Our last visit was to North Seymour Island.

It was a pretty flat looking island, like the others

It kind of reminded me of what Mars might look like if it had life because the soil was so red!!

This was an island of birds birds birds!

As I mentioned earlier, there were tons of boobies on this island!

Sitting on a nest

Next with two eggs – they lay two eggs a few days apart. However, the older sibling usually kills the younger one. :(

Lots and lots of pics of them

Even dancing!

The cool thing about this island was the frigates. The males have these red pouches they puff out to attract females and it was pretty crazy looking!

Here’s some of them flying

Here’s a deflated one

Two guys hanging out with each other

Here’s a couple

And a baby!

Birds birds birds

Not surprisingly, there were sea lions here too! They are everywhere!

I thought this dead iguana kind of looked like a dinosaur!

And too soon, it was time for us to leave. :(

Before going to post office bay, we stopped and did a little snorkeling trip. I can’t recall the name of it, but we all loaded onto the dingy and jumped off into the water. It was around some rocks – and the water was just this amazing blue and full of fish. Unfortunately, a jellyfish had released it’s little tentacles in the water and all of us were saying Ouch!! Everyone then rushed to get back on the dingy, and we moved a little bit where there weren’t so many jellyfish. There was just so much to look at – I wanted to just float around all day. So many beautiful fish and plants – amazing!! Then some sea lions decided to hang out with us – and a couple of the people just started swimming with them. We also saw a huge school of fish – I thought it was a rock because the school was so large. It probably was a million tiny fish!! It was great – there’s just so much to see!!

Then we traveled to the Post Office Bay. It was used as a post office back in the day – allegedly so that the whalers could be spied on. Now it just contains post cards – and if there’s a post card near where you live you’re suppose to take it and hand deliver it.

The group read where all the post cards were to be sent to – they were from all over the world.

I found this funny sticker on it – No Junk Mail

After that my mom and I did some more snorkeling. The water was pretty shallow and there were a lot of fish to see – but then something captured my eye – a sea turtle!! It was HUGE. I could have grabbed onto it’s shell and gone for a ride – it was larger than me curled up. It was munching on some seaweed and didn’t seem to mind my mom and I floating above it watching, following it. They are so fast and graceful in the water.

Then the best part of the trip – a playful sea lion came over. There was a group of about four of us and the sea lion just came over and wanted to play! He/She twisted and turned – and would imitate you if you did the same. It was such a cool experience – it looked at you and followed you… being able to interact with a wild animal that chooses to be there and wants to play – wow! I had so much fun playing in the water with him/her – and one time the sea lion got my mom and I to crash into each other! :) While this was going on, another sea turtle came over to have a meal – and I can’t even describe just how incredible it was to have all this wildlife and be a part of it.

The next day we went to Cormorant Point on Floreana Island. It was kind of overcast that day.

The sand at this beach was much more brown than the other one, kind of like a little mud mixed in!

There was a sea lion heading out to sea

Lots of itty bitty treasures in the sand

Some worm tubes

A little creature

Two sides of the sea urchin

We then took a trail to the more interior part of the island

This island had more trees than the other one did, and was more green.

It had a mountain too, and a salt lagoon

With flamingos in the water!

There weren’t many and they were kind of far off unfortunately.

There was a white one – means it hasn’t eaten enough shrimp! That’s how they get their color.

We climbed to more of a lookout where you could see the lagoon better.

They had this sign – if you didn’t stop well you’d certainly stop when you landed in the lagoon!

Then we came to this bay area where the turtles come to lay their eggs. They weren’t doing it then sadly. The sand though was so incredibly soft – I’ve never felt anything like it!!

The crabs were there

Just peaceful to watch the ocean

There was a blue footed booby searching for some lunch

Then we took the trail back to where we started and did some snorkeling!

It was much better snorkeling since the water was shallower. There were plenty of fish to see – some pretty large ones too!!

During the night the boat went to Suarez point on the island of Espanola. I did feel a little ill, luckily my mom had benadryl which can be used as an anti nausea medication (I checked on epocrates, since I recalled that Dramamine is a closely related cousin to benadryl).

We had a little landing step on this beautiful beach

And no sooner did we step on this island when we discovered that the path has tons of marine iguanas on them!

They were all out sunning in the early morning – and just everywhere! You had to be really careful where you stepped because it was hard not to step on them.

When we got to the sandy part, there were tons of sea lions just hanging out. Didn’t mind us coming through, barely even reacted.


For someone who loves wildlife and animals (me!) this was incredible!! My mom is also a fan of animals and she and I were completely astounded. It was as though we were somewhat invisible because none of the animals ran away or anything. It was too cool for words!!

