Belize - Our final vacation!

Belize isn't that far from Ecuador, but somehow it took us 2 full days to get there!  We spent the first 2 nights at a resort just outside of Belize City lounging by the pool and just relaxing (we had build in a couple extra days in case we had travel issues).  After 2 lazy days we were ready to get to the island and start our search for Whale Sharks! 

We caught a small local flight down to Dangrega, and by small I mean the world's smallest commercial plane!!  We expected a 16 seater but were very surprised to be walked out to a tiny 4 seater....and anyone who knows Julie's hate for small planes it was a minor mircale that she decided to board it!!  After a quick 20 minute flight was met up with the people from our resort and caught a 2 hr boat ride to Glovers Atoll.  Upon arrival we were shown our beach bungalow and got all settled in.

Sunday was our first diving day, and since no one had seen a Whale Shark yet we dceided to spend the day diving near the island.  The water was amazing, warm and clear!  We didn't even need wet suits.  We thouroly enjoyed the wall dives and the tons of coral and bright fish everywhere.  Our group decided to do the dolphin swim instead of a third dive since the previous group spent over 2 hrs with the dolphins.  We headed out with our snorkels and Luis found the dolphins right away.  As soon as we jumped into the water they swam away.  We chased them for about an hour but never had much luck, Julie did manage to snap a picture of 2 under the water.  Apparently they weren't in a playing mood.  Luis said he had never seen them run like that (maybe we just smelled bad!!).  We eventually gave up and headed back to the island.

Monday morning we learned that some fishermen had reported seeing 2 Whale Sharks, so we all decided to give it a shot and hopped on the boat for a 1.5 hr bumpy ride.  It was a good thing we took sea sick pills!  These 2 dives were another first for us being "blue" dives, meaning that you couldn't see the bottom, just blue everywhere.  It was really hard to keep track of depth.  Unfortunatly we didn't find the whale sharks, but we did see a giant ball of snapper, several dolphins (which the snorkelers got to swim with), and a few other fish scattered about.  Definitely a different experience from the previous day.

The rest of the week we spent diving just off the resort (less then a 10 minute boat ride each time).  It was some of the best diving we have experienced.  We saw numerous nurse sharks, HUGE loggerhead turtles, hawksbill turtles, shrimp, the biggest lobsters we have ever seen and millions of fish.  Hopefully Julie will get around to making a video from all our GoPro footage soon.  We even go to experience out first night dive, which was interesting.  My light died about 5 minuites into it, so I spent most of the time trying to stay out of people's way.  We did see some big crabs, a crazy looking anemone and a spanish lobster while we were down. 

Of course our final week of this world tour wouldn't be complete without a little bit of excitement.  On the second to last night we were all sitting at the bar (which happens to be over the water) and noticed how eerily still the wind was.  Around 9 we walked back to our room to watch a Castle episode, with about 15 minutes left we heard it start to rain but decided to finish the episode before gathering our clothes hanging on the deck.  Five minutes later we heard the wind and water started pouring into our cabin.  We quickly picked everything up off the floor and then ran outside to grab our stuff (or what was left of it!).  Within minutes we had an inch of water all over the cabin and the ocean, which had been about 30 feet away was rushing under the stilts of our room.  The lightening was so fequent it was basically daylight.  We later learned that the winds gusted over 50 mph!  With no power and nothing much else we could do we fell asleep, figuring we would deal with the rest in the morning.   

I want a yacht now and we don't even need one...

After finishing up the land based portion of our Galapagos trip, we boarded the Galaxy Yacht to see the islands from a different viewpoint. 

The boat was absolutely amazing, with wood floors, large guest rooms (it only holds 14 passengers max), a nicely designed bar and dining room, along with tons of space on top to take in the sights.  Shortly after boarding we met all of the other passengers and had lunch - the food also proved to be top notch throughout the cruise.




They wasted no time getting us active, and after lunch we boarded the little zodiacs and headed off for our first snorkel.  It was a deep-water snorkel so we stayed along the coastline and watched all the fish pass below us.  There was so much to see we were both surprised when it was time to go back and we learned that we had spent over an hour in the water.  After a quick trip back to the boat we departed again to visit a Mosquera Island - a small island populated with sea lions, crabs, and sea iguanas.  We were allowed to walk around the island on our own and had a lot of fun watching the sea lions play in the water near the shore.

Overnight the boat motored to Genovesa Island.  After breakfast we loaded up and went ashore at a landing spot known as Prince Phillips Steps where we spent a couple of hours walking on a pre-defined trail looking at all the different birds.  We saw our first Red Footed Boobies up close along with plenty of Frigate Birds that were puffing up their sacks trying to attract mates.  Our guide somehow managed to spot an owl amongst the thousands of birds flying around and everybody shared binoculars to get a good view.  We headed back to the boat, grabbed our snorkel stuff, and headed back out to look for cool stuff in the ocean.  This was supposed to be our best shot at seeing hammerhead sharks, but unfortunately they didn't show.  We did see plenty of cool stuff though, including three eagle rays gliding along effortlessly. 

We stuck around in the same spot after lunch and made another landing, this time at a sight called Darwin Bay (we learned that when Charles Darwin was visiting the Galapagos he never even went to Genovesa Island, so nobody knows why this spot was named after him!), where we had another nice walk with birds and sea lions.  We snorkeled from shore after the walk and then went back to the boat so we could head to our next stop.  While in transit, we were encouraged to stand on top of the boat looking for wildlife, and sure enough a nice minke whale showed up for us to gawk at.

