The one and only Galapagos Islands

WOW.

I have never experienced anything like the Galapagos Islands in my life. Nowhere else even comes close. Its pristine environments, the variety of such unique species, and their indifference to your presence makes it a surreal, unforgettable and amazing experience which is hard to put into words. But of course for you, I'll try.

My initial expectations were far exceeded which was a hard feat as they were so so high to start with due to my love of the environment and concept of the Galapagos as my environmental Mecca. I was not wrong!!

I saw every animal I'd hoped to see, most of which we were within touching distance of. True to rumour they have little fear of humans so you can get as close as you like as long as you don't touch them, which I did with all bar the sharks and rays, go figure. If you love animals you must visit the Galapagos one day.

We booked the trip last year, paying a whopping amount without question as we both knew it would be a priceless experience that we absolutely had to do. We opted for a 8 day cruise on a small yacht which allowed us to visit both the north and south islands of the volcanic chain. We chose a small yacht which turned out to be the last yacht tour operating on the islands as all the other companies have upgraded to the larger cruise ships to maximise on patrons. These take up to 200 people who are treated to an en suite, gym, restaurant and god knows what else...not our style at all!

Our tour was perfect for us. We had a maximum of 6 other tourists at a time so were treated to the small group experience. This meant we could organise ourselves to be the first each day to the islands beating the other enormous tours so we could experience the islands on own. It also meant that we were with relatively young travellers that could cope with yacht life who were more suited to us than the elderly loads we saw ambling along the shores.

We were also very lucky to have the best tour guide, a Galapagos born environmental guru who know the ecosystems and their components inside out, and respected the environment and its inhabitants. Our biggest fear was being lumped for 8 days with grumpy comrades and a bad tour guide after reading about guides that fish up our dinner from the protected waters and pollute the park under your nose without respect or care for what they are working for. There was none of this with Che Che thankfully.

One of the greatest things about the Galapagos is how close you can get to the animals. When I saw one I'd just walk on over to it and take a closer look. This was with both land and sea animals, walkers and flyers. Unless you are a bumbling, loud, tourist that will surge up to them and make them uncomfortable, which I did only once approaching a playful sea lion for an underwater photo and almost collided with it in my enthusiasm, they'll calmly trust you to approach them without fear.

I first experienced this with the tortoises on our first day when we hopped out of the ute and walked straight up to the old giants in the wild. If you walked too fast they would pull their head in but moments later it would pop back out and continue ripping at the grass or just sunning its wrinkled face completely un-threatened. We'd been whisked straight from the plane to some farmland to see these huge and ancient tortoises in the wild. A great start to our expedition!
I was relieved to see there were heaps of these old giants lumbering around on the grasslands, bathing together in muddy pools, and wandering on the dirt road as we approached causing us to go off road as they calmly sat on the road and watched us swerve!

Above their mammoth size what is most fascinating to me about the Galapagos Tortoises is their age. The oldest recorded one has lived to a whopping 150 years in the wild, which is a a conservative estimate compared to the locals, as our guide believes they live to over 250 years! Our children's children will have the result from the current research. I rolled this around in my head as I perched on my knees, and looked into a tortoises wise old eyes, with it looking right back at me. I was marvelled by its age, and thinking about all the human history that has passed in their lifetime, the arrival of Europeans on their islands, the species that have been erased, the wars that have passed and the US strategic stations that invaded their habitats in the Galapagos; and more personally, the generations of my family that have been born, lived, and died, and me sitting in front of him the meagre 5th, 6th or 7th of my ancestry to live to his one.
Later in the trip we had the privilege to meet the famous 'Lonesome George', the last known individual of the Pinta Island subspecies of Tortoise in existence. A sad result of the destruction the introduced species have caused to the Galapagos ecology. George was found on the island alone when it was too late to begin a breeding programme. There is however a small hope for his kind as they have recently bred him with a very genetically similar subspecies, only resulting in 3 viable eggs. Unlikely to succeed but you never know, well, actually we will know the result and the future of his species in less than three months. Fingers crossed.

Once on the yacht, our days were divided between trips to the various islands, snorkeling, eating and playing cards on the long journeys. Every day was filled with new experiences and learning. Each island had its own welcoming party for us, be it sea turtles, sea lions, rays or sharks in the shallows, a penguin or sea iguana watching us from shore, or a frigate or booby flying over head. Usually several of the above.

We'd adventure into the islands, eyes needlessly peeled for the different species on offer as they tended to be so prolific you barely had to try to see them as they'd be sitting right in front of you! Some islands had endemic land iguanas, huge and colourful, brilliant yellows with large spines, brown eyes and weathered scaled lips, lying flat on their bellies absorbing the heat; sometimes there were flamingos, sitting on one leg, a brilliant pink staring back at us like plastic figurines from the garden ...that blinked; there were huge piles of communal sea iguanas, lying upon each other for warmth, snorting spurts of salt from their noses at us to our disgust and entertainment; we smelt the rich perfumed sap of the various endemic deciduous trees, that was sometimes like frankincense, sometimes a rich woody sandalwood other times like a musky rose; we watched huge albatross chicks wait patiently in their nests for their parents and then the parents run down the aptly named 'albatross runways' leading off high cliffs to take flight; we walked across hardened lava fields that had poured into the sea, now a frozen black river over barren red landscapes, similar to icebergs, we found that once we were surrounded by the black mass the detail came out, it became hugely variable, made up of different oil slick like colours and varieties of frozen organic forms, from the ripples of waves, to piles of thick sailor rope, and bouquets of open faced roses strewn on the ground.

