Hi All,

What a start! After a business class flight to Quito (thanks for the upgrade Iberia) we arrived in our hostel in the afternoon where the girl from the reception told us to take no valuables in the street. 'Everybody gets robbed here at any time, in any place so just take as little as possible.' OK that is a warm welcome. Anyways, so far, so good, and we only have one more night to spend in Quito. We visited the old colonial city which has many churches, a cathedral and a basilica from which there is a nice view of the city. I had my first vertigo moment during the trip and this will surely not be the last. The following day we had an early flight to Galapagos. It is an amazing place and for sure it is a photographers' heaven! As the animals are not at all afraid, you can approach them as close as you want. Even birds seem to be posing for you. Just a short list of the animals we saw: sea lions, giant land tortoises at the Charles Darwin Breeding Centre (Yes we did see Lonesome George!), sea turtles, albatrosses, land and sea iguanas, lizards and many different kinds of birds amongst which the famous blue footed booby. It is nice to be here in the season when they have their babies. Fascinating animals and beautiful landscapes!

During 8 days, we hopped from island to island on a nice red sailing boat called the 'Encantada'. Usually we sailed at night around 5 to 7 hours. And not being used to sleeping on a boat… it was quite a challenging experience… but we were lucky that our stomachs were in good shape, others in the group were obviously less so. Now, enough typing, it is time to check out if we can spot some whales so, hasta luego….

… No whales, but we did see other great stuff from the Zodiac J. Today we saw a couple of manta rays. They are huge and can reach 6 meters of 'wing' span. One of the best experiences was surely the large group of spotted eagle rays (around 20) that were swimming on the surface next to our Dinghy as they call the Zodiac.

We got a new group joining us on the boat yesterday and again they are very nice people. Though not as funny as the previous group. But that was hard to beat. We had a French girl doing the bark of the sea lion, a typical English guy with an amazing amount of silly jokes … Why does a hedgehog cross the street? Because he has a meeting with his flatmate… ahaha ;o) We had a Shaman from Spain, a teacher from the UK, a couple from France who are like us taking 8 months off to travel, and 2 older German fanatic birdwatchers.

Almost every day we snorkel to get a glimpse of the underwater world. Stingrays, eagle rays, playful sea lions, sea turtles, sea iguanas, penguins, octopuses, plenty of tropical fish and finally on the last day a white tipped shark. It is also fantastic under water.

We said goodbye to the Galapagos today and are back in our hostel in Quito. Tomorrow we will go to mitad del mundo for some equator experiments, but first we will put this and some pictures on the blog in an Internet café.

So see you for the next blog update!