We were having a whole day on land today and to ensure we weren't going to miss out on a meal, we prepared our own lunch box after breakfast. The dinghy had us on the public dock at 8am and it was no surprise to see sealions and penguins there. We boarded a bus to take us to a Giant Tortoise breeding centre. The centre had 931 tortoises from the newly born to older couples kept for breeding. The tortoises are kept in the centre for 8 years before being released...

There are strict rules for the National Park in Galapagos and one of the rules is about the number of people in an area at any one time. What this means is that all cruises must register, and get approval, for their itineraries including times and number of people on the tour. Generally this didn't affect us apart from this morning. Breakfast was brought forward to 6:30am so that we could do our tour of Punta Moreno before another cruise did their tour. On the ...

The boat had moved during the night and when we woke up we were in Urbina Bay, on the western coast of Isabella Island. This morning's activities were going to be a combined land tour with snorkeling from the beach straight after. As usual, the crew had our snorkel gear and wetsuits ready at the back of the boat so all we had to do was grab them and a lifevest and jump in the dinghy. It was a wet landing, getting our feet wet, on a black sand beach. If we hadn'...