We´ve been in the galapagos for a week or so now. We spent our first couple of days cruising around the island of Santa Cruz. One day we hiked out to Tortuga Bahia (turtle bay) for snorkling and general beach going. There were massive marine iguanas on the trail between us and our destination. They were all black and red and brown and peeling, piled on top of each other, crawling over one another...and spitting. When anyone got too close to them they would spit at them. Don´t really know what the deal with the spit is, luckily we never got got. The next day I had a surf at a decent sized beach break, and realized I'm not in surfing shape right now, but it was great to be in the water...blue water, sun, trunking it south of the equator, mmmmm. Another day we took a tour to another island, a two hour boat ride south of us, Isla Floreana. We were welcomed to the dock by a snoozing sea lion blocking the top of the stairs. We hiked around the old port then took a bus ride into the highlands where we saw tortoises, pirate caves, coffee growing, and the homes of the original settlers. We returned to the boat and saw a sea turtle swimming at the surface. We rode around the island while the guide pointed out penguins, blue-footed boobies, masked boobies, frigate birds, and tropic birds. We finished the tour with some snorkeling which was incredible. Besides all the interesting tropical fish, there were a half dozen sea lions that were very playful and would swim around and around us. One of them got so close to Elizabeth that she could have reached out and kissed it. When we got back on the boat Elizabeth was freezing. Her hands were shaking so bad she could hardly get a banana into her mouth. On the boat trip back a pod of dolphins came up to check us out and we floated there for a while watching them jump and play all around the boat. When we started going again they followed us for a ways, jumping out of the water at the bow of the boat. A day later, we took a boat out to Isabela island which is much less touristy than Santa Cruz. They don´t even have a bank! Unfortunately, we didn´t bring enough money but we explored the island and had fun with the rations we had. We hiked along a boardwalk through some salt marshes, mangrove forests, and drier scrub brush which led us to a tortoise breeding center. As we walked along, we kept hearing a groaning/moaning sound and thought there might be cows around. We got to the last large tortoise enclosure and realized the sounds were coming from a male tortoise mounting an unwilling female. The breeding center was clearly successful! We then hiked up the beach and onto a trail for about 4 hours to a wall built by prisoners...it´s called the ¨Wall of Tears¨and was built for no apparent reason other than to make the prisoners work. On our hike, we explored a lava tube (Kieran actually took his shoes off and went into the abyss), saw more huge iguanas, some little fishies in tide pools, and ran into some wild tortoises. We then decided to take a dip in a calm ocean pool just off of the harbor. We swam out to some lava rocks and watched shrimp nibble at our feet. We´re back on Santa Cruz island now and may rent some bikes and go to the highlands. We´re off to Quito tomorrow and then to Latacunga in the Andes where we´ll travel around small mountain towns and hike through the cloudforest. Kieran will try his luck at summiting Cotopaxi volcano while I lounge in the lodge. We´ll try to update this again, but there probably won´t be internet in the Andes. If we don´t post again, you´ll just have to wait until we get back to hear about the rest of our trip.
