South America (Galapagos, Ecuador) Day 145 - 146: Yolita II - Floreana, Punto Cormorant, Devil's Crown, Post Office Bay, Sombrero Chino and Santiago Island

We'd travelled overnight to Punto Cormorant on Floreana island, and after a buffet breakfast we took a zodiac over to the island for a walk around. Our guide was Sarah who had been doing the job for 25 years, so knew her stuff. Unfortunately she seemed more interested in maintaining her appearance and keeping up-to-date with her phone than offering any sort of personality to proceedings. We'd arrive at a location towards the back of a group, only to find that she'd started talking as soon as the first person got there. Regardless, the beauty of the place more than eclipsed a mediocre guide. The sand sparkled with the volcanic material that had mixed with it, and pelicans and blue-footed boobies nested on the cliffs we passed by. Blue-footed boobies use their bright feet to dance and attract mates, and have wonderfully expressive faces. We also saw a Galapagos penguin, quite rare for the area.









Floreana is home to flamingos, and I never realised that their nests were built like sandcastles because they bend their knees in the opposite direction to us, so can't build nests like normal birds. Education! The shore on the opposite side of the point is home to nesting turtles. These only come out at night to lay eggs, but we saw the tracks they made up to the dunes. If they come across an obstacle such as a log on their way from the sea, they have to return to the water and try and find another path further up the beach to reach the dunes. As such, sometimes they can be still attempting to lay their eggs in the morning, and at that point they risk death from being dried out by the sun. Only one egg in a thousand will survive to hatch. Nature is pretty harsh out here. The juvenile sea lion we saw on the beach might disagree though, as it lay almost prone in the water and let the waves wash it ashore. It was pretty chilled out. After exploring the island, we took the zodiac out to Corona del Diablo (Devil's Crown) for some snorkelling. Yoconda had given us a wetsuit and snorkel gear which was actually in great condition, meaning that our time in the water was really comfortable. Gilly felt a little better too, and we were able to enjoy the crazily varied sea life. These included bumphead parrotfish, (which I can never not call "bumhead fish" after our time in Borneo where I misheard a travel agent...oh, the hilarity), angel fish, surgeon fish, and a group of three spotted eagle rays, one of whom had a stump where its stinger should have been. As fantastic as it was to see this all, it was topped soon after when I swam towards the entrance to the crown and a sea lion decided to join me, swimming past less than two metres away. Absolutely incredible.





We headed back to the Yolita for a lunch of avocado in thousand island dressing, followed by pork with mustard mash and a fruit salad. The morning, along with a restless night, had been exhausting. So when we decided to have a couple of hours nap after eating, we totally didn't hear the bell summoning us to the zodiac for the afternoon excursion. We got to the back of the boat ten minutes late, and the place had been abandoned by the group. Fortunately a couple of staff were on hand to call a boat back for us and take us to our third point on Floreana: Post Office Bay. Historically, this is where pirates used to leave messages in a barrel, which were picked up by other pirates who were heading in the same direction as the letter's recipient so they could drop it off. These days a variation has been created for tourists - you can leave a bunch of postcards behind, and travellers who live in or around the area of the recipient and who arrive after you can collect them and then go and drop them off when they get back home. It's a whimsical notion which I can totally get behind; Gilly found one for a person in South Ruislip where she went to sixth form college, so we took it with us to deliver on our return. It's highly possible that postcards can remain there for days, weeks, or even months without collection...It's entirely reliant on the visitors' provenance, and is all part of the fun. We left a few behind so it'll be interesting to see when they arrive!





After mailing duties, we took a trip down some lava tunnels. These were formed when the now extinct volcano on the island chucked out a load of lava which carved huge tubes into the rock, before cooling and eventually hardening. The tunnels were unsurprisingly dark and also slippery, thanks to a body of water that you could swim in further down (we didn't, paddling in it was cold enough), but it was big enough inside to fully stand, which makes you wonder exactly how much lava must have poured down there. More snorkelling in the beach followed after we resurfaced from the tunnel, and although the water was murky near the shore, we still managed to briefly see a couple of huge sea turtles swimming in the shallows. Unfortunately, Gilly's seasickness returned once we were back on the boat, and while I was able to happily munch through the tuna, pasta and broccoli and a chocolate mousse dessert, she could barely manage a soup starter. It may have been the anti-nausea tablets which have the potential to cause drowsiness, but she headed to bed and was flat out by the time I got to the room at about 7:30pm. I caught up with some blog and was asleep not long after, hoping that the extended nap would help Gilly feel better in the morning.

