Thursday, January 21, 2010

Land of Flamingos and sea turtles

I woke up at 6:20 with terrible headache. That was after first night on board of this rocking boat. Fortunately I was sleeping well – like in the cradle. We arrived to Floreana island in that cradle, so it was time to have a shower, breakfast and visit the flamingos. Ecuadorian cuisine amazed me again. We had tasteful desayuno. I ate twice as much as normally do. After that we got on dinghy and made a route to the island. Landing was wet this time. First thing we saw was a small sea lion sunbathing on the magma rock. Then we headed to flamingo mere. There were plenty of them. Some were dancing as our guide explained us and some were just waiting for their better life like humans do. We had not much time there, because as I realized later, people prefer to spend time on the beach, or on the boat. It's crazy – you're on Galapagos islands and easily give few hours of your day to laying on the beach or sitting on board of the boat and reading a book. I really can't understand it. I'd rather spend a day watching flamingos, but I was not allowed too. Stupid regulations. But ok, we had no choice, so used our time to take some pictures good enough to publish on this blog – but that's it. Nothing amazing. After that we headed to the other side of the island where we had a chance to watch giant turtles in the wild. And they really were there! I was surprised. You can really see them not only in the zoo! Moreover we saw blue heron just doing different poses to be photographed for over 10 minutes and another sea lions and plenty of colorful, very quick, nice crabs. Then we boarded back to the boat. It was the end of the day for me. The rest was very boring. Snorkeling in very crowded rocks, lunch, siesta after dinner, time on the very boring beach, dinner – nothing interesting at all. Ok, during snorkeling I've noticed something reminding stingray, so I got away from the water. Later it turned out that it wasn't venomous, but I hadn't know it in the moment it was few centimeters below me. So people were doing things that could also do at home. But this time they had to pay a lot of money for this. I still don't understand the case. Am I crazy or so? Maybe tomorrow we can see something wonderful again?

Pictures from these two days are straight from the camera – no processing, because I had no possibility to fix them. Sorry about that. Better versions will available in the gallery when I'm back.

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