Galapagos Cruise

A couple of weeks ago, Ewelina and I set out on a cruise around the Galapagos Islands.

We hadn't originally planned to go, as it is very expensive, but once we got to Quito and started thinking seriously about it, we figured a week in the Galapagos was probably worth about as much to us as a month on the road - so we decided to shorten our trip a little, spend a big pile of cash and go sail around on a boat for 8 days.

We flew from Quito to Galapagos, with a brief stopover in Guayaquil. Our guide picked us up at the airport and there we met our companions for the first half of the cruise.

Seeing our yacht, the Encantada, in the harbor was a bit of a shock - it was less than half the size of any of the other boats we saw at anchor. Once we got onboard though, after a brief mix-up with our cabin, our worries evaporated. The boat was beautiful, clean and comfy, the crew was friendly and competent, and as we soon discovered, the food onboard was heavenly.

So we spent 8 days sailing around, getting to know blue footed boobies, sea lions, frigatebirds, iguanas and our primarily Dutch companions. We snorkeled and hiked and slept. We never got sea-sick, but were a bit hung-over the morning after Ewelina talked all the passengers into going to the pub the one night we had the option (halfway through the trip, there was a brief stop near civilization to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station and swap passengers).

It was a great trip!

We took lots and lot of photos, of course.

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I was very geeky the whole time, writing code for my phone in my cabin and using it to collect GPS points as we traveled, writing a bit about each spot.

The entire journal can be browsed here, or you can download the KML file and have a look in Google Earth. The software I wrote to create this journal is available on the Android market, but hasn't generated much interest yet. For now that doesn't matter, as I'm having a great time writing it and expect it will get lots of use on the rest of our trip.