Tough to leave the easy life of cruising - even with 6 am starts, but it was back to the road. We made our connection and had an early flight out of the Galapagos. Another - yes another - small world story - on the flight to Guayaquil I ran into a defence lawyer I used to work with in Calgary. He was with his own group of 16 - they rented their own boat and had a great time as well.Made our way to the Guesthouse in Guayaquil where we had stayed a few weeks pri...

When we were booking our week we wondered if we should do the four, the five or the eight days. We worried that eight might be too long - what if we didn't like our shipmates or our ship, what if the schedule was too arduous, what if everybody was just talking in Latin names....?Maybe we just got lucky, but we couldn't have asked for a nicer group of people to share our amazing expereinces with. Over the eight days we shared our lives with:2 ...

Isabela was a study in contrasts. We started the morning by coming ashore at the sleepy - nearly comatose, town of Villamil. We walked through town - if you are coming to the Galapagos for relaxation and you want to stay in a nice hotel - they have one or two here. Small little boutique hotels, a few mini shops, an internet cafe, some restaurants and not much else other than a turtle breeding/rescue centre. The hike to the turtle centre went through a ...

Everyone loves Boobies. There are lots of Boobies here - Blue Footed, Red Footed and maybe other Boobies - I stopped paying attention when it came to Boobies. I like seals and cactuses and crabs. I don't care about turtles or tortoises and I thought I loved penguins but they turned out to be dullards so they are off my Christmas list. This day started with a 6 am walk, well first you have to get off the big boat, get in the small boat without falling, g...

  With the new kids in tow we headed off for their first 6 am hike on Espanola Island - the only completely flat island. We had a very long - three hour - hike, around Punta Suarez.   It was beautiful but oh so hot and I felt sorry for the new kids as it was their first outing in the heat and this one was too long and too hot. We did see hundreds of pretty marine iguanas, both on land and a few swimming - that was special. They are pretty huge and very c...