15 September 1835. 26-year old Charles Darwin, the son of a wealthy doctor who had dropped out of medical school because he could not stand the sight of blood (much to his father's annoyance), arrived in the Galapagos Islands on board the HMS Beagle. Being a geologist (someone who studies the solids and liquids that make up the Earth) at that time, his primary objective was to observe the interesting volcanic craters that make up the Islands. During the 5 months that he was there, he also noticed a rather strange phenomenon - the mockingbirds and finches that were found there differed slightly from island to island. Also, during a meeting with the governor of Galapagos, the governor told him that he was able to tell which island a particular giant tortoise was from simply by looking at the shape and pattern of its shell. These two observations (I'm oversimplifying things, of course) led to his now famous paper, The Origin of Species, in which the Theory of Evolution was born.
Fast forward 177 years (almost to the date). The Galapagos Islands, a group of 14 main islands located about 1000 km off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific (pretty much in the middle of no where), is now a popular tourist destination, albeit an expensive one (it was easily the most expensive part of our trip cost per day). But other than that, most of the islands that make up the archipelago and its natural inhabitants have remained as unique as when Darwin first saw them.
Here are some reasons why:
1) Many species of the flora and fauna found here are endemic to the Galapagos, i.e. they are not found anywhere else in the world. The Galapagos tortoise, the swallow-tailed gull, the marine iguana and the lava lizard are just a few examples.
2) Many of these animals have developed very interesting characteristics to adapt to its unique and very isolated environment. For example, the marine iguana is the only iguana in the world that swims and feeds in the sea. Another example is the swallow-tailed gull - the only of its kind that hunts at night.
3) The white sandy beaches, volcano craters and black lava rocks remain as characteristic to the Galapagos as ever, just as Darwin meticulously described in his journal
I know I've mentioned this a number of times in previous entries in the blog (and losing credibility in the process), but I'm gonna go ahead and say it again - the 4 days we spent on the Galapagos Islands are THE highlight of our entire South America trip!

The Galaxy
Let me start with our home for these 4 days - The Galaxy cruise and her crew. There are really two main ways to experience the Galapagos - by sea or by land. By land means staying in a hotel / hostel on one of the four inhabited islands (Santa Cruz, Isabela, Floreana, San Cristobal) and making day-trips to see the animals. It is more cost-effective, but you will not be able to go far, i.e. some of the more isolated (and interesting) islands will not be part of your itinerary. After much consideration (weighing the pros of seeing more of the Galapagos animals in its natural habitat that we would never see anywhere else in the world vs the cons of, well, the astronomical cost), we eventually decided to go with the second option, that is to take one of the Galapagos cruises and see some of the most unique animals on Earth.
Once we've made that decision, we were faced with another tough one - which cruise? There were at least 20 boats of varying classes to choose from with very wide ranging prices and quality. Back in Rio, we had met an Australian-English couple who had just been to the Islands and they strongly recommended The Darwin - a no-frills, "budget" class boat (but by no means cheap). However, right before we made the booking, we came across a "last-minute deal" for The Galaxy - a "first" class boat for slightly more. So we went with that.
As it turned out, The Galaxy did justify its rating (phew!). It's a relatively large boat - built to house 16 guests, plus 10 crew members. It is a far cry from the little Huckleberry Finn of a boat that we stayed on in the Pantanal. And given it was not running at full capacity (there were only 14 guests), there was plenty of space. The food was plenty too - we had three full meals plus two snacks in between meals everyday. Suffice to say, we were never hungry - at least not for very long. Being on a bigger boat, we also suffered less from seasickness. At least that's the theory. We did still get a little sea sick, but we managed to keep everything down.
As far as guides go in the Galapagos, they are quite highly qualified - many of them are trained naturalists. Our guide, Danny, knew his stuff and we enjoyed his dry sense of humor. As an unexpected bonus, we had another experienced guide with us - Louis - who joined the cruise with his wife, Irene, as guests. So we had twice the Galapagos education for the price of one!
The crew was top notch. The chef and his assistant whipped up some pretty delicious meals (easily the best we had in Ecuador) and the bartender/waiter was ever ready to serve. Other than seeing some of the other crew members playing cards amongst themselves in the lounge area (which I thought was a bit unprofessional), there really wasn't anything to complain about. In the words of the experienced guide / tourist, Louis: "The Galaxy offers one of the best cost-to-quality ratio in the Galapagos at the moment".

