20/12/2011

Barbara and I had breakfast in the morning before I had to leave and catch the boat back over to Santa Cruz where I had to organize a dive trip for tomorrow, it was all easy enough book but I was a little disappointed that I couldnt go the Gordon Rock where everyone was raving about diving with hammerheads – the reason being I didnt have enough experience diving to the depths that were necessary to see the sharks. Instead I found a dive shop that’s going to take me around Floreanea island doing the dives in what seems to be great places for $160 – we will see tomorrow.
I caught up on the lack of sleep over the last few days in the afternoon and went for dinner with some Aussie girls I met at the hotel. Its a 5.30 start tomorrow so I had an early one.

No Photos today

19/12/2011

Barbara was a fun girl to hang out with over the past couple of days, we got along really well and experienced some cool things together, one interesting fact about her is that she is studying to become a gynaecologist... I have nothing to say about that.
Today we cooked up a nice homely tasting breakfast because both of us were sick and tired of eating rice every meal of the day. We then headed out on a walk to The national park visitors center where even the police could not believe that we were going to embark on the whole 2km journey there by foot; people here in south America, actually I'll say all of Latin America are so lazy, they would never walk even the shortest distances.
Anyways it was a pleasant walk around the park and even better that there was nobody about meaning that we could even go for a quick skinny dip in an ocean cove amongst sea lions - although I was legitimately worried about getting my private parts bitten off.
With many lookout points this walk/hike had great views of the surrounding oceans showing off the beautiful turquoise coloured sea.
We returned to the hotel where I napped and for the afternoon and and worked on some photos using Photoshop until the evening came around and we walked the waterfront several times drinking a few beers and ate by far and away the worst attempt of a pizza I have ever seen, just a microwaved piece of dough with some pieces of ham and cheese sprinkled on top.
This was my last night with Barbara as I was heading off back to Santa Cruz in the morning so we made the most of the time we had left together.

View from lookout on San Christobal.

Boing enjoys the view too.

Pic of the Day

18/12/2011

Camping with Barbara on the beach of Puerto Chino last night was great, but one complaint was certainly the bugs, the tent was filled with them and when we turned on the flashlight swarms of these little critters would jump around like crazy.
We woke early to watch the sunrise that wasnt all that spectacular and wasn't worth the early wake up but you never know I guess.
We had the beach to ourselves for a good part of the morning before the locals would come and drown out the tranquility with their cell phones and music on repeat through the sound of their distorted inbuilt speaker.
One little note for the morning was that the entire beach literally was covered with track marks of the hundreds of hermit crabs that crawled about the evening scavenging for food.
Barbara and I did want to spend the following night at the beach but we didn't have the enough water which was a bit of a shame because we are both traveling on a tight budget and spending another night would have saved us a but of money.
Because of the lack of water we made our way back to Puerto Baquerizo Moreno via taxi with a bunch of other tourists costing us some pocket shrapnel. Looking in the guidebook there was a place you could sleep in a treehouse for $4 a night but my guidebook was published 3 years ago and obviously the owners took advantage of the flow of people and are now charging $20 a night. Shame really, that would have been pretty cool.
We returned to the same hotel that we stayed at when we first arrived where we had our stuff stored and checked in.
We didn't really do much in the evening other hang, drink a couple of beers and share a meal because I cooked a late afternoon snack that we were still filled up on.

The Hermit Crabs track marks in the morning.

5 am wake up for the sun rise

Around the beach with Barbara.

17/12/2011

Waking in the morning we packed our things, bought some groceries and filled up on water for the 2 nights we were spending on (what we thought was) a secluded beach on the east side of the island, the guide books mentioned it was a 2.5 hour hike to the beach but that was very wrong, hiking for 40 minutes only took us 10% of the distance so when we flagged down a passing taxi with a bunch of Westerners and hopped in and joined in on their tour of some of the highlights of the island, this included a lake inside a volcano, another tortoise breeding station (that we passed on) and the beach that Barbara and I wanted to camp. The other Westerners were fun to be about so we chilled on the lovely but touristy and small white sandy beach until they and the others left. Barbara and I set up camp on the beach and unsuccessfully caught any crabs to cook up (yes it is a national park and killing any animals has a huge penalty, but we wanted crab for dinner).
Despite the lack of crab the meal I cooked up was great.
We chased around hermit crabs in the evening and had an early night as Barbara had the on comings of a cold.

