Here goes!
Here is another pic from the fun buddies photo shoot that is pretty adorable. Ben is wearing my/Tom´s red fatal fury hat which is now floating peacefully in the Humbolt current between Isabella and Santa Cruz.
Speaking of these islands of which you have probably never heard, here is a map of our Galapageñian travels. We flew into Puerto Baqueirizo on San Cristobal which is a quiet, weird little town that is also the capital of the entire Galapagos. That is where we went spent most of our time and went to class at GAIAS, snorkeled everyday, hiked fun rocky trails, swam with sea lions and turtles, watched a cock fight, took in marvelous sunsets from cliffs, and star gazed from the tops of abandoned buildings. One of the places we snorkled was the same lagoon where Darwin first set foot on the galapagos.
From there we took a tiny boat named the Blue Fantasy, on a 6+ hour trip to the island of Isabella with a quick snorkel stop at floreana. One of the boats engines started screwing up early in the voyage (turned out there was a plastic bag caught in it) and so our fantasy began when the cabin began to develop a thick Blue haze of exhaust and carbon monoxide that persisted throughout the remainder of the trip. Aside from the noxious fumes tiggering the headache, and vomit controls of my body, the view was rather nice. Swarms of inch-long flying fish would glide within reach of the side of the boat, and there would always be a nice rainbow effect that would happen right before a deluge of water came crashing down upon my face.
Isabella was ravishingly gorgeous, and we took horses around the top of a volcano (that was where cute little Ben, who is on my back in the above picture, got some distinguising facial gashes when his Caballo Loco galloped his head straight into a tree-Poor guy). From there came another rocky, stinky boat trip to the popular tourist city of Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz. There we stayed at a crazy, Dr. Suess meets M.C. Escher hotel, and went on short, day long, boat tours to various other islands. Also visted the Charles Darwin Research Station, and got to see Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his kind, who i used to think was neat until i found out he was a curmudgeonly, old, murderer. On top of just refusing to mate with all the lovely ladies presented to him in attempts to continue his race, evil old lonesome george also managed to strangle one member of his harem to death. So now I don´t think i mind as much if the race of Jerk-Tortoises does go extinct.
The last part of our galapagos trip consisted of taking a short ferry to the island of Baltra where a converted US air force base provided our air travel back to Quito.
Quick note: the flight back to quito was the awesomest flight i have ever had. The entire plane was about half vacant, meaning that me and Azim got to run around having fun and dining like kings.
Here is Kicker Rock (in spanish it is know as something like ¨Leon Dormi¨or sleeping lion), the first place we visited on a day long boat tour that also went to an arcadian lagoon and to Islas Lobos. We jumped out of the boat and snorkeled through the channel and around the smaller rock twice. At this point the sea went down about 80 meters and there would be different layers of sharks and fish ever 2-3 meters. Diego, one of the big professors at USFQ, who also is in charge of most of GAIAS, and who was also an olympic swimmer, guided us through the channel and pointed out the various sharks, turtles, jellyfish, starfish, and bio-luminescent anemonoes.
Here we are at some beautiful lagoon where we stopped for lunch between snorkling kicker rock and Islas Lobos. There were many Titanic-esque shots taken from the end of this boat. The water near the boat was filled with cute little pufferfish, along with other fish after which the pelicans and boobies crashed into the water all around us.