We always had to be careful where we stood at all times in case of the small trusting lava lizards or iguanas bathing on the rocks, or nests being trodden underfoot. We had to be even more careful still with the gorgeous little sea lion pups to not let them touch us as they often tried to do!

These were high on our favourites list, with a call like a high pitched yelping lamb they sat on the beach sun bathing, paddling, playing with each other or shells and sticks as toys, passing time until their mother returned with dinner. Like sirens they'd try to seduce us closer but in their case with their cuteness, chasing our shadows, crying to us, rolling around in the sand and sometimes even sneaking up on us for personal contact but it would be to their detriment not ours if we made contact. They're absolutely harmless, posers for the camera and the epitome of cute but sometimes tragic reminders of how our small actions can influence a life. Sadly this is because if we give in to temptation to allow contact with one of these little creatures they will likely be rejected by their mothers who operate on scent recognition and will subsequently eventually starve. We saw several skinny, lost puppies, desperately tying to get milk from other mothers who aggressively rejected them. It was really upsetting to see.

Little surprise then that when me and a gal from our boat saw other tourists allowing the pups to rub against them onshore we let rip at their tour guide. He had the gaul to say that it is not a proven reaction to which I sharply shot him down with the question of the 'is it worth the risk!!!?' argument. Ridiculous. We also spoke to the tour group about it directly, with a boiling rage under the surface yet outwardly calm demeanor to ensure they understood their potential impacts on these pups that they seemed to have such admiration for. It was not my place but after seeing their actions and hearing the pathetic justification of the tour guide we took it upon ourselves to get the message out.

The snorkeling was the best I have ever experienced due to the abundance and variety of animals and beauty of the unpolluted pristine waters. We often swam both in the morning and afternoon. In one amazing dive I swam with almost everything I had hoped for on the entire trip within 3/4 of an hour. We began by following a reef where we spotted various rays, huge puffer fish with cartoon like eyes, corals, starfish, surgeon fish, and tuna darting at us from the depths. There were trumpet fish lingering in the current like long ropes with pig like snouts and reptile eyes, occasionally a sea iguana would swim past with colours of the rainbow, red, green, yellow on their black coal base. We followed huge schools of fish, each occasionally flicking their sides to us, flashing silver as a knife, when a large sea lion whipped past me within a meter dancing around its prey before my eyes. I saw a Ridleys Sea Turtle, the same species as the one we saw laying her eggs in Guatemala sitting in an underwater crater. She lifted up and I swam beside her alone as she stared back at me. magic. That was until the cold shiver of being alone in shark infested waters rippled through me and I returned to the guide! We continued on and after a while I realised our swim team of 7 was reduced to just me, the water baby and the guide as the waters were very cold so people were dropping off to the trailing dinghy. Sad for them they missed out on the highlight of the days dive, a HUGE stingray about 1.5-2m in diameter, digging on the bottom, already 30 cm or so deep into the sand scuffing up food for it as the many hangers on surrounding him feeding on the food he threw up. We dove down to it and saw up close the yellow tiger eyes watching us as it churned the sand up. A beautiful sight.
The female sea lions were fine to swim with, perfectly safe as long as you don't encroach on their space too much...no matter how much they do on yours! We had to be cautious of the males as they can be aggressive and are very territorial due to their harem lifestyle. A few times they hopped in the water to bark at us, warning us to back off and then herded their ladies back on shore. We naturally respected their wishes and froze in those situations.

There was one sea lion that played with us on shore mimicking the other divers, spinning as we spun, blowing bubbles back to Andy and swimming under your legs given the chance. The sea lions are so charismatic. The puppies of the sea.

One of the best moments we had was late at night when we were all lying up on deck staring at the starry sky competing to see who could spot the most shooting stars when blind Andy spotted some fast moving shapes over the side of the boat. We leapt up to check it out and realised that it was two predators and our boat was surrounded by phosphorescent plankton!! It in turn was attracting a whole feeding chain of animals for our entertainment. The fish were feeding on the plankton, and those that were feeding on the fish there were the real stars. First we saw fast, graceful animals darting about which we worked out to be sea lions. After that we saw slow, long, swaying animals, which we worked out to our excitement to be white tip sharks....but and most exciting of all we saw a strange shape, far larger than the other predators with a broad face.....swaying through the school like the whitetips....a HAMMERHEAD SHARK! Crazy. Such a strangely shaped animal, and to see this lit up in the water like an aquatic Greek constellation in flux in the black sea of glittering phosphorescence was unreal.

There are so many other stories to tell, but as this post is already ridiculously long, I´ll save them for when we are home, wine in hand. xx