Luck was on our side - an extended rest made a massive difference, and Gilly was in much better shape the following day. Coincidentally, it was our eleven-year anniversary so we were hoping for a memorable day. We'd arrived at Sombrero Chino, so-called because its shape resembled a Chinese hat. The island is separated from Santiago by a channel, and is home to a small sea lion colony (like pretty much all of the islands in the Galapagos), and we saw a mother and calf on the sand almost immediately after disembarking. We saw some small marine iguanas, and followed a path over a solidified lava field. All of the islands on Galapagos are volcanic, but Sarah told us that only Isabela and Fernandina were still active, and there were other "hot spots" which could lead to the activation of smaller volcanoes. To be fair, it wasn't explained particularly well so my explanation could well be completely wrong. The snorkel around Santiago Island which followed was superb. Aside from a multitude of colourful fish, including parrotfish and neon blue juvenile damselfish, I caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral vision and the next thing I knew a penguin was speeding past me, its feet blurring like a propeller. They can swim up to 40km/hr, and it shows.











After garlic prawns, rice and veg and a laughable dessert of sliced banana with chocolate sauce on top, we arrived at Dragon Hill after lunch for more snorkelling, which offered up little but a few boxfish and a dive-bombing pelican trying to catch lunch. As the name suggests, there are dragons on the island. Well, OK, iguanas. But they're almost the same thing - the land iguanas are huge beasts with five-fingered claws that look like they're covered in gauntlets. The females test the soil with their tongue to find a place with the right temperature to dig a hole and lay their eggs. It seems to be a successful approach as there were loads dotted around, and some very close to our path.

I wished at times that I'd brought a camera with a huge zoom lens to fully capture the creatures, but on balance the weight, bulk, expense and hassle accompanying an SLR and associated lenses would not have been worth it. What would have been great, and what I'd recommend to anyone taking extended travel in future, would be to invest in a GoPro camera. It'll let you take photos and video underwater, it's light, sturdy, and worth the price. If and when we head off on our travels again, it'll be top of my list of equipment.

After snapping more iguanas than I could count and taking the obligatory group photo, we were back on board for a meagre dinner of hot beef with cold chips and veg followed by some tinned peaches. Given that the Yolita was sold as a first-class ship, the food had been distinctly average throughout. Thankfully, the islands and the things we'd seen so far didn't make us regret a minute of it. We headed up to the sun deck to watch the stars, before turning in for our final night.

South America (Galapagos, Ecuador) Day 144: Yolita II day 1 - Puerto Ayora

It seems we have a habit of catching flights at the very last minute. We got up at 7:30 aiming to leave at 9, but I'd not realised that the airport was almost an hour away and given our flight was 10:40, it left us very little margin of error for checking in. After a quick shower, Felix put pedal to metal and we screamed along the freeway. It was looking like we might have a comfortable window until we missed a turning and then got stuck in traffic. With forty minutes to go before the flight, we arrived at the airport, said hurried but very grateful goodbyes to Felix, and headed to the luggage drop only to find we had to go to another desk to pay a Galapagos tax we hadn't banked on. Forty dollars later, we were checked in and running to the gate via a hasty stop for extortionately priced water (we had to get used to paying $3 minimum for 500ml it seemed, water giving alcohol a run for its money per milliletre). Somehow, we'd made the flight.

Two hours late we touched down. More fees ensued, including the $100 per person park entry, and a ludicrous $10 return bus ticket which is apparently free for other airlines...not TAME though! At the airport we were met by Padi, a guy who our upcoming couchsurfing host Andrés had pointed in our direction. He was offering a tour through his company for a very attractive price for 15 days. A little too attractive, it seemed. After some prodding, we found out he worked for Iguana Tours who I'd heard nothing but bad things about on the internet. After asking where his office was, he became incredibly evasive saying that everyone in town knew him - bars, hotels, restaurants - like he was some sort of mafioso. Then he said he was rarely at the office and that we should communicate via WhatsApp. The final straw was when he couldn't tell us what the grade of the guide he supplied was. This is important: all guides in Galapagos are registered with the government and graded from 1 to 3, with the lowest being competent but inexperienced, and the highest being very experienced. First he said his guides change each day so he didn't know what grade we'd get, then the story changed and we were assured our guide would have at least thirty years' experience. At that point we politely told him it was time to catch the bus, and beat a hasty retreat. Then it was onto a ferry, then another bus, before finally arriving in Puerto Ayora.

