Good Night Quito

Well, tonight is our last night in Quito. Tomorrow we head homne via Lima Peru and San Salvador, El Salvador, hopig to arrive around 10;30PM

We had a great trip, meeting lots of people from London, Oxford, US, Canada and New Zealand (now ih London heading to Abu Dabi). We hope to meet up with some of them again in the future, but only time will tell.

Last night we had a farewell dinner with Donald from Chillawack, Elizabeth and Nikki from London areas ) and Oxford) and Anna and Grant form New Zealand.

Today we visited the old city of Quito with Anna and Grant. They then flew to Lima to continue on with their travels until mid April.

Tonight, Michael and I ate at an all you can eat and drink Tapas restaurant - the food was great!!!

Tomorrow will be an early morning and a very long day - but we are both reayd to return home.

See you all soon!!!

The Magic of Galapagos

Well, here we are again back in Quito after an amazing trip through the Galapagos Islands.

We took our flight to Baltra on Jan. 27, then a quick ferry ride followed by an hour bus ride and we were at the dock to embark on our boat - GAP Adventures III.

There were 16 of us on the boat with a crew of 8 including our guide for the 8 days, Pablo.

Our first day we spend some time in the highlights of Santa Cruz where we saw giant land tortoises in their natural habitat. These creatures are huge, weighing some 600lbs. We were lucky enough to observe 2 of these giants mating (tortoise porn) as it is currently their mating season.

I´m not going to go day by day on our trip as that would take forever. So, I´ll touch on the highlights.

Everyday we were up for breakfast at 7AM and ashore by 8AM. Each day except 1 included 2 land excursions and 2 snorkeling trips.

The land excursions were on several islands, some inhabited by a few people, others only by reptiles and sea lions. The landscape varied greatly from island to island. Some were colourful with red, green and orange ground cover, along with gigantic cacti sprouting about. Others were mountainous with half erupted volcano craters remaining. Some had white sand beaches, others red, black and even green!

From land iguanas to marine iguanas (little dinosaurs), to beautiful frigate birds with their fully engulfed red pouches below their chins trying to find their perfect mates. Blue footed boobies with their blue feet diving into the sea - amazing creatures.

Many sea lions, most babies still nursing on their mothers while the big bulls patrol the waters in front. Tiny Galapagos penguins in their little tuxedos, sit and watched us drift by while we all snapped pictures. Then, for a treat, in the water they jumped and swam by us looking for food.

Snorkeling brought a whole other world. White tipped Galapagos sharks, manta rays, and colour fish all swam around us as we floated atop the ocean observing the wonders below. To see a giant sea turtle eating off the rocks and then swim by you without a glance is an amazing sight. And the sea lions, swimming by, looking at your masks and chasing sharks as they go - amazing!!!

To go on would take forever so we´ll stop here. We´ll try to post some new pictures and then share the rest of our experiences when we get home.