It's our last day in the Galápagos. We left the boat early, for our last dry landing, to visit the San Cristóbal Interpretation Centre on Santa Cruz Island before flying back to Quito via Guayaquil. It is another scorcher today. It was unanimous that visiting the interpretation centre was a bit of an inconvenience as it was a repeat of most of what we've learned over the trip and since we were leaving we just wanted to get back to Quito. They needed us ...

We spent the night sailing to Santa Cruz island. Santa Cruz supports one of the largest human populations of the five inhabited islands. Some 8,000 residents are distributed between the cattle-farming communities in the lush highlands and the coastal town of Puerto Ayora, where we started our tour. Puerto Ayora is the economic center of the Galapagos Islands. All the tour boats visit Puerto Ayora, anchoring in Academy Bay so there are many hotels, restaurants, so...

We had an early start today (7:15 in the pangas). First off we visited Islote Tintorera, which is supposed to be one of the best places to see sharks and other marine wildlife. Well, we saw 1 sea lion and some baby marine iguanas. I guess I'd better get used to the fact that I'm not going to see any sharks on this trip, even though I was swimming with one close by at one point. The volcanic rock looks like it has bird poop all over the south side of the r...

We got up very early to take a 6:00 am panga ride in Elizabeth Bay to explore the shallows and mangroves to look for sea turtles, penguins and birds. It was heaven! It wasn't hot yet and we saw many sea turtles, rays, and fish in the water as well as pelicans, flightless cormorants, blue-footed boobies and even an elusive Galápagos hawk. Derces was our driver/ guide as Alberto was in the other panga. To be honest, it was nice not having detailed, long-winde...

We woke up for a morning visit to Punta Espinoza on Fernandina, the youngest of the Galápagos Islands. Im happy to say that Vic made it through the night without rolling out of bed or puking anymore and woke up feeling good. Fernandina has the largest colony of marine iguanas in the archipelago, in addition to having a big sea lion colony, lots of sea turtles, and flightless cormorants. It’s also the most volcanically active island. marine iguanas and spe...