Puerto Ayora, Ecuador

We move to Guayaquil to buy a ticket and take the plane from there, took us to the Galapagos Islands. Although guaiac (people of Guayaquil) and Ecuadorians in general speak ill of Guayaquil, mostly because of their dangerousness, “there will kill you” they say, we feel safe. Well have to say that only visited the center, the boardwalk or promenade (it is a river) and the Rocks district, where there is a policeman every 100 yards, but where townspeople and visitors walk alone. We have no photos because with so much emphasis on the risks entailed Guayaquil, we decided to go out with the minimum, a shame because we have to say that the views of the city exceeded our expectations, long way …

We arrived in Galápagos 18 morning. We reached the island of Baltra, which only serves the airport and where is the odd military base. They crossed the narrow strait (5 minutes by ferry) that separates Santa Cruz, Baltra Island, the most populous of the entire set of islands with some 21,000 people approximately.

The bus picked us up after taking the ferry and took us to the island’s main town, Puerto Ayora, where we established our base of travel for the next 3 days. From Puerto Ayora visited the bay and surrounding area by boat where we saw sea lions and marine iguanas and one of the main birds of the island, the blue-footed boobies, red-breasted frigates and pelicans among others.

We walk and relax on the Playa Mansa Turtle Bay where we swam with a sea turtle, visit the Charles Darwin Station and downtown reproduction of giant tortoises and land iguanas and made a day trip to Isla Floreana, the only one with freshwater and the least populated (200 people) due to the mysterious deaths of the people that happened in the past and still create some fear in people to settle there (apart from that unless one is born in the islands , get residence for any of them is very complicated, for the moment). On Floreana sea lions are very curious and appear, especially smaller ones, to bathe with you. There are also tortoises (reintroduced) and marine iguanas different from Santa Cruz.

After we moved to Santa Cruz Isabela Island, and settled in Puerto Villamil, the only population of the island with about 2000 people. Isabela Island is geologically Young Island and in turn is one of the youngest in the Galapagos, about 1,500 million years old. It is of volcanic origin, like the rest of the other islands and some of these volcanoes are still active.

So we decided to go visit one of them, the Sierra Negra volcano, but time with us and we clouded his impressive crater 35 km in diameter. In Isabela also saw sharks fin shark or white tip and made blankets and snorkeling where we saw stingrays, fish and little colored and others …