themselves and the whole vibe is very relaxed. The second day we head of to San Cristobal with a speedboat, here we spend a couple of days watching lots more marine iguanas and see lions. We also booked a snorkeling tour to Leon Dormida where we got to see lots of fish, turtles and even some sharks. Unfortunatelly we missed out on the hammerheads. There had been some spotted by the divers on the cruise, but we missed them on this first opportunity, we got to see them later in the week though. After a few nice  days on San Cristobal we headed back to the island of Santa Cruz since our cruise was about to start on the 2nd of November. We got very lucky with the group of people we had on the boat, all very nice people and a very nice mixed group of English, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch. The boat which accomadates 16 normally, was not fully booked and with only 11 people on the boat we had plenty of space available. 

The first stop was Genovesa islands, where we spotted lots of red footed boobies, nasca boobies, frigate birds, galapagos doves and owls. It was a great start of the cruise. The day after we visited Bartolomeu, where we got to see great lava formations and gained good insight in how the galapagos islands are formed by the vulcanic eruptions that occured here in the last few millions of years. We also got to do some snorkelling and spotted sharks, turtle and pinguins. 

Every island here is unique in it’s looks and the species of animals on it. This truly is evolution in action. In the following week we went ahead and saw many more islands, Santiago, Chinese hat, Islabella, Fernandina, Daphne. I could make this a very long blog and try to explain it all. But I prefer to let the pictures do the talking......... all in all Maaike and I had a great 2 weeks here on the islands. Maaike, thanks a bunch for dropping by, we had a blast.

Tomorrow there is new adventure ahead. After a month without cycling I will start to work on the milage again. Tomorrow I head of in the direction of Colombia. Salsa, jungle and mountains here I come... next Blog from Colombia!

P.s Lots of fotos this time, hope you like ‘m