Day 9: Guayaquil and Galapagos
After breakfast we flew from Guayaquil to Baltra in the Galapagos. The Galapagos islands are about 700 miles east of Ecuador. Our cruise went to several eastern islands (Baltra, Bartolome, Santa Cruz, and South Plaza), which are drier and rockier than the western islands, such as Isabela.
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| View of one of the Galapagos islands from the air |
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| Approaching the airport in Baltra |
After landing at the Baltra airport, we took about a 10 minute bus ride to the "port", where we boarded a small boat that took us to our ship, the
MV Galapagos Legend. The ship, which has a capacity of about 100 passengers, is one of the larger ships that does Galapagos cruises. There were only about 40 passengers on this sailing.
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| MV Galapagos Legend |
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| Reception area on the ship |
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| Ship's library. You can see almost all of the books |
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| Our cabin on the ship--large, but not particularly elegant |
We arrived onboard at about noon. After lunch, we did our first excursion, to
Bartolome Island. For the tours, the passengers were divided into 3 groups--the Albatrosses (our group) the Boobies, and Cormorants. The Albatross group consisted of us and two large American families with children between about 7 and 15 years old.
As the brochure said, "this volcanic scene (Bartolome Island) has often been likened to a lunar landscape". Upon exiting our tender, we encountered literally dozens of sea lions.
Below is a short video of the sea lions in action:
The next few pictures are from the area where our tender boat (actually an inflatable Zodiac) disembarked. The most amazing thing about the whole cruise was the extent to which the animals were willing to interact with humans. We were told to keep a 6-foot distance from the animals, a rule that the animals were more than interested in avoiding.
After going ashore, we took a walk around part of the island. The island was covered with "tequila plants" as shown below. As far as I know, they can't be made into tequila.
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| I'm not sure what this is |
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| The hole in the foreground is a lava tube |
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| American tourist and volcanic rock |
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| View from the top of Bartolome Island. The sharp peak towards the right is Pinnacle Rock |
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| The path down from the top of Bartolome Island |
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| Returning to our ship via Zodiac |
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| Night time on board the ship |
Day 10: South Plaza and North Seymour Islands
Our morning excursion was to South Plaza Island, just off the coast of Santa Cruz Island. The primary population of the island was birds, iguanas, and sea lions. Once again, we able to get very close to the animals.
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| A local iguana |
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| A swallow-tailed gull (possibly) |
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| Another (possibly) swallow-tailed gull |
The landscape was arid, with lots of Opunti cacti and sesuvium (the red stuff)
