Hotel Red Booby

After getting off the boat it was nice to have another day on the Galapagos before jumping on another plane again. We stayed at the Hotel Red Booby, and it was wonderful. We went swimming on the rooftop pool, and I finally took a shower and changed my clothes! Dad also kept himself busy by doing laundry. It was especially exciting because all of the clothes had to be line dried. That gave Dad plenty of opportunities to check the clothes, adjust the clothes pins, move some into the room, and rotate them to get the best breeze. It was quite a system, but he was happy as a clam.

As for the cruise, let me give you a little more information, now that I don´t have a time limit. The weather was absolutely incredible. The sunshine was blaring and it was in the 80s everyday. The water was refreshing, but not too cold. Part of the reason the islands have such a wide variety of animals and vegetation is because of the three different currents that converge at the islands. While the water was beautiful, it is now fall on the Galapagos, and occasionally we would have a freezing cold pocket of water hit us unexpectedly.

The snorkeling we did was beautiful. I had no idea what to expect. The last time I had attempted to snorkel was in Disney World with my Dad when he wanted me to swim across some shark infested pool. I gave it a try, deciding that if it was run by Disney, it couldn´t be that dangerous... but I freaked out. I had to get out of the pool, go backwards through the line, and leave my dad to fend off the sharks alone. This snorkeling was a little different. The water was crystal clear. The moment we got into the water we were surrounded by sea lions. The baby sea lions wanted to constantly play with us. They would swim at us really fast, and then dart away, only centimeters from our faces. When we took our longer snorkeling adventures, they would follow us the entire time, playing and flipping through the water. We swam with a few sea turtles, lots of rays, and a few sharks (none of which I saw, thankfully)!

Our land adventures were just as interesting. Every day we would disembark on a different island to hike and look at the wildlife. We saw blue footed boobies dancing. We saw albatross nesting. The sea lions were everywhere. There were land and marine iguanas, lizards, sea turtles, flamingos, and more sea birds than I could possibly name.

Every day was a new adventure, and it was really exciting. But, by the end of 5 days, I was done. There were people on our cruise that did an entire 8 days... but that was not necessary at all. We saw all of the animals we wanted to see, never repeated a meal, and didn´t go stir crazy. 5 days was perfect.