How to become a Bird, Reptile and Marine Life Expert

Warning: If you really want to read this posting, get a cup of coffee first. It is the longest posting we ever had. But it is really worth reading, because you will learn so much about the magic islands of Galapagos and become a real marine life expert.

The headquarters of our wildlife trips was the cool Hotel Mainao, a house in the typical style of a greek island.

It was a great place and we had a room on the very top with a little balcony. The weather was really hot and humid. We laid in our sweat all night long. Then something happened, I never ever would have expected to happen in this life. Michelle turned on the air condition during the night. The Galapagos Islands broke Michelle. It did not happen on the Cook Islands, in Bali, Sydney, California or Hong Kong.

Okay, the air condition was set to 28 degrees (82 Fahrenheit), but still it was on.

We also had a Monday on the islands. As anybody in the world knows, Monday is laundry day. We normally pay like 5-10 USD to do the laundry. This hotel charged us 140 USD for T Shirts, underwear and socks to be clean again. You can imagine with how much care I will put on my expensive underwear from now on.

But now to the important stuff. What is the Galapagos known for?

A) For its famous alcoholic drinks?
B) For the wild party scene?
C) For the marine life, the special birds and reptiles?

C is correct. If you read this posting, you can learn a lot and become a biological expert for the Galapagos. That is what we achieved in our 8 days on the islands.

Our first trip took us to the famous Island Plaza. This is the only place in the world, where the Land Iguanas and the marine iguanas can mate.

If these cool dudes meet these hot chicks, they will have lots of fun and a few months later a very special creature is on the island. The birds do not need to rent a porn from the video store, they have best live views.

Some birds are so sick of all this dirty stuff and throw themselves off the cliff.

Okay. They also do that to catch some fish in the water. But even the crabs get red watching all the Iguana romance.

BTW: Iguanas do not want to be petted.

The next day was even cooler. We visited the bird island Seymour. Michelle forgot her close up lens for the camera in California. She almost wanted to buy one to take pictures of animals and people. There was no need for a close up lens on the island. The birds are really cool. You walk right next to their nests and they don’t care. A really cool experience.

But as so often the first thing we saw was a sea lion. The guy was almost as big as his mother and still wanted to be beast fed. Michelle told him: “Move your butt away from mom, time to get a job!” We still don’t know if he going to do so or if he is still hanging on to his mom’s breast.

In the next picture the kid, which already almost as big as chicken, wants to get up, but its mother is kind of overprotective. Mom, please let me go play with my friends.

Why do frigate birds have a red sack on their throat and why do Blue Footed Boobies do their dance? Correct, it is again because of love and romance.

Frigate birds do not have any red roses on the islands. They show their red throats instead and ask: “Would you marry me?”

The Booby turns around in front of a woman and shows his blue feet all the time. Then he opens his wings to show the muscles. Booby men normally take care of the eggs, while Booby women preen their feathers and make themselves pretty. And they cover the eggs with their feet. So it is very important to have good, big feet. So the female picks her partner because he has big blue feet.

Uli wanted to smuggle into the sea lion colony, but the guy next to him got suspicious about the weird looking sea lion with blue shorts.

Now we had a lot of biological knowledge, the tour on the next day made us geological experts. We visited volcanic islands around Bartolomé. It was a 3 hour boat ride and we had much time to watch the sea. You can see a lot of sea life even from the boat. We saw rays, sea turtles and also creatures who do not want to meet while you are snorkeling. On this trip we saw sharks and also three big killer whales. You just feel much better if you can watch these guys from your safe place on a boat.

We entered the volcano island and we were looking at black lava rocks.

Michelle was very disinterested and did not listen to the guide very well, because she isn’t into stones. Our guide asked a difficult question, why some rocks might have a special color? Nobody knew the answer. He threatened us with another half hour walk on the lava rocks as long as nobody would give the correct answer. Michelle’s motivation rose immediately and she gave the correct answer in a heartbeat. “Because of the plants, that were run over by the lava stream”. Bingo. Thanks to Michelle we could walk back to our boat “Queen Karen”.

Now we walked up to a volcanic island with very impressive landscape. The scenery looked like we were on Mars and it was incredible hot walking up the mountain. Michelle was not impressed. This girl doesn’t seem to be into geology. On the top we had some incredible nice views.

As you can see on the picture above there are some dark clouds in the back. This has to do with Murphy’s Law. On Galapagos it means. It is always sunny and hot, when you walk up a mountain and it always starts raining, when you begin your snorkeling tour.

Anyhow, the snorkeling was also amazing in the rain. You can see loads of colored big fish, snakes, sea turtles and on this island even penguins. Yes, we really saw penguins on the equators. These guys were always hiding from us on this tour. In New Zealand and even in the zoo of Sydney. But finally we got them. Done that been there.

After all these cool activities we got good lunch on the boat. And in addition always dry rice to go with it.

Gregg and Debbie were also the boat with us. An interesting retired couple who sold their home and are travelling around the world with their small sail boat. From Galapagos they will go on a tour over the Pacific Ocean. Can you imagine? 40 days without land contact. Amazing people. In addition they were also really nice people and we met them for dinner. Compared to their travel blog our blog looks kind of standard.

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On the next morning we went down to the fish market close to our hotel. It was always funny to watch the scenery, because most of the customers are not humans. Pelicans and sea lions always stand in line in order to buy their fish here.

Sunday was a lazy day. We went on harbor tour, where we were the only people on the tour. So the elderly Belgium tour guide played guitar for us on the boat, while we were watching sharks and sea turtles from the boat. A funny guy who lives for many years on the islands. He also told us, why there a so many cactus on the islands. It is supposed to be a dry and cold place for half a year, beginning in May. It was May and it was humid, hot and rainy. The cactuses and everybody on the island were waiting for the cold Humboldt currency to kick in. Our swim in the little inland lake was refreshing.

So far we learnt about biology, geology and climate. School is out for today. Now the fun part begins.

The next morning started with a two hour bull ride. It wasn’t really a bull ride, but it felt like one, because we took the fast boat over to our next island San Cristobal. It was a small boat, the sea was rough and the captain drove like crazy. He must have had a date with a really hot chick and did not want to be late. I still can feel my back if I think about this trip. At least we did not have any breakfast before.

Arriving at San Cristobal we found out, that or boat was cancelled. Because the boat is broken. It is mostly broken, when there are only two guests on the tour. It is probably not worth to go with a boat for only 2 people. Anyhow we won the walking tour instead.

You walk with your snorkel gear behind a nice young man, who walks you to the close beach (400 meters) and tells you to go in the water. Then he walks you to the next beach with the same procedure. He also walked us to the close by museum, but did not explain a lot. After this, we stopped the tour, because we felt like really dumb tourists, who are not able to walk to the beach. It least it was our most expensive walk to the beach ever.

The beaches were really beautiful with lots of sea life and the museum was interesting, until a guy with a mask in his face came in spraying bug spray everywhere. Did we already look like insects after all this nature?

And indeed we had pouring rain, when we started our second snorkel tour. In the picture above, we are not wet because of snorkeling, but because of the massive rain shower. Murphy’s laws can be proved on the Galapagos. The islands are excellent places to prove new theories. Charles Darwin also found his theories about the evolutionary process on Galapagos.