The Galapagos

Patrick has been out of his mind excited about going to the Galapagos ever since we started talking about this trip.

We were there about five days, and it was not even close to enough time. What an awesome place! I have 800 gazillion pictures of iguanas, sea lions, birds, tortoises and yes, even some blue-footed boobies! and that doesn't even take into account what we saw while diving!

Everywhere you turn, it's swarming with creatures. It's kind of weird because at first glance, it seems like a bunch of desert islands without any habitation, but once you get a little closer, you realize just how wrong you were.

On our first day, after getting off the plane and taking a water taxi to the island,


we checked in to our fabulous hotel, Galapagos Suites, (which we highly highly recommend, loved it!!) explored the town,














and headed out to the Charles Darwin Research center.


(oh yeah and also got our passports back. Note to self, the super expensive island entrance fee is cash only, and if you don't have $200 on you, there are no ATMs at the airport, so they take your passports hostage. Wha?? Yeah well at least they still let you in. Can't figure out the no ATM thing though).

The Darwin center is basically a animal sanctuary so we saw tons of Galapagos Tortoises








and Land Iguanas.





Oh yeah and cactuses.


They are everywhere! And look like trees which is interesting. Have you ever seen a cactus that looks like this?!


Day two meant diving! Our goal was to see hammerheads, and lots of them, so we planned our first day of diving at Gordon Rocks, a dive site famous for Hammerhead sitings.


Although I was still pretty congested from my cold, I popped a few Sudafed and we were on our way.

We had heard the ride could be a but rough, so we took some motion sickness pills, but we are both pretty good at boat rides so we weren't super concerned.

Let me interrupt my story to say that both Patrick and I are pretty good divers. We've had our fair share of tough dives, and while not hard-core we aren't usually woosie either. I have ear issues, but other than that we hold our own.

Anyways, back to the diving. I made the mistake of chatting with a fellow diver as we began the 1+ hr boat ride to the site. A few minutes in, I knew I was doomed. The water was SO rough, and I kept praying for her to stop talking so I could concentrate on not barfing. Too late. I lost it, then Patrick, then me again, then Patrick. We took turns at the side of the boat pretty much the whole ride out. By the time we got to the first site, things were not looking good.

We finally made it into the water, and started to descend but I could not get my ears to clear for the life of me. Usually it's tough, but I eventually get them to clear and catch up to the group, but this was 100x worse than usual. The currents were so strong, the water had poor visibility and I was doing everything I could to just stay calm. Thank goodness for a great dive master, who stayed with me until I finally got down. Once we were at about 80ft, the sea life started to pop out. Next thing you know, there is a school of 30 hammerheads, followed by 6 eagle rays, two sea turtles, and 6 white tip sharks.

Then you turn the other direction and there is a school of 30 more hammerheads!

It was seriously UNREAL. The dive flew by. Just absolutely breathtaking. Probably the coolest stuff I have ever seen. It was like screens just kept being pulled aside and more things would appear.

Everywhere you turned there were sea turtles, rays and sharks.

So, I started to think it was worth the seasick and ear issues. Invigorated and excited to get back on the boat to talk about everything we saw, we prepared to climb up the ladder and all of a sudden I felt a stinging on my neck. At first I just ignored it, stuff like that happens all the time and it's usually nbd. But then my chin was on fire! A jellyfish had latched on and was stinging me everywhere!

By the time I finally got back onto the boat, I was a mess. Emotionally drained and in tons of pain, I basically just had a meltdown. The worst part was knowing there was still another dive PLUS another hour or so wait until we got back in the water AND our 1+ hr ride back. I was sitting in the corner crying, Patrick was barfing over the side, and everyone else on the boat was trying to ignore the two pathetic creatures they had gotten stuck diving with.

Not our finest hours. In fact, I'm not really sure why I'm even telling the Internet this story! Although, looking back, it is pretty hilarious. This picture pretty much sums everything up. One barfer, one baby.

We sucked it up, did our second dive, and survived the boat ride home. Yes, the dive was cool, yes we saw tons of awesome stuff, but I'm still not sure if it was worth such a horrific day. At one point I had to talk myself down from swearing to never dive again. Looking at the pictures will help remind me it's worth it, I guess.

So we went to bed early that night, and woke up not super thrilled to be heading out on yet another boat, this time on an Island/Snorkle cruise. Turned out to be fine (fun even!); we bought some extra strength motion sickness meds and slept the whole way there. Plus it was a bigger boat so that also helped. Plazas was a really cool island. Tons of marine and land iguanas, birds and sea lions. Like I said before, when you first see the islands you think there is no way anything lives there and then you are blown away by what you see! So incredible.










































We were supposed to dive again on Thursday, but you couldn't pay me to get back on that boat. And Patrick wasn't so keen on it either. Throwing up 8 times and getting attacked by a jelly fish on the face will do it to ya, I guess. Wimps. So instead we hiked out to Tortuga bay, which was one of the most gorgeous beaches I have ever seen.


















Oh! And we even saw iguanas swimming in the ocean!


And took a bay cruise



to see more birds, iguanas and fish.


Blue footed booby!





Lovers cove



Look at all the iguanas! Crazy!!


We ended up at this swimming hole, called the Grietas which was gorgeous!


The food was mediocre for the most part, fairly overpriced tourist stuff,


but we found a street full of authentic Ecuadorian food and ended up eating our last two meals there.



The shrimp encocado was amazing and the Carne aponada was awesome! I guess you cant go wrong with shrimp in a butter/coconut sauce and chicken fried steak, but still! We also had at least one (or two) Magnum bars daily. And I read three books. Always a good recipe for a great trip.

We are excited to someday come back to the Galapagos, now that we've kind of figured out how to do it. We definitely need more time, and want to stay on another Island or two. Definitely put it on your list of places to go!