Cruising

Fragata, our yacht

My general view of cruises are big ships, filled with bluehaird ladies sipping drinks around the pool all day long. Fortunately, our cruise had nothing at all to do with that. The yacht, Fragata, was very nice - a lot better than I had hoped for. We we're only 15 passengers (and 8 crew members) onboard, 6 Italians that had already been on the boat for a few days and 9 of us who were on a 5-day cruise. The Italians had already their own little group (we did joke about one of us others taking a place at their dinner table to see how they woul react but none dared to...) so the rest of us formed a newcomer group. We were really lucky that the rest of the group were a bunch of nice, fun people in our age and not some stiff oldies.

Sunrise at North Seymour island

Wet landing

Estephan talking about Iguanas to the whole group

Yarden, Karin and a gang of sea lions

Afternoon relax on the roof

At 6.30 was wake-up (yeah, not really vacation mode on that) and at 7.00 breakfast was served. Food was great and abundant throughout the trip - breakfast could be a fruitplate, toasts, juice, coffee and eggs. At 8 o'clock the first landtour of the day started. We all hopped in the pangas (small boats) and landed on a beach, normally filled with loud, smelly but fun sea-lions. Our guide, Estephan, a native Galapagian (?) was really good, knowledgeable and with good English. We used to come back to the boat at 10.30-11.00, sometimes met by the bartender serving us freshly made juices. At 12.00 lunch was served and then we normally had a bit of freetime until the next activity - another island trek or snorkeling. At 18.30 we gathered in the "living room" (there's probably a boat word for that that I don't know) for briefing about the following days activities. And then at 19.00 dinner was served. After dinner we sat up and talked for a bit, or endlessly tried to find a good DVD to see (only strange spanishdubbed action movies and Titanic). And at 22.00 we slept like babies, the ones who didn't have a problem with the rough sea when the boat moved on to the next island at night that is...

Movietime in the lounge

Briefing time

The crew dressed up for the farewell coctail

Beautiful view from the boat

Pictures will be uploaded in due time, right now I'm sitting by a computer that doesn't even have USB-ports... This must have been what it was like to live back in the Inca days!