November 3, 2011

Day 10 - October 09, 2011

Last "day" at Galapagos :(

We woke up a little earlier today and went on our last excursion. I'm glad they still fit in an excursion on the last day to maximize our time there. It was a quick excursion, 1.5hrs, but it gave us a chance to see the frigate birds during their mating season.

The entire trip, from when we first got on the boat, we saw frigate birds all around us. They would land on our boat, fly along the boat or the beach, sometimes just one, and sometimes a dozen, but since they're flying, they're not in their "mating" mode. We visited North Seymour this morning, the location where the frigate birds mate. The males have the red "pouch" on their chest; they land, puff it up, show it off, and wait for a female to swoop down to check him out. It was great to see how the birds attract others with their features.

After our short visit on North Seymour, we made our way back on the boat and sailed back to Baltra Island where we started the trip. We all gathered our things and checked in at the airport and made our way back to Quito.

We landed back in Quito. We had a really nice evening actually. We checked back in to our hotel in the afternoon and met up with most of our group from the trip in the evening for dinner. It was really nice because we had a nice big group to go out and get a bite to eat and chat. The actual Galapagos trip was amazing, but the people we travelled with made it special. The boat was small and we pretty much had two areas to hang out; our cabins or in the lounge area. Every day we had funny/serious/casual conversations with everyone on board, and everyone enjoyed each other’s company. So that evening was nice because although we finished our trip, everyone was still up to get together and hang out.

Overall, this was an excellent trip and a different trip than our previous vacations. This was an adventure to South America with long flights, different terrain, and the main point of the trip, the wildlife. We couldn't really prepare ourselves for this trip as we did with our others, but we had everything we needed thanks to our travel agent and also talking to friends that have been on the same trip. Galapagos Islands is definitely a place to visit and we're glad we did it. But, our trip wasn't over! We made our way to Easter Island a couple days after, so stay tuned!




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