Galápagos is the home of giant turtles, marine iguanas, sea lions, birds and a rich underwater world. We thought that we’d need to take several tours or get to specific places to see the wildlife – but we were definitely wrong! The marine iguanas and sea lions rule the islands here and you can literally find them everywhere alongside pelicans, countless other birds and smaller reptiles. It seems like humans just arrived here yesterday – amazing!

Our 3.5 weeks stay brought us to 3 of the 4 inhabited islands and some smaller ones that we visited during daytrips. Apart from exploring the flora and fauna on land, we went diving multiple times to join the famous hammerhead sharks in the deep blue.

Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz is the island with the biggest city Puerto Ayora and the place where most tourists arrive. It is a good starting point for many daytours and offers several good dive spots. Furthermore, it is the best location to get to San Cristóbal or Isla Isabela by ferry, as they almost all go from here. We had 12 days to discover the whole island and visited the beautiful beaches like Tortuga Bay, Garrapatero or Playa de la Estación, the Darwin Reserach Center with the turtle breeding facility as well as the upper part of the island to see the giant turtles and volcano craters. Our daytours brought us to Seymour North to spot the bluefooted boobies, frigate birds and land iguanas and to Pinzón Island, a nice snorkeling spot to swim with small sharks and sea lions. A smaller rock near Pinzón was also the place, where Brian finally made a good catch – he fished a big yellow fin tuna.

 

Tortuga Bay

 

Garrapatero

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bluefooted booby

Land iguana

Frigate bird

 

Lava Tunnel

 

 

Our 3 diving tours in Santa Cruz took us to Seymour, Daphne, Mosquera and the Gordon Rocks (“the washing machine”), one of the best places to see big schools of hammerhead sharks due to the currents. We were lucky and the sea was not to rough that day. Unfortunately, this also meant that the visibility was not the best, but nevertheless we saw a big school of hammerheads passing by.

 

 

 

Isla Isabela

We hoped on the ferry to Isla Isabela and were surprised how different each island is. Isabela is the biggest island but the population here is significantly smaller. It’s characterized by its seahorse shape, a beautiful endless beach and one of the most active volcanos in Galápagos. The seahorse shape of the island is no coincidence as it is one of the few places where you can actually find seahorses in the reefs. It was also the only place, where we saw wild flamingos and penguins. We stayed fo 8 days as well and visited the whole island including the underwater lava tunnels, the active volcano, the turtle breeding center and Isla Tortuga for a nice dive with huge mantas and hammerheads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

San Cristóbal

The third island on our plan was San Cristóbal, by far the one with the most sea lions we saw. They are all over the place and it is lovely to just watch them at the beach, especially the cute cubs they have during this season. Apart from nice beaches and a very informative Interpretation Center, the island is known for two special places: Kicker Rock and Punta Pitt. We took a diving tour to both of them to see more sharks and to get the chance to spot one of the rare redfooted boobies that live here.

 

 

 

Kicker Rock

 

 

Redfooted booby

Bluefooted booby

We just arrived at our last destination on the list: Rio de Janeiro…

Awesome people we met

During our stay in Galápagos we met 3 awesome couples: Alessandra & Andrea, Flavia & Fabian and Doris & Dustin. Alessandra and Andrea are from Italy and currently live in London, Flavia and Fabian are from the Suisse capital Bern and Doris & Dustin are American with their current home in Hongkong. We had several nice days, dinners and drinks together and enjoyed the great company! We hope that Alessandra & Andrea and Doris & Dustin are having a blast on their further trips through South America and we are looking forward to have some delicious Caipirinhas with the two world travelers Flavia & Fabian in Rio 🙂