We landed in the Galapagos and any doubt about the temperature were quickly disbounded because it was a toasty 30 degrees as we got off the plain. Mathilde and I went through some more rigerous baggage security and paid our 100US dollar fee to enter the national park. We caught a boat across the small distance to Santa Marta island and then began the 1 hour bus journey to Puerto Ayora on the Southern tip of the island.

Once in town we wasted no time and immediately hit the tour agencies to try and catch a last minute cruise. It was apparent before long that we could not get any cruises within budget and within the time frame that we had, but instead had settled on an itinerary of visiting as many islands as possible within 5 days to still give us 2 days for scuba diving at the end of the trip. We spent the entire day in tour agencies asking for advice, availability and of course negotiating.

We eventually settled on a tour agent and had also been joined by Carly, from the hostel in Guayacil the night before. Thus the 3 of us were about to embark on our Galapagos adventure with Tito our guide! That evening we found a cheap hostel for 10US dollars a night (although i had to share a room with a rat). We went out for dinner with a few people from the agency and had a cheap meal and a beer in the street with the locals before turning in ready for an early start