The three best words you could hear in the Galapagos! When our tour guide, Milton, would come on the loudspeaker of our (luxury) yacht and say those three magical words we knew it was going to be a great experience! What would we see this time?!
Days were largely divided into quarters whereby we would have an activity or siesta. The latter was generally spent on the top deck either on a sun lounger or in the hot tub looking for sea life, I was fortunate enough to spot tropical whales in the distance and other spots were Orcas (for which we jumped on the pangas to follow), dolphins (I missed these), black tip reef shark and a host of other bird and sea life!
Snorkelling was certainly the highlight of the week and we generally had at least one such excursion each day whilst on board. All of the sessions seem to blur into one as we generally saw an incredible amount each time and frequently saw the same or similar marine life, but it should be said that we never got tired of seeing the same scenes. It is difficult to get tired of the experience when you consider some of the below highlights:
- playing with sea lions almost during every session (three at one point darting around me coming within 50cms of my face oblivious to my presence for the most part and others coming super close and looking right at me in the eyes)
- swimming with tens of sea turtles simultaneously or watching over a hundred graze on the seaweed
- being caught in the middle of a huge school of tropical fish
- swimming alongside penguins darting around me in their playful hunt for food
- Marine iguanas casually swimming by inches from my face as they made their way back to shore after grazing on the rocky sea beds
- A flightless cormorant whizzing by below with just enough time for me to capture it on film – seeing one of these swim was on my Galapagos bucket list!
Another highlight of course was the land tortoises which were huge and not phased by human presence at all. Our guide Milton had a phrase he repeated a lot (on purpose to ingrain it in our minds)… “In the Galapagos you don’t find the wild life, it finds you”. This statement was so true! We would be casually walking on an island visit and in the middle of the path would be a tortoise, iguana or booby and none of them would move for us. As we crept past they would look up at us with an expression almost like “what are these funny looking animals doing” completely unfazed by our presence. The rule is to keep at least 6feet from the wild life however on many occasions this was tricky! In one instance a juvenile blue footed booby took a liking to me and followed me down the path, the faster I went the faster it went!
Our yacht was lovely and over the week I unfortunately became accustomed to 8 courses a day with snacks! Not ideal given the huge quantities of deep friend food already eaten in Central America and Colombia! One night we had a ten hour open sea crossing during September which is during the season of rough seas… safe to say I didn’t sleep much and whilst lying in my bed I was flung across the floor of my cabin, my wardrobe also came off the wall. An experience but not one I’d like to repeat again.
After the Galapagos we returned to Quito, also known as the hardest place to breath in the world! Sleeping was difficult as I struggled to get enough oxygen soley through my nose. I had one night in Quito before heading to Bogota to meet a friend again. That one night was spent with a distant friend, a very nice meal and then he offered to drive me to a view point overlooking the city (which the police had previously prevented me from walking to alone… too dangerous they told me). I was very happy to go but the hydration refreshments for the driver was certainly a surprise as we made our way around the city on a sight seeing drive… I wasn’t drinking alcohol as on meds which was quite a nice break despite being ill.
The two days spent in Bogota were fantastic, we passed the time eating, relaxing, browsing art galleries and drinking cocktails in the Old Town whilst wandering the cobbled streets. Our last two drinks of the meet up were unfortunately in Hooters, the sight of the Nacional football game drew us in. Nacional are bitter rivals of Medellin so we were there supporting the opposition! My friend is a Medellin fan but has never been to the stadium for a game as was too scared by the stories. With my encouragement she is going to her first game this Friday… I hope it goes ok!! Nacional won and now move ahead of Medellin with the second Classico derby to come next week. Everyone in Hooters was super nice but they were baffled by our wine order!
Time for Argentina if my night flight goes swimmingly! Forgot to mention that some of the beaches reminded me of Barra from when we were younger… maybe my memory is inaccurate but this one certainly reminded me of Barra.
Brought back many memories of the Galapagos!
Nice one dad! Let’s go back!