LAS ISLAS GALÁPAGOS (The Galapagos Islands)

Blue-footed Booby

Sea iguana



I've wanted to see giant tortoises since I was young and saw them on a tv documentary. I think I've successfully realized that partiular dream. There are thousands of them in the Galapagos Islands, they hang out in the paddocks like cows...

Here I am returning from a hard day of tortoise farming. I'm learning as I go. The old guys don't usually give me too much trouble but it's not as romantic as it looks, the herd can be a bit stubborn sometimes. Still not sure what I'm gonna do when it comes to milking time...

Skeleton of a fish. We saw a couple of live ones in the water too.

El Chico: A volcano. We also saw the second largest volcanic crater in the world. It was pretty big.

To my shame I can't remember this guy's name. I tried to remember it till I got to a piece of paper but I lost it somewhere along the way. Pretty poor showing of gratitude considering he/she carried me for three hours up a volcano and put up with my inept handling. We did some fab galloping together (granted, I left most of the galloping to him/her).


Now, I know what you're all thinking - "That's a nice bunch of photos, Karen, but where are the flamingoes?" Well, it's a bit of a sore subject at the moment cos I was promised flamingoes and was very excited at the thought of seeing them and then we didn't see any and then I was told there were some we could see the night before we were due to leave at 6am and we got up at 4.30am especially, but it was all dark and we didn't have time to wait cos we had to catch the plane and then the plane was two hours late anyway, and...aw, I was really disappointed.

But, we did see this bird...

...sure it's a lot smaller and less pink than a flamingo but according to our guide it's really rare and some birdwatcher looked for this little guy for four hours and didn't find him. We saw two without even trying and were told that made us incredibly lucky. Yeah, it still doesn't really fill the flamingo-shaped hole in my heart.