ISABELLA: The Galapagos Islands

We have just arrived back from 8 days on the Amigo 1 yacht sailing around the Galapagos Islands. The Amigo 1 was a budget yacht and we were initially pleasantly surprised by the boat and the staff. Visiting the Galapagos Islands is a fabulous experience and we were very privileged to be able to do it. Highlights of the trip generally revolved around our snorkeling expeditions. Adrienne was nervous throughout these due to sightings of sharks but in the end managed to swim with a number of them. We swam with turtles, seals, penguins, white tip sharks, stingrays, and a number of different fish which our guide insisted on grouping into one name of colourfish.

We hope to get some pictures of the snorkeling from the underwater camera in a few weeks time. While on the dingy or panga as the locals called it, we also saw bull sharks and mantarays. Needless to say we didn’t intentionally get in the water with the bull sharks but on the first day the crew convinced us to swim around the boat and we were told later by other passengers that they had seen a 3m shark in the water with us.

We visited 5 islands in total and saw many species of birds, tortoises, lizards, iguanas and other insects. The blue footed boobie was a favourite, but we resisted buying the traditional t-shirt that everyone else seemed to have which had- I love boobies -written on it!

Unfortunately we had a bad experience with our guide who on mothers day, decided it would be a great idea if he got seriously drunk. At first it was funny but after the third bottle of vodka and him passing out at 10.30 in the morning we got very annoyed. It didn’t effect our tour too much after the sunday, and we managed to get some refund back for our wasted day. We were not happy at the time! If you want to see the video we took then follow the link below - not for young eyes and you have to give it a few minutes before the action starts!

Victor the Drunken Guide Youtube Video

We are off to the jungle now, we hope everyone is well!