The boat set off at 2am and the rough sea had us rolling around in bed for a while but it settled down the further north we traveled. We were awake early and were greeted with a beautiful sunrise. The final part of our cruise was a sail around Daphne Mayor island to see the birds and sealions. There were mostly Nazca boobies (which are a bit rarer than their blue footed cousins). There were a couple of turtles in the water mating.

A frigate bird had been swooping over the boat for a while and eventually it shat on David. Just after he left to clean himself up, a manta ray jumped in front of the boat twice and he missed it.

We ate breakfast as the boat made its way back to Baltra, where we started our journey a week ago. We had to wait in the harbour for a while, having our final chat with the crew, while boat refueled. We did learn that the position of black ball in front of boat indicated whether the anchor was down or up and that flying a red flag showed we were waiting for fuel.

We packed our bags and took our last dinghy ride to the shore and waited for the bus to take us to the airport with the rest of the group. Four of us were staying on the islands for a few more days, so we said our goodbyes to the rest and hopped on the free bus to the channel.

A ferry took us across the channel to Santa Cruz island for a paltry $1USD each. Turned out that everyone on the ferry was heading to Puerto Ayora, like ourselves, so we rented a minibus for $5USD each for the one hour journey to the opposite side of the island.

Puerto Ayora was 42km away and the road was pretty much straight albeit with a dog leg and it rounded the volcano. As the van climbed up the volcano, it got noticeably colder and the rain started. Fortunately, as we descended on the other side, the rain stopped and it got warmer again.

After checking in to Hotel Gardner, we met up with Xavier, who was staying in the hostel round the corner, and went to the dive shop to book some dive days. It was closed until the middle of the afternoon so we headed back to our accommodation. We saw Charlotte, killing time waiting for her next ferry, in a cafe so we joined her for coffee.

It was still a few hours before the dive shop opened so we grabbed some beer and snacks from the supermarket and relaxed on our hotel's roof terrace. Our room at the hotel was really big but bit moldy - it did have aircon and a fridge so all in all, not too bad. Being without WiFi for 8 days we also had lots of checking up to do on email, Facebook and world news.

We were back at the dive shop mid afternoon for David & Xavier to book themselves in for the day trip to Gordon Rocks tomorrow. This is the dive that everyone wants to do because of the likelihood of seeing hammerhead sharks. It's also a dive not for the faint-hearted, not because of the sharks, but because of the treacherous conditions. We'll find out tomorrow if what they say is true.

Afterwards, we continued down the road out of town towards Charles Darwin Research Station. They had quite a few giant tortoises and land iguanas in enclosures. The animals looked a bit sadder than the captive ones we had seen on Isabela's breeding centre.

We checked the beach out quickly and it was nothing to write home about, it was a bit rough and it had just started raining too so we headed back towards town. We ducked into a few souvenir shops on the way to keep out of the heavier showers of rain. Puerto Ayora is definetly the tourist mecca of the Galapagos based on the amount of high priced souvenirs for sale.

We stopped at a pizza joint for a couple of slices and washed it down with beer. Cheeky waitress tried to charge for an extra beer but all was good at the end. As well as expensive souvenirs, the town is also much more expensive than mainland.

We had an early night, David needs to get up early to be at the dive shop for 7am. Our room might be bigger than our cabin on Angelito but it's a bit smelly without having the windows open and fan on. I suppose this is back to reality for our budget.