Another early start – breakfast then off to the airport about 7.30 ‘sh.
It seamed very early for my flight – but I think it was more for my driver and guide to get an early start driving back to Quito. They where not going back the way we had just come – thru the mountains. They were going back along the coastal plains and then up to Quito from the plains. I think they said this was about 9 hours drive.
Anyway – I was well in time for my flight at 10.40am. The plane was quite full – and I thought – this is funny – cause I did not see all these people waiting at gate 4. Turns out the plane had come from Quito and only stopped to pick up the Guayaquil passengers. I had seat 6A – which meant that the couple in B & C had to let me in. Turns out that were coming on the Beluga too – so we had 2 hours to get to know each other.
The Galapagos Islands are 1000 km off the coast of Ecuador and are part of Ecuador.
We were meet by our Guide at the Baltra airport and all our bags were loaded onto a truck and we were loaded onto a bus for a short ride to the ferry.
Baltra is a small island that was a Airforce base and is now the main connection with the Main land. To get to Santa Cruz island we all piled into a ferry boat ( and our luggage was piled on the top of the boat.) and off on a short crossing .
On Santa Cruz we collected our luggage and it was loaded onto another pickup truck and we onto another bus. ( This bus was for just the Beluga passengers – while the airport bus and ferry was public). Off we went to travel across or is it down the island to Puerto Ayora.
We have lunch on a farm – not sure what they farmed BUT we saw our first Giant Tortoises – lots of them – on the farm – on the road – everywhere and you can see me with one of them in the photo gallery.
In town, we visited the Charles Darwin Research Centre – and then walked back into town and where to all meet up at the wharf. 12000 steps and we were there and taken out to the Beluga by little rubber boats called Panga’s. Cabins were allocated and I got cabin 8 by my self. On the boat cabins 1 – 5 were below deck and had little portholes – Cabins 6 – 7 were off the dinning area and had lovely big windows on the side and back of the boat – and my cabin was on the top deck with a nice big window. I did not close the blinds as once it was night – there was no light to shine in to keep me awake.
Dinner was serviced at 7.00pm and at 8.00 pm we had a safety talk and run down of what we were doing on Day 2. ( This was the same each night)
At this stage we had 13 passengers on board – a good mix of countries – NZ, Australia, UK, USA and Sweden ( Johan and Eva were the couple with me on the plane)
During the night – the boat travelled to Floreana Island. I did fall off to sleep before we arrived but was awake when we arrived at 6.00am.