2 Galapagos

28th August - 10th September

Getting up close and personal with the friendly inhabitants of North Seymour island. This little pup wasn’t shy about posing for us...and what a cutie he is too!

We did a Cruise of 5 days 4 nights on a boat called Eden. Our itinerary included Seymour Island, Santa Fe, Floreana ,Espanola. The landings and relatively naturalistic walking excursions were accompanied with snorkelling and several dives. On the Islands the big attractions were the sea lions colonies, the marine and land iguanas and the wonderful bird life. The most spotted between birds were: blue footed boobies, pelicans, frigate birds, albatross and penguins.

During snorkelling and diving were spotted: Galapagos sharks, hammerheads, black and white tip sharks, green turtles, manta rays, eagle rays and we also had the possibility to swim with sea lions (pups nibbling on our fins).

After the cruise we stayed for another 10 days mainly on Santa Cruz Island where we visited the Charles Darwin Research Centre and we went to see the tortoises in their natural habitat. We stayed 3 days in Isabella (reaching the Island mean a 3 hours rough journey by local boat (-Capitan Freud was our destiny-).

We visited one of the world’s biggest calderas on horse back: the Sierra Negra Volcano. Our guide showed us many marvellous natural rock formations and the Pele’s hairs (something like a stone hair which formation is due to the particular fluidity of the lava).

We visited the local tortoise breeding centre (where oops we stumbled upon 2 tortoises making love) and some small islands where in natural channels white tip sharks lay on the sand of the bottom and can breathe without swimming thanks to the mild current.