GALAPAGOS, EQUADOR

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We are in Lima Peru in a hotel, waiting for our car ride back to the ship, that is in Callao, about 20 minutes from here.  We got here last night after spending most of yesterday flying here.  Well, actually we spent more time waiting to fly than flying.  Well, that is how it always is with planes. 

About the Galapagos.  The best part is not that the animals are different here than anywhere else on the planet.  That is really cool, but the guides did not do a great job of explaining that.  Luckily, we all know somethin about survival of the fittest.  The best part is that the animals, all of them, including the birds, don´t even notice that we are there.  Best example, I am walking along a trail and 2 birds land right where my next step would be.  They are arguing but they just land, and I must stop so I don´t step on them.  They just expect that to happen, so they ignore me.  I stood and waited for them to finish and fly away.  Then I continued.  (no picture of course)  It is like that with all the animals.  If  a sea lion or crab or iguana was somewhere, they expected us to go around them.  And we did. 

That was the best part.  Because of that we were able to walk up to a nursing sea lion and watch.  The sea lions walked right up to us.  They had a wonderful people zoo to look at every time a boat came in.  But they really didn´t care that much.  I guess they have seen lots of people.  Some of them would walk right up to us and stare.  Scared a lady sitting on the beach looking out at sea, when an adult sea lion (no small thing) put her face right up to the womans.  To her credit, she did not scream, but she sure did jump, which is hard to do when your sitting :)

About the boat.  We spent 3 nights on the Galapagos Explorer II.  She holds around 100 people.  Luckily, I got sea sick pills from the Amsterdam, because I lived off of them.  I took one every 6 hours, religiously.  There was a lot of rocking and rolling going on.  Good news is the pills worked.

So, what did we see?  We saw sea lions, marine iguanas, land iguanas, Sally Lightfoot crabs (red etched shells with bright blue legs), blue footed boobies, masked boobies with chicks, albatrosses, hawks, mockingbirds, sharks scaring fish enough to jump out of the water, turtles making more turtles, too many different kinds of finches to mention, (lots of birds).  We even saw a frigate bird attacking a boobie nest to get a chick and being repelled by the parent birds.  Oh, we also saw Orcas, or Killer Whales, which is unusual for this time of year.  They must have been after the sea lion cubs.  Luckily, we did not see an Orca catch one.

Duane went snorkelling.  Arleen did not, since she had a bad experience with snorkelling in waves and getting sea sick.  She needs to get some good experiences before she is willing to go out to sea.  But after Duane´s experience, she is going to make an extra effort.  Duane saw lots of reef fish and several different coral starting to form.  He even had a ´´dance´´ with a sea lion, as they checked each other out.  Wow.  Great fun.

While Duane was dancing, Arleen was watching a sea lion cub playing with a land lizard.  He was chasing the lizard.  Now, of course he didn´t get near catching him, but he kept at it.  He also tossed around a stick.  It was delightful to watch.  We also saw a masked boobie doing the mating dance with a female.  On his way to his lady love, he hit Arleen with his wing.  It was not a light brush of feathers, but more of a whack.  That was a surprise.  It was interesting to see the pair of boobies picking up rocks and twigs to show the other.  This is a mating ritual done by birds that make nests.  Only, the boobies don´t build nests.  So this is left in their genes from genetic memory.

Well, we are going to spend the next couple of days resting.  We started this last adventure by getting up before 4am.  Then we travelled 4 hours on muddy, bumpy, busy dirt roads.  After getting on the ship we were awakened every morning about 6am with an announcement.  Since dinner did not happen until 8pm, our day did not end until at eariest 11pm.  Neither of us is very awake right now.

When we get time on the ship, after we download our cameras, we will post pictures.