The majestic and amazing creation of evolution - Las Islas Galapogos.

 Tuesday 13th of November 2012 to Wednesday 20th of November 2012


What can I say about the Galapagos islands???????


They are the single most amazing place I think I have ever been to
The water was crystal clear
The air was fresh and salty
Birds of all types, shapes and sizes
Sea lions that swam and played while you snorkeled
Iguanas that could could swim
Fish of all colours of the rainbow only meters from your face
Turtles that curiously looked at you and swam next to you
Sea cucumbers that squirted when taken out of the water
Starfish that were prickly, soft and as big as a dinner plate 
Coral reefs with fluro sea anemones and urchins
Lave floes that rolled for kilometers and kilometers 
Tortoises that weighed twice as much as a person and live longer than 160 years 
Underwater caves full of fish that you could swim through......

These are only some of the things which we saw and did while we cruised the Galapagos islands for 8 days and 7 nights in a tiny boat that was at the mercy of the temperamental seas of the Pacific ocean. We snorkeled every day, twice!!!!
We landed on beaches full of sea lion (lobo marino in Spanish)  colonies and saw mother sea lions that had given birth only hours before and watched their pups take their first drinks of milk.
We watched schools of King angel fish swimming around our boat and sharks swimming around them.
We watched amazing sun sets over the ocean and watched the stars and moon come up
We looked at incandescent  phyto-plankton when it was dark.

A map of the main Galapagos Islands......

ENJOY THE PHOTOS, THERE WERE MORE BUT OUR CAMERA WAS STOLEN!!!!!!

A Galapagos pelican

A black sea turtle

The pelicans and the turtle were hunting for fish in this cave

Ghost crabs, they are EVERYWHERE!

A juvenile sea lion

Mother and pup, the pup is only about 1-2 days old

Getting up close and personal with a juvenile on a beach colony

It's such a hard life, eating and sleeping all day......

A male and female red footed booby. They have just come back from the ocean
looking for fish for their young

Frigate birds following our boat

A Yellow Galapagos Warbler, even when the close up the birds are so tiny

Our tiny boat when compared to the ships that plow the waves, this one
can take only 16 people, the bigger one 120+

Sergeant fish swimming around our boat

A shark looking for an easy meal!

A lucky bird contemplating a feed of fish and joining the shark

A male Galapagos land iguana, distinctive by it's yellow face and lower body

The same 'little' fella, these iguanas grow to 1 meter in length

A curious little pup, maybe 2 or 3 weeks old

A female Galapagos land iguana eating a prickly pear

A juvenile Galapagos night gull, the only sea gull in the world that hunts it's prey at night

A lil' bub!!!!!!

A female Galapagos land iguana

One of the many islands we visited

Male and female land iguanas squaring off for a prickly pear

The winner, with a devout fan, one of the many Galapagos lizard of many species

A pelican, Galapagos land iguana and a night gull

This is a Red Billed Tropic Bird, nesting in the rocks.

Nazca Booby flying in from catching his dinner

 A frigate bird, they steal food from other birds

High five!!!!

Attention on deck, the 'capitan' is on the watch

The capitan and his officers

Why swim when you can sail a boat???

Getting some air

Sun baking on the sand, so hard!!!!

' Maybe if I close my eyes, they'll go away'

Two of the luxury cruisers, a ticket on one of these costs $8,000 for 8 days

Mother and baby

Alpha Male sea line going for a wash after rolling in the sand

Another curious little pup

A male alpha sea line keeping watch over his harem!

Kisses for the baby

More ghost crabs

Up real close with a pup, it didn't mind one bit we were so close

Cleaning her little fella

'Who you lookin' at???'

The vertebrae of a long dead whale 

Hanging at the beach with friends, Galapagos marine iguanas taking advantage of the sun

Galapagos marine iguanas

Marine iguana

Marine iguana

Marine iguana

Lying in bed

Catching up on some zzzzzz'z

Another trying to

'Great success'

A conch shell at sunset

A pup with it's friend

Probably the most interesting thing for me was seeing the tiny little birds that make the Galapagos islands so famous and rewarding to go to, the minuscule Darwinian  Finch. We learnt the difference about the finches while we were on our tour, where the different ones live, in relation to the specific islands out of the 70 different islands that there are, how they live and the why they have the different beaks that they do. Here is some simple information that you can easily get if you go on a tour, or, like I just did now, off the internet

• Darwin's finches (also known as the Galapagos Finches or as Geospizinae) are 13 or 14 separate combinatory species of Passerine birds (related to American Emberizidae or Tanagers rather than European finches) related to a group that Charles Darwin collected on the Galapagos Islands during the voyage of the Beagle.
• Thirteen reside on the Galapagos Islands and one on Cocos Island.
• The birds are all about the same size (10–20 cm).
•  The most important differences between species are in the size and shape of their beaks, and the beaks are highly adapted to different food sources.
• The birds are all brownish or black

There are also many different sub-species of each one of these finches, as they continue to evolve as they have done for hundreds of thousands of years. The most interesting type of them all, which was my favourite, was the 'vampire finch'. This little bird is a type of short beaked ground finch, and has adapted through the years and ended up by surviving through the drinking of the blood of the many Blue footed boobies and Nazca boobies that are also only found in the Galapagos area. They also eat nectar from the prickly pears of cactus's and seeds and insects.  

One of 'Darwin's finches', looking for food.
 I'm not too sure what type this one was.

A Darwin finch with excellent balance

This bird let me follow and watch it for about 10 minutes 

There were 100's of these birds, and every one was brilliant to look at

I don't have many photos of these birds, only a few, but to see them close up is amazing, and you really can see the differences in their beaks, their different colours and sizes in the birds.

The same is with the amazing giant tortoises. They have evolved through thousands of years to be different species and specific to certain islands in the chain. To see them up close in their habitats and lands is breath taking, and you can't help but feel so small in the world, and tiny and insignificant when compared to the other types of life living on this planet.

Completely blown away at the size of these creatures,
this was the first tortoise I encountered

Brenna and her new 'biggest' and best friend

HOLA!!!!!

This tortoise is probably 100 years old or more!!!!!!

Having a 'mud bath' in the literal sense

We did so much more!!!!!!
It's too hard to explain ALL of what we did, but I can tell you one thing for certainty, it was the most incredible experience of my life!!!!!!!

James.............