Aymi’s Adventures

Me and my Boobies!! 

I am so glad I decided to do this, even though it cost me well over a months budget just for a week, it was well worth it, the highlight of my travels so far.  To say it is a nature lovers paradise is an understatement, it is just PARADISE.

The Samba boat was fab, the crew were really friendy and looked after us well, cooking us three 5* meals a day and two snacks a day, all presented beautifully.  Maurice our tour guide was so knowledgeable and passionate on both the history of the Islands and the animals.  The other people on the boat were really friendly and a pleasure to spend time with, Bell was my Baileys drinking partner, Christian my cards partner & Phil my photo partner.  There was not a thing I could fault. 

A little over four million years ago there was open ocean where the Galapagos Islands now lie, on the equator some 600 miles west of Ecuador. But submarine volcanic activity slowly built up the string of islands that Darwin visited in 1835.  No doubt they are much different now than they were then, although i’m sure the experiences were just as fantastic.  To find out how the plants initially begin to grow, each new thing bringing something else with it, to hear and see how the animals have adapted themselves to their new circumstances in order to survive, sometimes the adaptation being so great that it actually creates a new species.  It really is the best education in evolution I have ever had. 

To walk amongst sealions and marine iguanas, having to be careful not to step on them, see hundreds of birds flying overhead in the bright blue cloudless sky, to swim with sealions, penguins, turtles and sharks – all at once, are the most amazing feelings ever. 

I was sat on the beach one morning when a sealion came ambling over to me, sniffed my back so I could feel her whiskers tickling me and then carried on to the sea, not something that happens on any old beach!  Snorkelling and seeing a penguin feeding off the tiny fish just a meter or so away and being able to float and watch it for at least 5 minutes before it swam off to find its desert.  Chasing white tip reef sharks through the oceans warm and cold currents without crashing into the hundreds of undersea craters.  Being so close to seaturtles you could make out every marking on them, including the alge growing on their backs, you could have reached out and touched their shells.  Seeing blue footed boobies sat on their nests and eggs & even their chicks and still only being a meter away.  I could go on forever, the experiences were never ending.  Unfortunately the trip was.  I was not looking forward to leaving my newfound paradise – especially to go back to Guyaquill!

Goodbye Galapagos!