Day 1
We arrived on the island of Baltra following a 3-hour flight from Quito, the capital of Ecuador (we had flown to Quito from Lima two nights before). We were met at the airport by our guide, Danny, and were immediately brought to the nearby jetty by bus before switching to a panga (motor-powered rubber boat) to get to the Galaxy that was docked about 100 meters away. Louis and Irene were the other passengers on the panga with us.
Upon arriving, we found out that the other 10 guests onboard had already been on the cruise for 2 nights - they were on the 6 day / 5 night cruise while we were joining them for the remaining 4 days / 3 nights. Following a quick lunch and after being shown our cabins, we were given a briefing of our daily itinerary, which looked something like this:

7:00 am: Breakfast
8:00 am: Hike
10.00 am: Back on the boat and snack
10.30 am: Snorkel
12:00 pm: Lunch
1:00 pm: Siesta
3:00 pm: Hike and/or Snorkel
5:30 pm: Back on the boat and snack
7:00 pm: Dinner
8:00 pm: Briefing for the next day

Our first activity was snorkeling. Most of you will know that while I can run continuously for hours, I'm not particularly fond of swimming. Even less so in the open sea (too many sea monster movies when I was a kid). And the rough and cold water of the Pacific did not help, despite having wetsuits on. Fortunately for me, my new wife who is a lot more comfortable in the water, was within an arm's length away at all times. After fighting the initial panic of being in the ocean and not knowing what monsters were lurking beneath us perhaps waiting for the right time to pounce, I relaxed a little and started to do some snorkelling. Apart from some colourful fishes, the highlight of that first session was a large stingray - possibly the kind that killed Steve Irwin but otherwise harmless.
Back on the Galaxy and a quick snack later, we found ourselves walking on the islet of Mosquera where hundreds of sea lions were basking in the sun. It's true that you get to see wild sea lions elsewhere (in San Francisco for example), but no where else will you see animals in its natural habitat (and not just the sea lions) so completely oblivious to human presence. In theory, you will be able to go up to most of these animals - close enough to touch them - without them moving away, although we were advised to maintain a distance of 2 meters from the animals. This 'phenomenon' is due to the lack of natural land predators on the Islands. In fact, an overly curious baby sea lion (also known as a pup) came wading towards us and tried to lick one of the passengers, just like a regular puppy. Cute.
Later that night, while we were hanging out in the lounge following a 3-course dinner, Danny came bursting in, shouting: "Big sharks outside. Lots of them!" So we dropped whatever we were doing and rushed out to the deck and spent the next half hour marvelling at the big sea predators circling our boat. According to Louis, there are two species of sharks found in the Galapagos. There's the relatively small White-Tipped Reef Shark that don't grow to more than a meter and a half. And then there's the Galapagos Shark that can grow up to more than 3 meters in length - not as big as the Great White, but impressive enough. That's what we we were looking at. Lots of them. Our Galapagos cruise was off to an amazing start.

Day 2
Around midnight, while we were sound asleep in our cabins, the Galaxy left Baltra for another island - Genovesa, a horseshoe-shaped island on the other side of the equator (which incidentally, would be the only time on our 3-month trip that we were back in the northern hemisphere). In the panga on the way to the island, the theme song of the reality show Survivor and images of the castaway contestants being stranded on a deserted island played in my head. Except that we were not being left to fend for ourselves (thankfully). We were there to visit its inhabitants - the birds. More specifically, the 3 species of boobies (yes, that's what they are really called) - the red-footed, blue-footed and Nazca boobies. Again (as I did in the previous entry), I would like to point out that we aren't generally very interested in birds, but I have to admit that these birds were quite intriguing. The blue-footed boobies for example, have comically bright blue feet and like the sea lions, have absolutely no fear for humans. Or any other predators for that matter since there are none to worry about. That's why they don't bother building their nests high up on a tree like regular birds. We saw many baby boobies in their nests on the ground or no higher than waist-high, waiting for their mothers to return with food. Other than the boobies (it still cracks me up when I say it), there were also swallow-tailed gulls (the world's only nocturnal gull), Darwin's finches (the birds that contributed to Darwin's theory of evolution), mockingbirds, frigates (nasty birds that fly around in groups stealing food from other birds), herons, barn owls (which interestingly hunt in the day unlike most other owls) and maybe 10 other species of birds that I don't know / remember.
And just as we were getting a little bored of watching the birds, we heard someone shouting "sharks!" from the water. We were chilling out on one of the beaches on the island at that time and instead of clearing away from the water, we quickly put on our snorkelling gear and jumped into the water. No, we didn't have a death wish - we had been told earlier by Louis that there was a chance of seeing the harmless and smaller white-tipped reef shark near shore if we were lucky. And he was right: as we swam towards the guy who had shouted earlier, we noticed two sharks in the water, about a meter and a half in length. Now we can say we swam with sharks in the Galapagos!
But it would get better.