El Junco Lagoon

Injured Sea Lion

As the sun was setting

16/12/2011

I met with Barbara in the morning to organize our trip over to San christobal where we were going to be camping for a Couple of days. The boat over there didn't leave till two so we had a bit of time to kill, we went back over to the beach I went to yesterday as well as going back to the cliff jump where I built up the courage to jump from one of the higher rock platforms.
Getting the boat to San christobal was very unorganized and we were thrown about a bunch I boats until finally they had us sorted out; in total we went to about 3 boats having to shuffle our belongings amongst the people squeezed in the small areas amongst the boats.
Arriving in the main town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno we found a place to sleep for the night, not the cheapest place but it was nice enough with a view of the ocean and the festival that was held in the evening that hosted a whole bunch of terrible performers.
48 hour notice is needed for camping anywhere on anyone of the Galapagos islands and as such we made our way to the park office where we needed to get the permission, we arrived there at 5 minutes past 5 on a Friday meaning we couldnt get the proper documents. With disappointment expressed on our faces we sweet talked another officer who gave us written permission to camp.
We really didn't get up to much for the rest of the day other than chill in bed drinking a few beers and attempted to watch Pulp Fiction on my laptop..

Barbara jumping from Cliff Jump

Baby Sea Lion

For Example Sea lions are everywhere! Even in children’s play equipment

15/12/2011

This 4 day tour was well worth the money and was an fantastic experience. Our guide 'Johan' was incredibly enthusiastic with good knowledge of the islands, their inhabitants, vegetation and history, he was also a good laugh and as such I left him and the crew members a sizable tip.
The last thing before the tour ended was a tour around the Charles Darwin Center where the breeding center for tortoises was established.
These giant tortoises are absolutely adorable and absolutely massive, these slow moving lazy bastards live to over 150 years and just get bigger and bigger. This breeding center has bred a hell of a lot of tortoises in the past and one thing is for sure – if I had the opportunity to steal one of the little ones I would certainly attempt to take one home – or even with me traveling.
I took many pictures of all the famous tortoises and I now have a lot of sorting and editing to do – arrg, im very behind on posting this blog but at least im keeping up with the drafting part.
Most of the people on the cruise left for the airport in the morning but some of us remained and so we hung out all morning and after we all found accommodation we went for lunch – here I noticed that most people that come here to Galapagos are not so easy to please, almost everyone was worried about eating from the restaurants where the locals eat, worried if the salads are washed with the tap water, hi gene of the kitchen and so on... It has been a long time since I worried about these things and I reassured them that it is rarely an issue but this was difficult of them having diarrhea recently. Im just looking for the cheapest place to eat with locals inside and for as long as I can remember I havent had a real issue, apart from the occasional case of the shits.
Later Anna and I went to this natural crevasse where many people cliff jumped.. I attempted it too but not the height the locals were jumping from because that was really insane. Here we met a Danish guy who had many stories to tell about taking a London double decker bus around the world from Europe to the East, to africa and many places inbetween – his stories were awesome and he and his friends broke a few world records and made some too. 100,000km in a bus around the world!
Anna and I retreated to the beach later and hung out there talking bullshit with one another having a good laugh.
I organized to meet with Barbara and Henrik who I met on the flight over, Barbara wants to join me on a camping trip on another island, we went for drinks at a few places with some Dutch people they had met on their trip around some of the island, we ended up in a few bars around on the main strip and when things quietened down I went home.

Pic of the Day

Dolphins on the way back to Santa Cruz

Around the Charles Darwin Center

Volcanic Terrain on the way to the Cliff Jump

The Cliff jump