Andrea: Today we would be seeing the '5th most famous turtle in the world', Lonesome George. This was a very exciting moment so we asked Gino, our guide, who the 4 more famous turtles were and he said, 'The Ninja Turtles.' So it's Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo and George. It goes without saying that we were pretty excited. We would also see other, not-so-famous giant tortoises while we were there, which was good because there would be less paparrazz...

Vern: When we awoke, the boat was docked off the coast of Española island, and after breakfast we boarded the dinghy to go ashore to Gardner Bay. The beach appeared to be very rocky but as we neared the coast the rocks started wriggling and barking and it became evident that we were joining a colony of around 50 sea lions. The books in our beach bags went unread, as we spent the morning swimming, snorkelling and sunning with the sea lions. While snorkellin...

Vern: The seatbelt-lights lit up, the passengers straightened their chairs and stowed their tables and the crew strapped in. Then the mechanisms whinged as the landing-gear was released. The plane descended through the last cloud belt and the islands were visible and approaching fast. Then suddenly the plane pulled up and accelerated and with its nose in the sky we burst back into the clouds. The pilot said nothing until after a 20 minutes and big circle, the ann...