Day 3
We took the panga out in the morning to explore some sea caves near the island of San Cristobal. Other than the interesting rock formations and a bunch of pelicans swimming nearby, the stars of the show were definitely the sea turtles - quite a number of them actually, swimming near our panga and occasionally poking their heads above the water for air.
Following this, we made a landing at one of the beaches on the island, where the white of the sand, the black of the volcano rocks and the blue/green of the sea could not be more beautifully contrasting. We were greeted by more sea lions lazing in the sun, but we had other plans. Louis had told us earlier that our best chance of seeing a large marine iguana was on this island. We had actually seen a big group of them on Genovesa the previous day but they were relatively small - a foot long at most. What I wanted to see was a big, fat one. So we trolled the length of the beach, watching the volcano rocks closely where they are most likely to be hanging out. And about a half hour into our hunt, Siau-Wei found him. Big, fat, and over a meter long with spikes along the length of its back (indicating his gender), he looked more like a relative of the dinosaur than a present day reptile. He was perched up on one of the black volcano rocks and there I sat with him for awhile, enjoying the morning sun together. It was a special moment. One of my primary objectives of visiting the Islands has just been achieved.
Back on the Galaxy, after lunch and siesta, we got ready for one final snorkel. We were first called on the sun deck to admire a rock formation called Kicker Rock - a 145-meter high formation shaped like the tip of a spear. At its base was where we were going to snorkel and with some luck, see some hammerhead sharks.
Within minutes of jumping off our panga, we realised that we were in shark-infested waters. And these were not the little reef sharks that we saw the previous day - they were the bigger Galapagos sharks, the kind that have reportedly attacked humans (although we didn't know this at that time, which was probably a good thing). At first, it was just the odd one or two sharks that swam about 5 meters below us - but soon we realised there were a lot more of them. Both Danny and Louis, who have over 30 years of guiding experience between them, later told us that they've never seen such a high concentration of sharks during a single snorkelling session before. Equipped with an underwater camera, Louis dived deeper into the water a few times to get a better look - and came up with some pretty amazing shots. According to him, there were about 20 sharks swimming around us. Hearts beating in our mouths, we stayed in the water for as long as we dared. While it was hard not to keep our eyes fixated on the sea predators gliding effortlessly below us (and also to ensure that they don't mistake our flippers for a juicy sea lion), we did also see some other interesting animals, including a large spotted eagle ray and a sea turtle, who was swimming calmly amongst the sharks and us, humans. We didn't see any hammerhead sharks but it was still a pretty awesome underwater experience.

Day 4
Now that we've seen the marine iguanas, the boobies (and other birds) and swam with sharks, there was really just one thing left to do to complete the experience - seeing the Galapagos (or "Giant Tortoise" in Spanish) themselves. Up until 2 months ago, there were 11 species of the Giant Tortoise left on the Galapagos - but sadly, Lonesome George, the unofficial mascot of the Islands and last surviving tortoise from the Pinta species, died recently, leaving its species extinct. He was believed to be about 100 to 120 years old.
Fortunately for us, there were plenty of other giant tortoises to marvel at on the island of San Cristobal. For some strange reason, the visit to the tortoise breeding centre was not part of the itinerary so we, along with a British father - daughter pair, decided to break away from the group and take a separate 3-hour tour to the other side of the island to see these amazing reptiles. The tour started with a half hour explanation of the 10 different species of tortoises remaining and how they can each be distinguished from their shells, as well as the steps taken by the National Park to protect and breed them. According to the guide, there were about 50 adult tortoises in the centre and they've successfully bred about 60 babies so far. These babies would be released back into the wild once they reach 7 years old.
Eventually though, we get to see the tortoises. And they were HUGE! They move so incredibly slowly but yet I could watch them all day. There's just this tranquil quality about the way they move. We also got to see the babies - from the very first one that was bred at the centre (Genosis) who would be released later this year, to the very little ones who had hatched from their eggs just a few weeks ago. I was surprised at the size of the little ones - they were really no larger than the tiny terrapins that some people keep as pets. It's astounding that something that small will eventually grow into a 400-kilo giant. Once again, nature finds a way to blow our minds.

The visit to the breeding centre wrapped up our visit to the Galapagos quite nicely. No doubt it was the most expensive part of our trip, but the once-in-a-lifetime experience (due in part to the prohibitive cost and the very remote location) to see these incredible animals, many of which are not found anywhere else in the world, has made it worth every cent.