My mom just taking it all in…

I could have just spend hours watching – there was so much wildlife! Birds, crabs, sea lions, iguanas, lizards… I was always ending up last in the group because I just was trying to take it all in and get some good photos!!

There were these brightly colored crabs (Sally Lightfoot) everywhere – the babies were black and pretty skittish so I don’t have a picture of them, but the adults were pretty!

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Our next stop was to Gardner Bay, also on Espanola. This was a wet landing which means the dinghy goes up to the beach and then you get out in the water. These made me all sorts of paranoid because of my camera – but I dealt with it. :) My mom and I rented snorkeling gear and our first activity was snorkeling. The snorkeling was good – there was much more amazing snorkeling later in the trip. I should have probably bought a disposable underwater camera, but for me I don’t like it when I have pictures that are meh quality but I post because there’s something amazing in them. I’m too much of a perfectionist. The underwater shots are often kind of cloudy cause of all the little bitty sediments in the water. Anyways, back to Gardner Bay…

Those aren’t rocks on the beach, they are sea lions… lots and lots of sea lions!!!

The black rocks are where we snorkeled.

After snorkeling, we spent the rest of the time watching the sea lions. They are everywhere, pretty darn close and do all sorts of silly things.

Like strange noises…

Waddle around on land – and there were cute baby ones!

Sea lions take short cuts, even when it means walking over your fellow mate.

Yawn

Take a nice afternoon nap

Someone had a busy day!

Pose

Make cute eyes!!

Cuddle with mum

They were just too much fun to watch. :)

My mom and I got up nice and early for our flight to the Galapagos. It probably is about 2 hours away by flight, except we stopped in another city in Ecuador, Guayaquil. The security within Ecuador is much easier than in the US – none of the shoe taking off, liquids in a clear plastic bag, etc.

Our plane was a normal sort of plane, 6 seats across. It wasn’t some rinky dink little plane. There really are a lot of people going to the Galapagos.

The airport we arrived at is on the island of Baltra

After our tour group got all together, we headed off in a bus to get from the island of Baltra to Santa Cruz. There was a little boat between the two islands and then a bus ride down to Puerto Ayora. Santa Cruz has a paved road, but most of the islands don’t. It was interesting to watch the landscape change as we drove across the island.

The islands are all kind of flat looking, don’t have huge steep mountains.
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After the trip to the market we had lunch at a Hacienda. It was of course this beautiful property with a very nice house. :) The meal was very good too!

The place was set very nicely with these beautiful heavy silver plates

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So the next day, we went to the indigenous market of Otavalo. It was about two hours away and we went through some very picture-sque areas, including a lot of the greenhouses where they grow all the roses.

Our first stop was this little touristy rest area with a nice view.

Then this very large market selling most anything, and of course a lot of touristy kind of stuff.

Lots of beautiful colors

Cute dolls and toys

Spices

Lots of food stuff for sale

beads, beads, beads!

Beans and corn

It was really fun to see all the different things… and the colors! Here’s a slideshow!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

A panorama I made (kind of crudely made) from the balcony at the Basilica in Old Quito. Pics from Old Quito to come, but I’m moving tomorrow and am a little tired from all the packing and errand running :) Although Quito was not as “safe” as an American city, I was impressed at how nice it was. Compared to some of the other places I’ve been (not many, but some) it was fairly clean and well constructed. :)

The next day we went to Pasochoa nature reserve – another place to take a hike! Our guide warned us this one would be much more strenuous than the previous one. The trip was a little bit shorter, only about an hour away. This was also off the beaten track, so the final road was dirt/rock and pretty bumpy. Fun though!

Pasochoa is on the side of a crater of a volcano that erupted long ago. This whole area is in the Andes. Where I am is very flat – and even where I grew up there were just soft rolling hills, so being near these beautiful majestic mountains was amazing!

There were many farms in the area with dairy cows. These cows were walking along side us at one point in the trail.

The hike started out very nice, not too bad. Soon though it began to get pretty steep!! This is what our guide had warned us about! I was huffing and puffing – it was hard to get enough air, maybe due to the elevation, maybe cause I was really out of shape ? At one point the guide told me to have some water and I didn’t want to stop breathing to just get a drink! My mom decided to take a rest since it was pretty strenuous, and then the guide and I continued. He suggested we hike for a bit more and then go to Old Town in Quito instead. I thought I could continue on further – but I was so out of breath, and my heart was racing like I’ve never felt. I thought it was going to bust out of my chest!!! Anyways, so we cut the hike short, but it was fun. I can see why athletes do altitude training!

Beautiful plants

Such a beautiful place no?