 We awoke the next morning at San Cristobal Island with a nice view of Kicker Rock in the background.  Our morning consisted of a landing beneath Witches Hat rock where we had an hour to walk around - it was a beautiful white sandy beach - and then another hour or so to snorkel from the beach.  The snorkeling turned out to be some of the best of the trip; just before we were going to head back to shore a couple of sea lions decided to play with us.  We swam with them for a long time, watching them move effortlessly underwater as they went all around us and practically between our legs.

We had a lazy afternoon on the boat as we waited for all the other tour groups to move on before we moved to kicker rock for some more deep-water snorkeling.  The seas were pretty rough but the snorkeling was very nice.  We saw over 20 different sea turtles and even a couple of sharks.  There was one moment where our guide yelled out that she saw a hammerhead but by the time we swam over all I saw was a shadow swimming away, and Julie missed it completely.  The fact that we didn't really get to see hammerhead sharks gives us a great reason to return for a dive trip!


The next morning we made our final landing at Puerto Baquerizo Moreno.  We went with the group to visit the Darwin Discovery Center which is a museum of sorts where we learned about the history of the islands and it's inhabitants.  After that we said goodbye to everybody on the boat and headed off on our own.  We spent one night in town before flying out the next day to Belize and the LAST STOP of our world tour.

After trying both a land tour and cruise, the cruise was the hamds down winner!  We would have been completely happen on the Galaxy boat for the entire 2 week.

By land, with a little bit of sea and lots of Tortugas

With an 8 hr layover in San Salvador and nothing else to do (at least we found a Star Alliance Club), I guess I should get around to summarizing our two weeks in the Galapagos.....This will be my attempt to try being "productive" in preparation for our return to the real world in only 10 days (well really more like 30 once we visit family).

We arrived on the island of Santa Cruz around lunch time and made it to our hotel.  Right off the bat we found a tiny baby sea lion walking along the sidewalks and marine iguanas EVERYWHERE!!  We spent a lazy afternoon reading (and watching the sea lion that was sitting in the chair next to us).  I quickly decided I could get used to life here!


















The next morning we headed out on 2 dives, just outside of the bay.  The first dive had pretty bad viz, but we did get to swim with a couple of sea lions and see an octopus, so it turned out pretty good.  I spent our surface interval trying not to puke as the waves made our little boat rock and roll....I know, I know, don't EVER forget to take the dramamine with you!  The second dive was cold, we figure the water dropped at least 5 degs.  Viz was even worse here so it was hard to see much, but we did see a couple huge schools of small fish.  After finishing the dive we headed back to the hotel for the first "activity" of our land package.  We ended up going to a beach about a 30 minute drive from town.  The beach was pretty, unfortunately the horse flies thought we were yummy, so it wasn't very relaxing.  After about 45 minutes we headed back to the hotel.  Had I known ahead of time I would have skipped this "activity" and gone to a better dive location....oh well, live and learn.



After breakfast the next morning we headed to the Darwin Station, which was only a short walk from the hotel.  Here we got our first glimpse of giant tortoises.  We also saw land iguanas that were really big.  It was fun to see the animals but it was set up very much like a zoo.  That afternoon we headed out to some lava caves and took a short walk through them.  It would have been nice to be able to explore them some more.  Our next stop was a farm with more giant tortoises.  I enjoyed this place because you just walked along looking for tortoises.  We managed to find about 10, most of the females were down at the beach laying eggs (it takes them 3 months to walk there and then 3 more months to get back).  This farm had a shell that we could crawl in and experience first hand why tortoises are so slow...it is because there shell is freakin heavy and awkward.  By this time it was getting really hot, so I was ready to head back to the hotel for lunch and some AC.

Pirate "caves"

After lunch we boarded a small boat and took the 2 hr journey to Floreana.  I was smart and took sea sickness pills this time.  Floreana is a much smaller island and we stayed in little cabins right on the lava rock beach.  That evening we hopped in the cold water for some snorkeling.  The visibility was awful but we were able to make out a a sea lion and 2 turtles during our 45 min swim.



We spent the next morning visiting "pirate caves".  They weren't actually caves at all.  The rock had formed an area of big walls which could easily be divided into rooms, which is why the pirates lived there I guess.  We also got to see some more giant tortoises.  Adam and I had a competition for who could spot the most.  He took a commanding 6-1 lead, and then I put on my turtle finding eyes and caught back up.  We ended up 9-9, not bad for 30 minutes of turtle hunting!  We were even able to find a baby tortoise (less then 5 years old).  There are only 2 in the entire area, so it was a pretty good find.

Blue Footed Boobies

It was now time to head on to Isabella Island.  After another 2 hr boat ride we arrived at a tropical paradise.  This island was beautiful, a huge bay full of sea turtles, penguins, sea lions and blue footed boobies was just sparkling in the sunshine.  We spent the afternoon taking a boat ride around the bay and then snorkeling.  While snorkeling we saw several penguins swimming with us (of course the Go-Pro battery was dead), which was a first for us.  The next morning we took a quick land drive on the island stopping off to see a group of Flamingos (would have been cooler had we not just been in Africa, first world problem I know) and another tortoise breeding center.  By this point we had about 300 pictures of these awesome creatures.  Our last stop was at Love Beach and then it was back into a boat headed back to Santa Cruz Island.

Bad day to be a little tortoise

After arriving back in Santa Cruz we had one day left before our cruise started.  We elected to go diving (of course), and this time we went a little bit farther away to another island called Santa Fe.  The diving here was SOOOO much better.  We could see 20-30 meters and there were millions of fish swimming everywhere.  It was hard to know where to look.  At the end of the first dive we saw 2 eagle rays, the first time we had ever seen them and at the end of the 2nd tank we saw a Galapagos Shark.  It turned out to be an excellent way to end our land based tour.  The next morning it was off to board our boat, Galaxy, for the next 4 days.  I will put that in another post because this one is already long.

Check out all of our pictures here