Matthew & Jen's World Trip: In the footsteps of Darwin... well... sort of...

At 5.40pm on Thursday, 20 minutes before the travel agent closed for the night, we booked an 8 day cruise through the Galapagos Islands which was to start first thing the next morning. We’d like to think that, with respect to the fact that neither of us have worked since March, we chose an appropriately budgeted tour. Actually, and probably surprising to most of you that know us well, we failed. 1 week on a luxury Galapagos yacht, thank you very much. Enter La Pinta, a luxury yacht run by Metropolitan Tours. What can we say, but what a week!! we were wined, dined and entertained to the max.

Baby Frigate Bird

La Pinta is one of the larger boats that cruises the Galapagos - with a maximum guest capacity of 48 (with a further 30+ staff). The larger ship size meant for a little more stability and less rocking in the water. A blessing for those who suffer from the occasional bout of sea-sickness (Jen). Despite the large number of guests, embarking and disembarking was handled very efficiently, with a queue of rubber dinghies to ferry the guests ashore as required. We quickly made friends with a group of 5 ladies from USA who were there to celebrate a 50th. All of the girls were a bunch of fun - and our time aboard was all their better for their company. In addition to those 5 girls, we also made friends with a number of the other people aboard, who had travelled mostly from the UK, Australia and the USA.

The La Pinta

The Galapagos islands are stunning. Situated pretty much on the equator, the islands were formed by underwater volcanoes and are, in the context of global geography, some of the youngest islands in the world. But the real highlight of the Galapagos is the wildlife. Absent land-based predators, the wildlife are very much unafraid of people. This allows us to get to within inches of almost all of the wildlife on the islands.

On the topic of wildlife - much of it is endemic to the galapagos - with especially interesting characteristics or markings - including the blue footed boobie (they have blue feet), frigate birds (of which the males puff up a red pouch on their neck to attract a mate), giant tortoises (Shakespeare has a bit of catching up to do Elliot), sea turtles, sea lions and their brand new pups, iguanas (of which there are two kinds, the land-based and larger iguana and the sneezing marine iguanas - who purge sea salt from their system by snorting it out!) sharks, stingrays, fish and much more.

Every day we would get up between 6.30 and 7am. Then to breakfast, after which we rolled (because we had eaten so much for breakfast) to our first activity. This was either a landing on a beach to explore an island, or a morning of water activities such as snorkeling, glass bottom boating or kayaking. After the morning’s activities we would be served lunch (which we probably didn’t need after our massive breakfast but still would eat it anyway), whilst we were being relocated to another island for the afternoon’s activities. Fortunately, there was almost always an hour between the end of lunch and the afternoon activities to catch up on a bit of rest and digest all that food!! The afternoon would involve a similar activity to the morning, either a short walk across one of the islands to explore the wildlife there, or a water-based activity - sometimes there was even time for both!

Even though we were on the equator, the water wasn’t exactly warm. At around 20 degrees Celsius, a wetsuit was definitely welcomed. But no matter how cold we were after swimming in the ocean, there was always the after activity snack and drink and the jacuzzi (at a very comfortable 38-39 degrees) to warm up in!!

Dinner was generally served at about 7.30pm. After so much food for breakfast, lunch and pre-dinner snacks, we were never exactly hungry for dinner - but because the food looked and smelt so good - it was hard to say no!

We both absolutely loved our time on the La Pinta and through the Galapagos and would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about it - the only disappointment was leaving. If nothing else, it is the proximity to which you can get to the wildlife that really sets this part of the world apart from anywhere else. By way of just one example, on our final island walk, the track actually went through a whole flock of nesting Boobies (Blue Footed and Nazca species). That is, these birds actually chose to build their nest on the (highly regulated) permitted pathway through the island!

I’m still working my way through the ~5,000 photos that we took on Galapagos. Below are some of our favourites so far (it’s been hard to limit it to just a few!)