An evening in Santa Cruz

As usual by evening we are STARVING and exhausted! We have swum from the boat and and yet once more the crew have donned their whites and William has come up with a new cocktail! We have 3 Americans who are on vacation from studying at Uni. A couple Eric and Anita from Canada. She is a photographer and Eric works in Events coordination and has just finished working on the Paralympics.

Katrina owns a banana factory near in Loyola in southern Ecuador and Jorgen was a manager of one of her factories in Germany. So a really interesting bunch of people... lots of interesting discussions as you could imagine.

We decided to go into Santa Cruz for the evening, what fun! The whole town was out eating ice creams and families squealed with delight as the 'bug" towed carriages around town. Loved it.

Of course sea lions snored lazily around town!

New people on Archipel II

Seemed strange to be off walking with a new group on Santa Cruz. BUT it was a fantastic walk, lots of frigate birds nesting, boobies, iguanas and albatross. What was the really amazing thing is that they just didn't move as you walked by... incredible. They just did their thing and you did yours!

Boy those tortoises are BIG

Our final morning with the first group is spent in the Highlands, clad in wellington boots watching the huge tortoises and of course poor old lonesome George! Just can't get over how big everything is.

Anna and Ben head off to catch the plane back to England while we head off back for lunch and to meet the new group!

Farewells

It is our final night with the first group, we have had a fantastic 5 days and hope to catch up with Katy in the jungle next week and maybe Ben and Anna in Uk... Who knows, fun farewell drinks with the crew and LOTS of angst about tipping! Oh my god I HATE tipping!

A final thrill was standing out on the front of the boat, wind ripping through our hair, all highly illegal I'm sure but great fun!

whiteboard has a new meaning!

Each day we have a briefing before dinner and in the morning we check out the whiteboard to see what is planned for the day and what we might see... guess what we were never disappointed!

As usual the day is so varied, we go out into the dinghies to watch penguins and marine lizards ... a highlight is seeing the sting rays in the shark channel

Oh my goodness, those tortoises are quite something!

isabella

So to the largest island, Isabella, we head off in a Chiva- the local bus service up, up and across lava strewn countryside, a really weird vista. The island is one of the most volcanically active places on earth - 2009 was the last eruption. For us though it was an incredible journey where we passed amazing scenes of flamingos, tortoises, wandering across the road... at one stage so many had wandered, that Mauricio had to hop out and move one off the road so we could make some sort of progress!

I'm so bad at blogging

I know, I know, I am so far behind with uploading my blog.... since my last posting we have been to the jungle, the Andes, Sao Paulo, Rio, Salvadore and Iguacu Falls!

We are now in Europe, a few wonderful days in Barcelona, a transit through Rome and we now have 5 days in Florence before setting off on our Tuscany walk. Such a wonderful trip we are so lucky.

Love to hear from you, it is always such a thrill when I open the inbox (on the rare occasions we can connect) and yeehah! there are messages.

Hope you are surviving the weather in Oz and UK.

Write soon

Julie