Swimming with the sharks and seeing lots of Boobies.. hehe boobies

If you read the last post you would have probably guessed that those tummy cramps would turn into something... and did they ever. Tyson woke up around 1am shivering, and by 1:30 was running to the washroom, where in the span of 1.5 minutes had emptied his entire digestive track via both ends. He slept somewhat better after that.

I also got sick but only from the bottom end and was up every hour or so! Not a super duper great way to be excited to fly to the Galapagos Islands the next day. We woke up early as we had to be at the airport 2 hours in advance for our flight to San Cristabol Island, Galagapagos. Both Tyson and I drank some gatorade and had no breakfast as we were scared it wouldnt settle down. At the airport we had to get our tourist card for the islands, which we then used to check our bags. It also worked as a piece of ID to get onto the plane. We sat in the departure lounge for a while, and it was past our boarding time, but the gate on our ticket had not been called yet. Luckily Peter went and checked, and they were boarding our plane, just via another gate. We got on, no problem and we were off, via Gualiquial (something sorta like that) to San Cristabol. We arrived and were completely overdressed. We instantly took off our sweater and socks as it was approximately 30´C outside. As we stood in a very slow line to pay our park fees we saw what we thought was a celebrity in the Ecaudor line. We thought this because there was paporazzi all around this girl, one with a camera and another with a camera. The reason the line was taking so long was that the girl that entering the information into the computer was having about a dozen MSN conversations as she was suppose to be doing her job. I don´t think many other people noticed, or else one of the sweaty overweight tourists having to stand in a hot sticky line may have said something.

The funny thing was that after we picked up our bags we found out that we were on the same boat as the celebrity girl and the paporazzi. (Sara) I thought the girl was like miss. Ecuador or something as they paparazzi were all over her like drooling! It wasn´t until later that night when we met our boat crew and our bartender made us this really alcholic drink that the paparazzi was actually not a paparrazi but they were doing a promotional video of our boat Archipell 2 to get more tourists to come over to the islands. So really these last 5 days they have been mostly interested in the Ecuadorian Girl who we later found out last night was actually a teenager and not a model but her mother knew the person who owned the boat. Both her mother and her did not speak english.. maybe a couple of words and the girl was quite a snob! She was like a princess when we went on our Island walks all scared of the non existent bugs.. there were maybe a couple of flies. When we got to the dock we saw our first wildlife, sea lions lazying around on the dock and rocks, and birds sitting on the boats in the Harbor. It was already the closest I´ve been to a sea lion. Peter didn´t see one behind a bench, and also put his bag down on top of it. Tyson and I got our room which was the penguin room and Peter and Marilyn got the turtle room and poor Leann was stuck with one of the paparazi guys and they were in the blue footed boobie room.. hehe boobie.

When we got our rooms it was lunch time... the eating times are very schedualed. Breakfast at 7, lunch at noon, dinner at 7. The food has been awesome except Tyson and I can eat very little mostly rice and fruit pretty sad... everyone else is gaining weigth while our shorts are falling off. I guess its a great weight loss management for wearing my bikini. Not really a fun one though. After lunch we sailed up the coast to a little island called Las Lobos or something of that sort. We did a short walk where we saw baby sea lions, crabs, blue footed boobies .. hehe boobies, iguanas, lava lizards, and the red breasted frigate bird. Already we were in awe! You can get so close to the wildlife.. like 50 cm but you are not allowed to touch that is the number one park rule! So hard to not want to pet a sealion! After we did our walk, we went snorkling with the baby sea lions. It was AMAZING! The sealions come right up to your face and sometimes they hit you like one hit me in the head... there so friendly, and the school of fish! Tyson was cold... clearly he needs more body fat, i was just amazed at snorkeling i had not done it since i was a kid in the Atlantic Ocean. You really dont need to dive here, as you will see when we talk about the Devils Crown Arrrr. We snorkeled for about an hour and then we returned to our boat to have a nice warm shower and read our books. Then we ate dinner at 7pm and then stayed int he San Cristabol harbour till midnight to where we sailed. Tyson wasn´t feeling well so i gave him some gravol and he was out like a light. I was feeling alright but only because i hardly ate all day. I woke up once we sailed as we hit some pretty big waves and i had to convince myself that we were just on a train and i was dreamin we were on a boat and then i fell back asleep.

Day 2. Esponala Island
We ate breakfast at 7 and then we headed off to Gardner bay! MAGNIFICIENT!!! SPECTACULAR!! WHITE CRISP SAND so fine that it felt like Velvet between your toes and a million sealions lazin around on the beach. WOW! This is what i wanted my Greece to be like.. but this is better! We had a free walk for an hour and a half on the beach, where you could walk to the end of the beach, or snorkle, or swim, or lay around with the sealions. I did all three! Leann and I made a Sand Castle that Tyson critized but hey we didnt have buckets or anything! The sealions are a highlight to this trip they are so friendly like dogs really, i kept asking Tyson if we could take one home! HE keeps telling me no..

