Galapagos Islands

No problem catching my early flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands. The views from the plane as we left Guayaquil were great. It was a wide verdant delta with the river winding around in all directions. We saw some more tuna boats working just off the coast as we started to climb. They had the whole flotilla with planes, helicopters and lots of boats to find and corral the fish. The flight was fairly long but the views as we came over the group of islands and did our approach to the airport were worth the wait. The first land we saw near the airport, as we touched down on the tarmack, was very arid and rocky with lots of cacti and succulent type plants. The Cacti were huge almost like trees. The landing was fine but the post landing long lines, searches of our luggage and persons was kind of invasive. The paperwork was also needlessly long and involved. They are islands! Do they think they couldn't find somebody if they got past the customs and immigration officials??? We also had to purchase $100 permits to be in the National Park. If you wanted to, you could get your passport stamped but that was yet another line to wait in after all the other long lines. A couple of hours after landing we were loaded on buses or in cars and taxis for the ride to Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz Island where my hotel was.

My guide met me at the airport and helped me through all the hassles at the terminal. She was a nice friendly helpful woman who spoke perfect English. We took her car all the way to the hotel as we chatted about the plans we had for my visit. I checked in and had about an hour off before we walked over to the Charles Darwin Research Station. We saw Lonesome George at the Darwin Station. He is the sole remaining member of his species of tortoise. I hate to say it but he looked like he was pretty elderly so he won't be doing any more breeding. We saw lots of other tortoises of various species from the different islands. Several of them were endangered species as well. There were also the iguanas from both land and sea to check out including a rare pink species. I enjoyed my afternoon at the station.

I met another single woman at the Darwin Station and we went to dinner after the station tour. We were both at the same hotel which was all inclusive so we ate in the restaurant there. It was fun talking to her about her preconceptions of the Galapagos and her first impressions so far. She was pissed off that everything was so regulated. She wanted to go off and hike alone and experience the wildlife like that but it was illegal to be in the park without a guide so she was out of luck. Some of the other tourists were like Nazi police yelling at anyone who stepped out of the yellow or white lines where you were allowed to walk within. I could see yelling at stupid people but only if the transgressors were walking over things and trampling them or something else bad but most of the yelling was at people who just mis-stepped momentarily because they were looking around at the sights. I did not like the tension from that attitude either as I saw the same thing.

After dinner we swam in the pool and had a few beers with the other guests. It was a very pleasant evening with good people. I called it a night early and went up to my room to watch some tv and get some sleep because the next day had lots of hiking in the plan and that can be hard for me with my mobility problems.