A quick side note : Anik and I are now spending countless hours on buses on our way from Quito to Lima so I am typing on his iPhone and will post to my blog when we get Internet. This means I may make a couple posts in one day if we don't have Internet for a while and also that there may be more spelling and grammatical errors. You have been warned!! :)
Okay so I left off last time with day 3. Onto day 4 then! This was one of the most eventful days yet. Probably my favourite. We were up stupid early again to go snorkelling. We hadn't seen sharks yet and our guide promised some. He told us the reason we had to go so early was because the park doesn't let people snorkel at this location but they don't check it until later in the morning. This is probably the reason it was the best snorkelling yet! We started off in a little cove and saw more little sea lions. We kept close to the coast but I had the creeps because on one side was the coast and rocks but the other side was murky ocean. Plus it was super deep here. I was waiting for jaws to come out of the blue and eat me! We ended the first dive in a cave, which freaked me out worse! Our second dive we were told there would be White tip sharks. Even though they are fairly calm sharks and only eat soft fish, I was still freaking out. I made Anik hold my hand while we snorkelled. Sure enough there were sharks. Lots of them. They were a long ways down (I think) but the water was clear as glass. We also saw barracudas (a big school of them) but one was a little too close for my liking. It was in a group of regular fish swimming closer to the surface and I can honestly tell you I was scared! Anik will attest to it. We also saw a massive sting ray and the biggest sea turtle ever. Both were hiding under rock caves on the ocean floor. The sea turtle was honestly the most ridiculous size. We also saw so many colors and shapes of starfish and other kinds of fish. Even an octopus hiding in a hollowed out sort of rock. What a morning for snorkelling! After returning to the boat, we were heading closer to the Island Floreana when we found a group of dolphins!! They were huge dolphins! Some swam along the front of the boat keeping whatever speed we were while the rest of them were swimming along farther out. My first time seeing dolphins in the wild so it was pretty cool to see!
We were now on Floreana Island walking around. The beach was a dark brown and red color because of the iron and magnesium. Saw more flamingos and another gorgeous beach. In the afternoon we were at Post Office Bay. It's named this because back in the day the whalers on the island used this area as a post office. They had no way of communicating with their families so they came up with a system. They left a large barrel by the beach and people leaving would take letters that were close to where they were going and hand deliver them to the families. Letters from home were also received in this way. They let tourists do it now so we opened the barrel and pulled out post cards for BC or MB and then left our own in there for someone else to deliver! Neat system! On this island we also went down a lava tunnel formed many many years ago. It was pitch black! On the beach we had a chance to snorkel again and we played with more sea lions. What a day! After dinner our guide showed us the pics and videos he had taken of us snorkelling and told us we could burn them onto a cd to take home! Awesome since he has some unreal pics of the sea life we saw!!
Day 5 - This morning we left the boat for good. We packed our bags and said goodbye to the crew before heading to our last stop of the boat tour, the Charles Darwin Research Center. Here we saw the enormous land tortoises. They were a sight to see. They breed them here and keep them for 40 years and then release them back into the wild. 40 years seems a long time to us but we know these animals live at least 200 years, maybe longer. After the centre we said goodbye to our tourist crew, collected our bags, and then went with the two Israelis (Itay and Liad) to buy tickets to other islands. They were heading to San Cristobal island but we were going to Isabela for a couple days. The boat didn't leave until 2:00 so we all decided to go to Tortuga Bay, which was on the island we were currently on, Santa Cruz. What a walk! It went on forever but we finally got to a huge beach. Walked around some and laid on the shade for a while before heading back. We said goodbye to them and then boarded the tiniest sketchiest boat ever that's supposed to take us the 2 hours across the ocean to Isabela. We were scared but it turned out to be fine. All the bumping over waves reminded me of doing shore lunches on Lake of the Woods at Totem. We found our hostel on Isabela and then walked around the town. Such a nice little sleepy town with sandy roads. We saw another flamingo lagoon then had dinner and hit the sack. It had been a long day.
It was now June 3rd and we had been enjoying everyday on the islands. We decided to do a snorkelling tour because we enjoyed snorkelling and hoped to see hammerhead sharks. On this tour we met a couple that were from Japan and were on their honeymoon! Except it's probably not what you're thinking. Their honeymoon was a year long round the world trip that they had started in Yellowknife 4 months ago. New life goal! Sounded amazing. Anyways we did some snorkelling but I guess we had been spoiled on the tour. Our guide this time didn't even snorkel with us and the water was very cloudy so we didn't see much. The biggest thing was that we saw and swam with penguins here!! Anik and I both wanted to see penguins and swim with them so although we didn't see much else we were glad to see them. They love to play in the water and swim around you although they swim so fast it's hard to keep track of them! No hammerheads though. In the afternoon Anik and I decided to walk the miles of beach on the island. It was very peaceful, the sand felt amazing on our feet, and we saw many many crabs. We decided to spend time playing in the water when something I feared happened. I got stung by a tiny blue jellyfish as it washed up on shore! We were sitting on the sand playing tic-tac-toe in the sand letting the last of the waves hit us. I had been thoroughly enjoying myself until then. I can hardly explain the pain. Definitely worse than a bee sting but of course it didn't help it was on my inner thigh. By the time we walked back to the hostel I felt like my leg was seizing up. I'm not sure if that's a real thing that happens but it felt like it! Anik went to a pharmacy and hoped the pharmacist had given him the right creme. The two stings were so swollen surrounded by a bit patch of red so I could hardly sit still it hurt so much. Anik had the movie Kung Fu Panda on his phone so we watched that to take my mind off it. By the end of the movie it felt much better so I guess the creme helped. We had dinner and a lazy night again.
The next day we went to see triple inactive volcanoes with the owner of our hostel. It was only the three of us which Anik and I really enjoyed. It was area on the land of his friends and it was spectacular. We got to climb down into one of the inactive ones that actually goes down 80 meters. We didn't go down nearly that far but it was pretty cool. The inside was all covered in green vegetation. There were some shady steps and ropes to us to get down but we survived. We also went to the top of another one and could see for miles. After the volcanoes we went on a quick tour of a well known cave. Some guy used to catch pigs there by getting them while in the cave.. or something. Neat anyways. That afternoon we were the laziest bunch of slobs. It was our last day on the islands but we felt extremely satisfied with everything we had seen and done. We spent the next 5 hours in the hammocks behind our hostel reading, napping and eating ice cream. What a life!
The next day we were up at 5 am because there's only one boat a day that leaves at 6am. We loaded on (it was a much nicer boat) and tried to sleep. We had a quick breakfast and then caught a taxi to take us across the island to the ferry. The 5 minutes ferry took us across to Baltra Island where we caught the bus to the airport. The airport was chaos here! It's so tiny and packed with people leaving and just arriving. We got our tickets and went through security without a single person looking at our passports! Although I guess you can't get on the islands without showing it soooo I guess they assume you're all good. We saw a plane out on the Tarmac but once through security we couldn't find any airport personal so we just walked out onto the Tarmac to the plane. Strangest thing.
Bye bye Galapagos. It's been a blast!
No comments:
Post a Comment