After our free walk we swam-snorkeled to a rocky outcrop where we saw schools of fish, and some tropical fish. The water is crystal clear tourquoise blue it is just gorgeous! We snorkeled again for an hour and then headed back to the dingy... thats the little boat that we take from our big boat. We were going to lie on the beach for another 20 min but it started to rain. We have had bits of rain but not too bad we are still getting tanned and putting SPF 30 on like 3 times a day! After lunch and a siesta ( we always eat lunch and then have about 2 hours of free boat time). At 2pm we headed to the cliffs of Espanola. Where we saw more blue footed boobies as it was thier nesting time and we saw Albatroses on land which was amazing, and pelicans, other boobies, more crabs, sealions, lizards, iguanas, etc. As you can tell wildlife is everywhere. The cliffs where amazing if we can use that word enough. Its so hard to explain without having pictures to show you. There was a big blow hole and the clif was probably about 50 feetdown. There was tons of seabirds in the sky and on the cliffs. They would fly right over our head. So breathtaking, it was like i was on another planet. It is worth the millions of dollars to get here!

Day 3 Florena Island and the Devils Crown ARRRRR

Woke up ate breakfast, still feeling only so so, it wasnt until the next day where we realized to take gravol 30 min before boat takes off! We went to Post Office bay where there is a barrel where you can put postcards in and the you supposed to look at all the other postcards there and if you find one that is where you are from like Edmonton Canada or Alberta you take it home and deliver it! We put our 2 in, in hope that it gets to us one day! There was nothing from Alberta, lots of Quebec and Toronto but that is too far away, Marilyn and Peter found one from North Vancouver so they took it and will deliver it to those people in the summertime when they go to Victoria.

We then went into a Lava Tube underground. It was alright the caves in Laos were better, but it was a really big cave. reallly high ceiling. From there we went back to the boat to get our snorkeling gear and sailed to the Devils Crown ARRRR. Ok I can´t even explain how awesome the snorkeling there was. Lets just start with this, we saw 4 Reef Sharks!!! I was scared but they were pretty far down below, we say a massive sting ray or 2, tons of colourful fish, some puffer fish but they weren´t puffed up, beautiful star fish, Tyson saw a lobster that had some wierd colours, and we saw massive schools of fish. It was a little wavy and rough and there was a bit of a current and i actually cut my leg on some coral and decided to go back to the Dingy boat as i was getting tired anyways and i didnt want the shark to smell my blood from my cut! It was so crazy that when you first jumped in the water and looked down you couldn´t see the bottom, not because it was murky or too deep, but because of all the fish. That was how many there was. Hopefully our underwater camera pictures turn out! After snorkeling for an hour and a half we went back to the boat for lunch and siesta. Then we went to Turtle Bay and a salty lagoon where we saw 3 flamingos for a brief second then they hid, and at Turtle bay we didnt see any sting rays or turtles but we saw lots of turtles nests. We did see Turtles in the ocean though, swimming. There was one frigate bird that went back and forth over all the turtle nests just hoping that one little turtle would come out early and make for a lunch. He didn´t eat while we were there. The sand was really fine there and beautiful as well. Paradise!

Day 4 Isabella Island

We went to the breeding center for the Isabella Tortises and saw little baby tortises and big torties. It was mating morning because we saw 4 turtles mating... lol there were a lot of jokes to be had. From porn stars, to I have a headache get off of me, to long and steady wins the race, etc. They were not the biggest tortises int he Galapagos but i decided there not that fun to observe compared to Sealions. They dont do a whole lot.

We also went to another salty lagoon and saw 2 other flamingos. Then we went snorkeling. It wasnt very good, that was the first snorkel that actually sucked. The water wasn´t clear and there wasn´t many fish or anything, a sealion did appear out of no where and went under my legs and there was some shrimp but thats about it. Everyone was kind of bummed out and i dont even think we used our full hour. The boat is great though after every outing we come back to some sort of snack always juice and we have had banana timbits as i call them, chips, fresh bread, and so on and so forth. They put toffees out and I think we ate them all, Peter ate half of them in 2 minutes.

In the afternoon we did the super hot death walk on Lava rocks. It was probably pushign 35 degrees with the heat raidating on the rocks. We went to see if any sharks were resting in a lava tube.. but we only saw one and i spotted it! We did see a couple turtles but it was so hot even the wildlife was hiding! We saw a bunch of Marine Iguanas swimming.

Day 5 Santa Cruz Island

Today was the last day for Princess Ecuador and her mother, as well as our Israel family, and the paparazzi. So we are now down to 7 people left on the boat with 11 crew and we expect one more person to join our boat this afternoon. This morning we had a early awakening because those peoples fligth got changed to early morning flight and they still had to go see the tortises in the wild. So we ate breakfast at 6am and then were were off to the port. We saw about 5 tortises in the wild, they were much bigger than the ones in the breeding center because they are a different species. I got bored, they didnt move they didnt do anything. We walked for like an hour and then it was time to say goodbye to our friends. They left by bus to the airport while we stayed and put ourselves into old tortise shells and got great humour out of it. We when played ping pong. For the record Tyson and Peter are tied 1-1 and I beat Marilyn but loss to Tyson. We then took 2 trucks back to the port where we came to the internet place to update this long ass blog!

We have 3 days left on the boat including today. We fly back to Quito on Monday lunch time and then our plan is to go straight to the bus depot and hop on a bus to Latatugna in the Andes and do the Quiolata loop for 3 days. We will return to Quito for Good Friday to see the festivities before going up to Otavalo for the Saturday Market and maybe spend the night there and come back to Quito on Sunday where we will hav 2 days in Quito before we leave on Monday night at 11pm to fly back to Atlanta and I hope we have time for the waffle house!

Thats all for now!
Dont worry we took LOTS OF pictures!

Sara and Tyson