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!

Island hopping in the Galapagos

As we wanted to see as much as possible of the Galapagos and our cruise was only 5 days long we decided to fly to the islands a few days before the cruise started. We landed in a tiny airport on Baltra island, a desertlike island with cactuses and leafless trees. From there we crossed the canal to Santa Cruz, one of 4 inhabited islands in the Galapagos and home of Puerto Ayora, the main town. A lot of people only pass through Puerto Ayora on the way to their cruises but there is also things to do in town. We quickly went and booked ourselves on a diving tour the following day and the rest of the afternoon we walked around in town and got into the much slower pace compared to Quito.

Yachts in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz

When we had finished our diving the following day we took a speed boat to the island Isabela. The two-hour ride was easily described as bumpy. I sat and stared at the horizon so not to get seasick. Another girl on the boat didn't do the same I guess as she had to hand over the back of the boat and vomit. We tried to help her with water, paper and Mentos while a nice German woman in her sixties was documenting the whole episode with her camera...

Isla Isabela turned out to be a small paradise. The "town", Puerto Villamil, was pretty much a beach, a sandy main road, a lagoon with a few pink flamingoes and some quarters of houses inland. People were really friendly and didn't care too much that our spanish (ok, Yarden's spanish and my spanified French) did leave a lot to wish for. We quickly established contact with the main tourist guru in town, Pablo. He fixed us up on a horseback tour, he negotiated hostel prices for us, his wife laundered our clothes and they fed us coconuts. Another imortant person on our stay was the owner of Restaurante Arenitas, who fed us set menus of breakfast, lunch and dinner. We also met a nice couple from Quito, Juan Pablo and Margarita, who functioned as our translators as soon as we were stuck in misunderstandings (yes, that did happen...).

Restaurante Arenitas, our main foodplace

Karin with the beach and Puerto Villamil in the background

The post office of Isabela

Breakfast in a local restaurant, Isla Isabela

One day we went on a horsebackriding tour to the volcano Sierra Negra. From the sun at the beach we went by truck through the jungle and up, above the clouds where our horses were waiting. We looked like a bunch of bandidos in hats, sunglasses and shirts tied around our faces in order to protect ourselves from the dust from the track, the sun and the heat. When we reached the volcano area we got of the horses and walked around in the lava fields, crept through lava tunnels and enjoyed the amazing landscape. It felt like we had landed on Mars.

A walk in lava land

Pablo, our tour guide

Yarden, natural born cowboy

Volcano Sierra negra

After three days on Isla Isabela we had to Santa Cruz at 6 o'clock in the morning in order to catch up with our cruise. And we know - it's a though job, but someone's gotta do it!!

Blowing lavasand off the hands

Maybe she should have changed her name to Kahlo instead of Cohen...

Galapagos

Baltra island, Galapagos - from the air

We are a bit behind on our blog... Haven't had time to write about Madrid or Quito and now we're suddenly in the Galapagos! Really cool place, even though we only have been in the main town this far we have seen plenty of animals - seals, lizards, birds etc.

Sea lion on watch...

Marine iguana, Santa Cruz

Just wanted to say that we are having a great time, tomorrow we are going to dive at a place called Gordon Rocks where we hopefully get to see Hammerhead sharks. After that we'll jump straight on the boat to the island Isabela where we are planning on staying for 3 night before we're getting back to Santa Cruz and get on to our cruise!