THIS PLACE IS AMAZING!!!
I cannot stress enough how much we loved this bit, so much better than we expected. We arrived by Tame, with a lovely meal on the plane - salad is not something we have risked much since being out here so a lovely treat. We arrived at Baltra on the main Island - Santa Cruz. Straight away you notice the Finches are super confident and all over the place, including you.
We caught the crossing boat (with luggage on the roof) to the mainland, passing sealions on route then found a hotel and cruise trip. We opted for a day trip to San Cristobel before getting on the Cruise, but the journey (2hr) by speed boat was even worse than coming off the Andes. I along with 2 other passengers puked in a bunch of little black bags. Horrific!
We have snorkelled with stingrays, penguins (which are great fun to watch fish when they whizz under you), sealions (which are pretty big when they are trying to play with you under water), millions of fish (every colour), blue footed boobies, iguanas, little sharks and also we dived down to see the big ones sleeping (white fin sharks) in underwater caverns, huge turtles which we did touch but probably shouldn,t have done - they are not in the slightest bit bothered and carry on eating. We snorkelled behind a pack of Dolphins a few times, but they move so fast you can,t keep up with them for long.
Saw lots of birds on land, including Boobies, Cormarants, Hawks, Finches of course (even got a picture of one eating off Damian,s foot - again crisps are probably not encouraged as a food source but they would eat your dinner if you didn,t push them away...
Sealions are literally everywhere as are Iguanas. The orange ones are land iguana and the black ones sea iguana. I really liked the red and blue crabs on all the rocks when snorkelling.
Finally, on the last day after the cruise we went to one of the many reserves and saw ENORMOUS tortoises. There were shells in the restaurant area so had to get in and check it out. They weighed up to 250kg for a big one and can survive without food or water for 1year, which explains why the sailors took them on board for the journey home. The pahoihoi lava was cool too and we went through a massive lava tunnel at the reserve as well.
Our ship was called Yolita and comes highly recommended if you fancy it, but best to book on arrival as most people pay a fortune for the experience.
