Yesterday morning we were picked up at 7am and taken to the airport for our flight to the Galápagos Islands. There was a whole section in the airport just for people like us, with a sign saying Galapagos Passengers, so we joined the queue leading us to a scanning machine where all our bags were xrayed, in order to be checked for fruit, vegetables and other items which aren’t allowed to be taken into the Galapagos.
After we’d cleared the scan checks, we stood and waited for about two minutes while our tour guide checked us in and collected our boarding passes and other forms that we needed to fill in (easiest check in ever). We then walked to our gate and joined the queue to board the plane.
When we got to the front of the queue, we realised it actually wasn’t our flight (idiots) and sat for half an hour before once again joining a queue and boarding our plane… For real this time.
The plane stopped off somewhere else in Ecuador after literally about 25 minutes, before taking off again and landing a couple if hours later on one of the Galapagos Islands.
We were given stickers to show our hotel and along with all the other sticker wearers, we were met by two tour guides from our hotel who told us to leave our luggage and board the bus to travel to the hotel.
We had a short five minute bus ride, another shirt journey, but this time on a small boat, and then we boarded our main bus to the hotel. On the way we had two stops…
Our first was to a lava tunnel. When the volcano on the island erupted, the lava flowed down the side and across the island and when this happens, the outside section of the lava cools and dries up while the inside keeps flowing, the cooled section forms a tunnel shape. In the tunnel we were exploring, the roof of a part of it had collapsed, leaving and opening and space for the inhabitants of the Galapagos to build stairs down to it where we could then climb down and explore. It was absolutely amazing, quite damp and unbelievably huge! We could only walk half way down it as some of the roofing had collapsed further down making it impossible to explore the whole thing without crawling, but it was extremely interesting.
While we were standing in the lava tunnel, we also had a history lesson about the Galapagos, it’s age and how the animals came to be inhabited here as they are natural islands that rose up from the sea. Most animals over time either got washed up here by sea currents, flew here or were blown here by sea currents.
Our next stop was at a field absolutely full of giant tortoises, no one knows how they came to be inhabited on the island as obviously they can’t swim or fly here however there are thousands of them that roam around the different islands freely. They are said to live up to 200 years and survive solely off grass and so can pretty much live anywhere, which is exactly what they do on the Galapagos, plod very slowly around wherever they want. The only time they ever have a place to go, is to the coast to lay their eggs as the main land is too humid.
We were then served fresh fruit salad and an empañada before getting back on the bus to drive and then boat to our hotel. The Finch Bay Hotel is absolutely stunning, right on the bay with a hue swimming pool where Galapagos animals such as ducks also swim. We were greeted with smoothies and snacks before being shown to our rooms. We then spent be rest of the afternoon swimming and playing cards, until dinner time where we had a dinner themed with fresh fish caught off the coast of the island before turning in for an early night.