This was the most amazing experience of my life, everyone needs to go to Galapagos immediately!! I am definitely going back.

Day 1

Another early start, we were out the door at 5:30am!!! to start the 2.5 hour plane ride to Galapagos. We are on a 16 person boat, which I think is one of the smaller ones here and our group is 6 Aussies, 5 Canadian, 3 Peruvians (although they now live in Australia) and us. So far so good.

Day 1 we set ourselves up in our rooms, had lunch and our guide Billy briefed us on the rest of the trip. Then straight into it, turtles swimming along side the boat, snorkelling with lots of tropical fish, watching iguanas on the beach (and swimming), flamingos and huge crabs everywhere. After dinner we sat outside with the lights on watching the pelicans fish from the edge of out boat and dingy.

Day 2

Day 2 was one of the best days of the whole trip, we went into an island with sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks. There were lots of babies sea lions too so I think we managed to time this trip pretty well. This island is home to land iguanas also. The wild-life here is crazy, they aren't bothered by us at all. You can stand about 15cm away from a sea lion and it wouldn't worry it at all.

In the afternoon we went snorkelling in this fantastic little lagoon - where we got to snorkel with sea lions in one corner, huge turtles in another and a couple of small sleeping sharks on the other side. The sea lions were incredible, they aren't scared at all. The just swim around you chasing and playing with one another. It's one of the coolest things either of us has done in our lives. The sea lions are really playful too and in the past have stolen cameras or their bikini bottoms from people swimming with them. Also when we pull into port you sometimes see that they have pulled themselves into peoples boats and are sunning themselves on the roof or in the dingy behind the boat.

Day 3 we went to another beautiful beach in the morning and did a bit of snorkelling. Also living on this beach are some marine iguanas that are black and red coloured. They were quite pretty (for iguanas anyway) with their red backs which get brighter and brighter during the mating season. In the afternoon we did a big walk around one of the islands to see some of the locals bird including baby albatross (and big ones too), Nascar and blue-footed Boobies. We got to see them building nests and then a mummy and daddy blue footed booby siting on their egg. Again you could pretty much get as close as you wanted and they weren't too worried.

Day 4 we snorkelled in a small bay where a bunch of penguins were swimming and fishing. They were pretty cute and would get really close to you while you were swimming. Then we stopped at another spot for snorkelling which had really deep water and the current was so strong we didn't even need to kick to get back to our boat, we saw a lot of stingrays and eagle rays but no hammerhead sharks as everyone (expect me) were hoping for. We sailed for the afternoon which meant Jolly could pay 500 non-stop for hours so he was pretty happy. We went into the village after dinner to have a look around at a few of the little souvenir stores. Unfortunately our backpacks are about 5kg over weight so it was just window shopping for us. Day 4 was also the day we (read: Jolly) managed to get the camera wet and fry it. Luckily the memory card was fine so we have all our pictures but will need to get a new camera in Quito for the remainder of the trip.

Day 5 we visited the Darwin centre where they are running an extensive tortoise breeding programme. The programme is so successful that there are now too many tortoises living on certain islands in Galapagos. They also have giant tortoises living in captivity there (this is where 'Lonesome George' lived until he died in June) which was really cool to see. Half of our group went home today, and we picked up some new people for the last couple of days. So along with this new group we went up into the highlands and saw the giant tortoises in the wild, they get up to 600 pounds, they are really huge!

Day 6 was Jollys dream day - all snorking, all day. We went to 3 different snorkel spots and saw pretty much everything galapogos has to offer - peguins, sharks, turtles and millions of fish I don't know they name of.

Day 7 we spent the morning doing a bit more snorkling and saying goodbye to all our sea lion friends. In the afternoon we went to an island an island almost completely covered in lava. It was really unreal, walking on a sea of black that stretched as far as we could see.

Day 8 we headed back to Quito. Somehow jolly and I managed to get upgraded to business class on the plane which was pretty fun. We got a slightly bigger seat, and our ham and cheese sandwich came with grapes (everyone else just got a sandwich) - fancy.