On the Move

I arrived home last evening after eighteen hours of travel from Guayaquil to San Salvador to Los Angeles to, finally, Vancouver.  Vancouver was, as if often the case in winter, overcast though there was a strip of sunset showing as we flew over the San Juan Islands.  This part of the world is entirely different…

The Manglares Churute Ecological Reserve is about an hour south of Guayaquil (ecuador.com/protected-areas/manglares-churute-reserve/). It simply teems with wildlife and today it teemed with human life too. On the road to the Reserve, our Guayaquil guide, Eddy, introduced us to the fruit zapote. It has a hard green exterior but delicious kind-of-melon-like fruit around a hard…

This morning we packed our belongings and with much regret left the MV Coral II. Most of us would have liked to stay a few more days.  There is so much left to experience in the Galápagos Islands!

Each island in the Galápagos archipelago is unique. North Seymour is an important nesting ground for frigate birds, both the magnificent and the great varieties.  These birds survive on food stolen from blue-footed boobies, as the boobies can dive for fish while the frigates with their two-metre wingspans cannot.

Our two full days in the Galápagos Islands began with early wake-up calls to take advantage of the cooler mornings. First up would be a walk for a couple of hours, then back to the Coral II to change for an hour of snorkelling, then lunch and a quiet time.  Around 3:30 pm we would…

What a strange and wonderful world we have entered! We flew from Guayaquil to Baltra Island in the Galápagos archipelago a few days ago, and after being x-rayed and searched and our belongings sprayed with disinfectant the authorities pronounced us fit for entry and stamped our passports with a pretty cool little logo.