Ecuador / Galapagos

Already before I left The Netherlands I had a travel dream to go to Galapagos. I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to go there on this round the world trip, but I was wrong. I´ve had 2,5 week on the Galapagos! I hitchhiked around one island for a day, visited (the not so interesting) Darwin research station, saw the giant tortoises, big lava tubes, craters and did a 7 day cruise on a budget cruiseboat sailing to several of the islands of Galapagos. I got a last minute trip on a boat named Rumba. With $780 I paid less than half the price some of my fellow travelers. A price like this can only be arranged when you´re already on the island. The trip was awesome and Galapagos is amazing. There are many animal species specific for Galapagos and according to my tourguide animals here have never been hunted. Because of that they don´t see us as a threat and we can approach them close. The movement of the tectonic plates make the Galapagos islands form from the west and sink away in the east. Land iguanas here had to evolve into sea iguanas to be able to island hop and survive and this is the only place in the world where they live. I saw many of them on land and a few under water. Cool was swimming with sea lions and penguins…. YES Penguins… they live here because of cold ocean currents and I could luckily swim in nice and warm water with them. But the sea lions were the best! They are very playful. While snorkeling I would free dive several meters down with a few of them around me. On the beach they lie and crawl around like crippled puppies, but when you enter the water with them you enter their domain. It´s so cool to see them make a salto, spins, blow bubbles (breath out under water) and other stuff. And they look at you and interact. I wish I could take one home. One was following me around at a beach and I really think she wanted to be adopted. The land trips were also nice as the different islands have different soil types and animals to see. There are especially many different birds to spot. In total we where 10 on the cruise, a nice group. I shared my cabin with a Danish man who has as hobby: photography… Feels like I´m always lucky on the right moments. He was less lucky and had a horrible diarrhea. He couldn´t go from the boat the first days, but he gave me his professional photo tools to use. Now I have WICKED nice photos of Galapagos! (he was also kind enough to share the photos he shot later) The photos online now are shot with my own camera, and you’re all going to need to wait for the even better stuff until I´m back home to show them. (they are way to big to upload, and I cant resize these files here) On this trip I had an important goal to achieve…. I´d already written it down on my facebook and told some people I woudn´t leave the islands before I achieved this goal: See a hammerhead shark. I never swam with hammerhead sharks and this is THE place to do it. But I only had one day left to dive after the trip. I´d tried to do a trip from Puerto Ayora to Gordon rock, assumed to be the best dive there, but after that got cancelled I did a dive from San Christobal to Kicker rock. The rock itself is an impressive pinnacle rising up more than 100m high and under the surface goes a very long way down. (def more than 50m) On the dive we saw maybe 20 reef sharks, 7 or 8 eagle rays, more than 10 turtles and then, lucky as I was swimming up the front, a +- 3 meter big hammerhead shark came from the mist under us as close as 4 – 5 meter away. He was not as interested in us as we (or I) in it and left within seconds. Only one of the divemasters and I saw the animal. For some reasons big sharks always leave the scene immediately on my dives. Maybe my blue eyes scare them??! The divemasters on the trip were real cowboys. They didn’t check anything, took customers into deco dives (deep long dives!) without briefing them or give out a dive computer. They also took off to the surface without letting us know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran out of air. A couple of us with own computers stayed at depth and finished our dive according to our computers. After having seen everything I hoped for at Galapagos I chilled out for two days with a couple of surfers and then got a flight to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Upon arrival finding a last minute flight to Lima failed. (read: was still to expensive $450) Now I’m in a hotel waiting for a bus that will bring me in 26 hours to Lima, Peru tomorrow. ($70) Hopefully I can do some more cool stuff as the end of my round the world trip comes closer and closer. I plan to go back home the end of May.

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