In search for lonesome George

We had 5 days to spend in Guyaguil before D-day when there started to be some excitement in the air! What was going to happen on the 13th of October? The opening of a new Dunkin Donut store? No! Mickus’s parents were coming to visit. After a happy reunion and a few days of reacclimatizing in Guyaguil we all set out for the big adventure; conquering the Galapagos. We had booked a 5 day first-class cruise around the southern islands and our excitement was sky high as our plane touched Galapagos soil. Finally we were here to witness firsthand the endemic species that influenced Charles Darwin to his theory of evolution by natural selection.

The cruise was going to take us to 5 different islands in the southern archipelago. Each island has its own unique wildlife, which we would visit during the day and travel to another island during the night. The five islands that we were going to visit were San Cristobal, Espanola, Floreana, Isabela and Santa Cruz.

Rather than to rant about every step we took and all the lizards we saw lets rather marvel at the pictures as no words can give justice to the beauty of the islands and the feeling of wondering around with the fearless beasts that inhabit them. But before doing this there’s one story that needs to be told that unfortunately would lay its 300kg large dark shadow over the coming weeks....

So there we were on an utterly beautiful beach on the island of Espanola. We had woken up a couple of hours earlier in our cabins to our first morning on Galapagos. After having breakfast and chitchatted about our first activity, which was to be snorkelling from a beach, the dingy dropped us off on the beach a couple of hundred meters form the boat. At the beach there were a lot of sea lionesses and male sea lions watching their harems. They didn’t seem to be bothered by us as we were getting ready to go snorkelling. So there I was waist deep in the water sorting out the snorkelling gear, thinking how life surely can’t get any better than this...when from the corner of my eyes I saw something dark coming towards me, and I just had time to think Who is this playful little critter coming so close? When WACK the mother fucking son of a cockless goat bites me in my leg. I stumbled out of the water and at the same time the massive male sea lion was luckily heading in another direction. The bite didn’t look good; the pain was intense, blood was pouring out from the 4 sharp corner tooth marks. One of the bite marks looked rather nasty and it looked like it was deep enough to have touched the bone.

The monster that bit Mickus

The guide then came over and said one should be a bit careful about the male sea lions as they tend to protect their harem and I had been a serious threat to his 30+ foxy wives! He couldn’t have told us this before entering the water!? Luckily the incident didn’t spoil our trip that much. By taking strong painkillers I was able to drag myself with the help of a cane around all the island activities and only missed some snorkelling. I also got to visit several so called ‘hospitals’ on different islands where they cleaned the wound. And they didn’t have the proper antibiotics so surprise surprise the leg got infected and turned red and swollen. But that we took care of once in Quito, where I stayed 4 days at the hospital getting the proper antibiotics.

Well now let us marble at the goofy looking creatures of Galapagos!

On one of the islands there was a mailbox in where you could put mail for someone you know. If you found a letter for somebody in you own country, you were supposed to take it to your country and deliver it. There were no letters to Finland...

Sharks

Lonesome George is the only one left from his species and hasn't mated with anyone for ages. Things were already looking really bad when suddenly a while before we came here he had finally mated with two girls of the closest species with him! So he is not lonesome anymore! He has two girlfriends now and hopefully soon lots of kids.

Albatross

Albatross baby

Blue footed boobie (one of the most famous ones)