What followed was one of the most crazily stressful periods of my entire travelling history, which I'm sure Gilly will attest to. We'd not booked anything in Galapagos at all: day trips, cruises, even accommodation had been left to the last minute. This was deliberate, since we'd read (and been told by people like Richard and Sara who'd experienced it first-hand) that you can make serious savings by showing up and being flexible. The hotel was easiest. We got off the transfer bus and a woman offered to show us a room nearby in Costa del Sol Suites which ticked all of our boxes for forty dollars, pretty much a bargain on the island. That done, it was food time. We found a cheap eatery on "restaurant street" for $5 for a huge plate, and wolfed down grilled fish, chicken and carbs. Then it was time to find a cruise. We'd originally planned to island hop ourselves, and while you can certainly visit some of them on day tours and stay there if you like (Isabela and Cristobal), the outlying islands are only reachable on longer cruises. We started with Mockingbird Tours, where a guy called Sergio bombarded us with more information than we could process, with ever-changing itineraries and prices which we were simply unable to follow.

You see, on each of the Galapagos islands there are only certain spaces for boats to visit each day so itineraries circulate between boats; one week a boat might visit the southern islands including Floreana and then the following week head north or west. As such, you are left to choose from whichever boats are going to the places you want to visit at any given time. Furthermore, there are three classes of boat - tourist superior, first class and luxury. The comfort levels and the price increase in a mutually inclusive manner, so if you have an itinerary in mind but don't want to shell out five grand, you may well have to change your plans. We visited a couple of other agencies including Moonrise (run by an efficient lady who was big on boat knowledge but small on itinerary detail) and an agency near Mockingbird run by a guy called Jorge who only had a tiny boat which didn't hit the spots we wanted. Back with Sergio, we were on the brink of booking an 11-day excursion made up of the tail end of a 3-day cruise and a full 8-day cruise. The problem was that they wanted cash. This is something you probably won't read about: if you don't have thousands of dollars in hard currency and want to pay by card, you're looking at paying up to 21% extra in fees. It's absolutely crazy.

As we tried to work out how we could withdraw enough money on our two remaining cards when the limit per day combined was $800, we went back to the hostel to see if we could move our room booking to when we returned. The woman refused, and I couldn't really blame her. I'd stupidly paid up front rather than at checkout, so I'd basically just chucked away $40 for them to mind our bags for a few hours. She did point us in the direction of another agency across the road though, run by a lady called Yoconda. She seemed lovely, ran through all the itineraries we wanted but said the space that Sergio said was available actually wasn't. It seems that there are enterprising resellers of boat seats that buy rooms in bulk from the owners and then sell them back to agencies for a profit. So when we confronted Sergio about this, he was trying to get hold of the guy that had bought the seats that were supposedly going to be ours. However, he couldn't get through. It meant that we could definitely have seats for the first three days of the trip, but he was reliant on a) getting through to the reseller and b) being able to buy them off him.

The entire situation was farcical. It felt like I was in some sort of tropical Wall Street, with agency staff on phones all over the place buying and selling, haggling and pleading. We simply couldn't take the risk that Sergio would get us the room for the remaining trip, not least because he was leaving the following day to go on holiday for a month. Back at Yoconda's, she offered us a four-day trip leaving two hours later that night on a first class cruise - Yolita II - in a matrimonial room, with a potential option for moving to the Guantanamera if she could secure the seats before our end date, and if not, a free tour to the highlands. Tired, hot, and drained from all of the negotiations, we accepted. We forked out $600 each, I made a pit-stop at a pharmacy for sea-sickness tablets, cash from an ATM, and some postcards, then headed to the dock where there were two sea lions just sprawled out asleep on a bench, because why not?



Gilly told me that while I was away, Yoconda had told her we'd have two beds in our room, not the double we'd paid for. Surely she wouldn't have lied about that to us? We got on a zodiac to shuttle us to the Yolita, and found out that yes, she had lied. It wasn't the end of the world, since we just pushed the beds together, but I was furious at the deception. It seems that finding an honest agent in Puerto Ayora is near impossible. Yoconda was due to meet us when we docked near the airport at the end the four days, so I resolved to have a chat with her about ethics at that point. Until then, we were introduced to Briandy and Mani who were part of the serving crew, and who made us feel right at home, before collapsing into the (actually very comfortable) beds.



Unfortunately for Gilly, the motion of the waves proved too much, and I awoke a few hours later to her being violently ill in the bathroom. Somehow the sea didn't affect me, which was unusual as I normally feel at least a little queasy. Consequently, Gilly was exhausted from lack of sleep the next morning. Not the best start to a dream excursion, but thankfully this was as bad as it got for the rest of our stay on the islands.

