As we drove in the bus from the little airport at Isla Baltra, it was hard to imagine seeing any animals at all, as the landscape was so arid and dry. But as the bus pulled up to the tiny dock to cross to Santa Cruz, the turquoise waters captivated us both and we knew then we were in a special place. A 10 min ferry followed by a longer 45 min bus journey eventually brought us to Puerto Ayora – the main town in the Galapagos on the island of Santa Cruz. During the 10 min walk to our hostel we encountered sealions, marine iguanas, Darwin’s finches and small lizards all at close range.
The fantastic hostel owner Marcos, gave us the lowdown on the islands and showed us his beautiful hostel that he and his brother had built themselves. The next day we spent the day visiting all the travel agencies to find out if we could find a last minute 4 or 5 day cruise. To our disappointment there was not much to choose from but eventually after some hard bargaining from Dan (with minimal success!) we chose a 1st class boat and remortgaged our houses!! 🙂
We had 2 more days before the boat left so we took the time to explore Santa Cruz, visiting the Darwin Centre, the German beach and our clear favourite – Tortuga Bay. An hour’s walk from town this was a beautiful long stretch of white sand which curved round to form a sheltered bay in which you could swim. We shared the beach with big groups of marine iguanas and a pair of pelicans fishing for over an hour right in front of us. We were also lucky to see a large group of turtles bobbing up and down in the choppy waters which was wonderful.
There was a small fisherman’s market in town and you could tell whenever fresh fish was in as the pelicans gathered in numbers! This also attracted a single female sea lion who waited patiently for scraps. It was fascinating as the fishermen treated her almost like a pet dog and she acted like one – they would feed her leftover fish and if she got too close they would scold her and tell her to get down
Each evening we wandered down to the pier where you were guaranteed to find sea lions asleep on the benches a few feet from tourists and could peer down into the clear water and see fish, crabs, rays and baby black tipped reef sharks.
All this and we hadn’t even left Puerto Ayora! This made me incredibly excited about what we might see on the next stage of our adventure – our Galapagos cruise!
Tiredbuthappytravels 