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More Cute Animals

Despite the thousands of tourists that descend on the Galapagos each year, you're still tripping over animals. It's easy to understand why these islands were the inspiration for Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.

At first, we were just trying to capture everything on camera. Then the objective became to get two or three wildlife examples in one shot. Or the ultimate: wildlife riding other wildlife. So much fun.

1. Sleepy Sea Lion
2. White-tipped Reef Sharks with Marine Iguana
3. Lava Heron
4. Baby Giant Tortoise
5. Flamingo
6. Marine Turtles
7. Pelican in a mangrove
8. Marine Iguana swimming. This is the only lizard in the world that lives in the ocean.
9. Bird (do you know what kind?) with a crab
10. Creepy iguana fingers
11. A mad crab
12. Sea Lion, Pelican, Iguana, Crabs and a Sea turtle. (BAM!)
13. Blue Footed Boobie. They're incredible divers, plunging to a depth of 8 meters to catch their prey. And the inspiration for all the “I LOVE BOOBIES” t-shirts in town.
14. Sleepy Sea Lion with lava lizard
15. Napping Fur Seals
16. Starfish
17. Marine Turtles. Incredibly peaceful to swim with.
18. Penguins. This is the only penguin found in warm equatorial waters and the most northerly in the world.
19. Baby Sea Lion
20. Galapagos Snake
21. Cormorant. The only flightless cormorant in the world. Over years, it evolved into a great swimmer, losing the capacity to fly.
22. Six hungry flamingos
23. Mound of Iguanas
24. And finally, Baby Marine Iguana riding Papa Marine Iguana

The Millennium

We flew to the Galapagos with wild  hopes of scoring a real, last-minute cruise deal. And boy did we score. $900 to hop aboard the Millennium Yacht for a 6-day journey around the western islands, everything (except libations) included. It was the route we crossed our fingers for. Only a handful of luxury vessels have permits to cruise those particular waters. So we found ourselves in a tropical wonderland, with just a crowd of creatures for company.

Snorkelling (playing) with sea lions was incredible. Sometimes it would be an intimate one-on-one, other times six or seven sea lions at once gracefully whipping around us. Holding eye contact with a curious and intelligent wild animal is beyond compare. Even if it happens to be an extra giant bull (they have killed before) that makes you drop a load in your shorts. It's an experience we didn't tire of and one that could temporarily make us forget about all the other wonders lurking in the reefs. Monster lobsters, stingrays, schools of tiny krill that looked like they were running in place. Prowling around with white tipped reef sharks, getting whiplash trying to follow penguin torpedoes, and gently floating with countless sea turtles. Not to mention schools of fish so thick they could be mistaken for a solid object that parts only a split second before you, or a sea lion, crashes into it. And that's really the magic of the Galapagos, hoards of different species co-existing so close, and often, right on top of each other.

As for the ship, it was amazing. Although, we became overly accustomed to the little ringing bell that signalled it was time for a new adventure or gourmet meal. Sure our guide was a bit of a boob and left a snorkeler behind, but considering the lot of shipmates we had, we couldn't have been luckier. Becoming land lubbers once again, we spent the next 10 days bumming around San Cristobal, adhering to a strict, ice cream rich diet, in order to help us adjust to our harsh, Post-Pavlovian reality.