South America (Ecuador) Day 142 - 143: Guayaquil

Eighteen hours on a bus sounds like a lot, but when you're sleeping for eight and you have TV and films to watch as well as photos to sort out, it goes by pretty quickly. The worst part was just before we actually got to the border and had to disembark - the heat was unbelievable, at least 30 degrees. It was necessary to invest our remaining soles in cold things: ice creams, cold water and even colder beer (of course). Unfortunately the bus' air conditioning couldn't cope, so the remaining three hours were a sweltering mess, I was down to just shorts (leather seats are not conducive to sweat, as it turns out), and we were very happy to reach the cool climate of the huge bus terminal. Our Couchsurfing host was Felix who lived in Daule, forty minutes away from Guayaquil centre. He had kindly offered to collect us from the terminal along with his friend Jorge. While Felix spoke excellent English, Jorge barely spoke any so it was good practice for all concerned. Felix took us to a funky little resto-bar called Frutabar where we had a very good caipirinha and an excellent sandwich. After watching Brazil somehow come back from two goals down to equalise against Paraguay in injury time, we dropped off Jorge and Felix took us back to his house where we had a beer and after shooting the breeze for an hour, fell asleep almost immediately after.

As Felix was working the following day, he dropped us off at the bus station en route after a breakfast of eggs and fried plantain. Locals eat plantain with fresh cheese, but the flavours didn't really mix for me, so I ate them separately while Gilly devoured everything regardless. Felix had recommended visiting Parque Histórico, so after navigating the labyrinthine terminal and grabbing a cheap bus ride, we were at the park twenty minutes later. It was an excellent recommendation, consisting of a wildlife zone, historical zone and farming/urban zone, all free. The wildlife zone in particular was fantastic, filed with naturally acclimatised birds, reptiles and mammals, including a wonderful macaw which was happy to reply "Hola!" on request.











In the historical (or Malecón 1900) zone, there are some colonial houses which were rescued from Guayaquil centre and beautifully restored from dilapidation. Finally, a goat took a liking to my arm in the farming area, which was flattering, I guess. The park is shaded for the most part which is very handy when the mercury is as high as it was: pushing 35 degrees and uncomfortably humid. It's definitely worth a few hours walking around.

We retreated to the air-conditioned bliss of NOE Sushi for lunch to scoff some delicious rolls and a trio of desserts before getting a taxi to Malecón 2000. This is a relatively new pedestrianised park/green space, designed to improve the image of Guayaquil which was historically considered to be a dirty, unsafe city. We arrived too late to go to the museums but we were able to see an impressive replica of Henry Morgan's pirate ship and climbed a tower to take in the view of the area. Since we were going to the Galapagos the following day, we'd been advised to stock up on dry food since the prices on the islands were around three times the price of anything in the Ecuador mainland. We hit a supermarket and bought pasta, snacks and oil, before going to another branch of Frutabar for a happy hour cocktail whilst waiting for Felix to finish work.

He met us with his friend Consuela and we took a walk to Las Peñas which is one of the oldest districts in the city, filled with art galleries and bars. We stopped at two galleries to chat to the owners and look at their work before walking up the 444 steps to the still functioning lighthouse at the top of the district. The humidity was intense, so an air-conditioned bar was very welcome. Felix had a word with the bar staff, and the music switched to salsa; before we knew it, he and Consuela were teaching us how to dance the salsa in a tiny bar, with far more success than our brief attempt in Sucre. Apparently Gilly is a natural Latina. I'm more of a work-in-progress, which is an accolade far higher than I was expecting.

It was getting late and we were all hungry, so Felix drove us all around the area to try and find some food, not helped by a blackout which had knocked the power out in all of the blocks with likely restaurant choices. As luck would have it, we stumbled upon a Shawarma joint which was still open and served amazing crunchy falafel wraps. Couchsurfing, and in particular the hosts, never fail to impress. Everyone we've met had been genuinely wonderful, and we're really looking forward to opening our house to people in return when we get back to the UK. I couldn't keep my eyes open on the journey back home, but once there we packed as best we could (with help from Felix's two crazy cats Mars and Cairo) ahead of a 10:40am flight to the Galapagos the next day.

It had been a short stay in Guayaquil and we'd have loved to stay longer and explore more, but time wasn't on our side. Still, Felix had looked after us like a gentleman for the entire time and we were incredibly grateful for our two days there.