A Few Galapagos Pictures

I know I've been a blog-slacker. Sorry 'bout that.

Here are a few small pics from Galapagos. The amazing thing about the land wildlife was how close you could get to them. Many of them had no fear of humans. Check this out:

This is a sleepy sea lion pup sunning himself on the path.















Here is a land iguana that let me get up-close-and-personal:















The marine creatures were more circumspect. They were curious, but basically behaved the same way they do everywhere else. Way up north at Darwin Island, this hammerhead shark gave me a fly-by:















Here's a shot of a Galapagos shark that came in to check me out:

And finally, the monster we'd all hoped to see:

A 50 ft. whale shark (one of nine we saw this trip)!

Leaving Galapagos

Well, we are back at the Baltra airport with a couple of hours until our flight leaves. I will try to post again when we get to Quito tonight because I bought an 18 minute internet card and time is ticking away.

All but two or three of the passengers ended up with nasty respiratory infections, but everyone snagged antibiotics and kicked it. Hopefully I will be almost well by the time I get home.

I did a total of 16 dives over the week, and saw many many sharks. I got to swim very close to two huge whale sharks and we were almost continuously surrounded by Galapagos and hammerhead sharks. I got a few good pictures, but suffered with technical problems most of the trip.

Other than that, all's well -- I did end up with a few good pictures and some wonderful memories! I also got some great ideas for new scuba equipment I want to buy!

Waiting for "de plane"

We're camped out in the Quito airport, Domestic terminal. It's like every other airport terminal I've seen, except that the air reeks of exhaust fumes.

Our Aerogal flight from Quito is an hour late due to morning fog. We're flying to Guayaquil, then on to Baltra in the Galapagos.

Travelling with an experienced group is the best way to travel. Our luggage was handled from the hotel to the plane, and Aggressor is to handle it from Baltra to the boat. Our airline tickets were waiting for us at the airport, and the tips were collected and disbursed for the group.

One nice thing is that everyone seems to be a lot of fun. There are even several guys who share my sense of humor. There are only two women in our group - the rest are middle-aged men. Big surprise: That's normal for dive trips.

One of the guys has been commenting on how clean Quito is. I don't agree: Although I've seen much dirtier cities, I wouldn't call it clean.

Once we arrive in Baltra, we'll be loaded onto the Galapagos Aggressor II and move to our first dive site while we gear up. We'll do a checkout dive to get our weights set, then have a welcome aboard party. As I understand it, overnight we'll sail 200 mi WNW to Darwin/Wolf Islands, where we'll spend the majority of our time. The objective is to be surrounded by huge marine creatures, mostly sharks and rays.

More when possible!