Click here to view the full album of photos from July 17: http://picasaweb.google.com/jbartucz/20100717?feat=directlink
Bed
We woke up at 6:45 to get ready for our trip to the Galapagos. I felt some minor some gastro issues (uh oh, was it the shrimp?). We tried to go downstairs for breakfast, but a German tour group had just arrived in front of us. There were almost no supplies left and the poor waiter looked like he was about to quit. After that surreal experience, we went back up to our room to finishing getting ready and got a ride to the airport from an INSANE hotel porter. I mean, I lived in New York for 5 years and never had a worse cab ride. The trip itinerary we were given told us to wait at the ticket desk to meet a representative from the tour company. After waiting around for 20 minutes, we tried calling both emergency numbers to no avail. Starting to panic, we went to check in ourselves and ran into our cruise representative. At this point, I started to feel quite a bit worse and wished that I had not checked the Pepto-Bismol in with the luggage.
Security
Once we were on the plane, we took off towards the Galapagos, stopping briefly in Guayaquil. When one arrives in the Galapagos, one is supposed to pay the $100 / person National Park entry fee. Ours was pre-paid by our tour company, but since we neither had $200 nor knew how to say “pre-paid” in Spanish, there were a few more moments of panic. They take their security very seriously.
Athala
Once that was all sorted out, we met our guide and some of the other cruise passengers and took a bus and “Panga” to the ship. The “Panga” is a large inflatable raft similar to a Zodiac which seats about 10 people and is what we would be using to visit all of the islands. The ship Athala is an eight-bedroom catamaran with a 10-person crew: our naturalist “Javier”, the captain, first and second mates, cabin boy, chef, assistant chef, engineer, and two cruise representatives, who took on various duties.
Bartholome
We immediately set out for our first adventure. After sailing for about 20 minutes, we stopped to snorkel around Bartholome Island. Everyone was wearing wetsuits as the water is about 50 degrees. We were very lucky on this first day as we saw starfish, several eagle rays and other types of rays, a couple of sharks, sea turtles and a sea-lion. The water was quite clear, so I decided to try the video-camera on the next snorkle.
To the lighthouse
After coming back on board and warming up with some hot-chocolate, we had 3 minutes to change for a sunset hike up one of the highest walking paths on the Galapagos Islands. We took many pictures as we climbed up to the lighthouse and Javier gave us some introductory information about the formation of the islands. We returned to the Athala just in time to change and get ready for dinner. I was still not feeling 100%, so I didn’t eat much, but the food was excellent none-the-less.
Panorama