Well we are finally almost there! I have been waiting for this moment my whole trip. I didn’t do that much research as I didn’t want to know all of the good things I had to look forward to. I am more the surprise type and the not knowing what’s coming on up ahead if I’m honest. Spontaneous they call it I think!? This will hopefully be the pinnacle point of my trip.

I have to say, that was one of my worst journeys I have ever had to deal with so far. From the early morning leave and leaving the hotel right up to boarding of the flight and then the duration of the flight itself was very very tough to endure. I struggled a lot with the high altitude upon flying into the Islands. The pressure on my ears was literally like a feeling where my head felt it was about to explode! What with arriving into Quito just a couple days before and the altitude already affecting the way I breathe and continuous high heart rate by just walking up stairs for example this is for sure going to take a bit of getting used to this side of the equator.

So I arrive in Galápagos and pay the $100 entrance fee to the Islands. Some people from Ecuador haven’t even had this privilege as the cost is too expensive to get there which must be incredibly hard on them knowing they have a special place belonging to them yet they can’t even get to witness it for themselves. I am one of the lucky ones to get this close to it and feeling incredibly emotional right now!

We pass through security check and we are introduced to Nickolas our tourguide. Nice guy and has some good witty banter about him. Fact he speaks fluent English and understood English humour was a good thing I guess. Once the group are altogether we board the bus which will take us to where we take our first dingy trip together over to ‘Isla Bantra’. It is there we go on another bus trip for about an hour or so for another dingy trip on to our accommodation for the next four days/nights. Boat Xavier! I’m on a boat mofo don’t you ever forget, in the words of well known funny music band ‘The Lonely Island’! The excitement has begun. No wifi, no social media, no knowing of the footie results and most importantly no contact with loved ones back home :(. How am I going to adapt or survive with all of this? Pfffft please. I’m ready!

Boat on deck I will say is incredible, particularly the rooms. I am going to be doing this adventure in style. First up is a prep talk of what we will be doing today and shortly after is lunch (which was bliss) and fed us up enough fuel to go see some huge tortoises. These guys are huge, take a look for yourself! They hung around long enough for a selfie believe it or not too lol.

Big ain’t they! I don’t mean the tortoise poo either! Obviously we aren’t allowed to touch them but they look so dam adorable not to! It truly is a privilege to see these guys in the flesh. We spend best part of an hour or so taking lots of photos and selfies. We even got to go inside an existing lava cave towards the end. These new walking shoes from Quito are a necessity here as it was very steep going down and up the built in stairs inside the cave itself. Money well spent if you ask me!

After getting back from the day out it was my first encounter with a sea lion upon getting ready for our first main sail! I better get used to these guys as I’m going to be seeing a lot of them over the next few days. They are adorable but have to have your wits about you as they can be a little volatile if you stand too close to them!

All of the islands we are going to be visiting over next four day’s were called Sombero Chino, Santiago, Cerro Dragon, Santa Fe and yet another place named San Cristobal. You wouldn’t believe how many times that landmark name popped up on my trip! A lot of San Pedros and San Cristobals in Latinos Americanas everywhere it would seem.

Galápagos is split up into a number of different Islands from a volcanic eruption that happened thousands of years ago and all that remained on them was just purely animal habitat! That was until it was discovered by us humans, Tomas Berlanga to be infact in 1535 where it became refuge for pirates preying on easy targets and coastal towns. It eventually become what it is today via a scientific discovery from a rather well known man named Charles Darwin (an Englishman) in 1835 who made the Galápagos the remarkable place it now is. A young student himself at the time just out of university and a naturalist he maintained the wellbeing of all of the Islands and even put all of his efforts into saving all of it’s habitats before his own relationship with his actual religious wife!

That night was our first sail from the Island of Santa Cruz on to another shaped like a Chinese Hat (reason being for the unusual name was it looked like it was in the shape of an actual hat and was called….Chinese Hat!) How original! This was a serious wake up call for me now knowing I am going to be living on a boat for the next four days. That was one heck of a cruise that evening and to say it was a little choppy on the water that night was an understatement! I ended up waking up a few times due to the draws underneath our beds pinging open from the endless rocking to and fro throughout the night. Reality was starting to sink in but Tom my roomate didn’t bat an eyelid, he was out for the count! Slept through the whole thing.

The next day we were scheduled to be up bright and early as there were lots of things to see and do for us all. We were going to be heading to Cerro Dragon to check out some marine iguanas! As you do! Back on the lil dingy boat we all go and once upon Dragon Island these guys were all over the dam place! They were everywhere but what fascinated me more was how wonderful they were with us getting up close and personal in front of them for selfies and pictures lol. The simple fact we had crabs, pelicans, sea lions and iguanas all getting along with one another on the same island makes you realise there really is no place like this on earth! Took a heap load of photos!

Did you see the sea lion corpse above! Grim eh! So after our guided walk by our illustrious leader Nickolas it was time to tackle something very new for me. Snorkeling! It probably sounds ridiculous I know but it’s something I have never got round to doing before and if I am being honest the sea as beautiful as it is what with the thousands of different habitats that live in it I have never been comfortable of going into in general and not knowing what exactly swims beneath me. That feeling of seaweed wrapped around your feet when it feels like it could be something else is never comforting! Funnily enough though here I have a fairly good idea what actually is in the water in some areas as it’s just ridiculously nice and clear. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not though!

We are back on board from our trip to Cerro Dragon and it’s time to grab our snorkling gear. Now me being me I approach this with slight caution and because of my laid back approach to most things in life I am one of the last to get my snorkling gear. Big mistake! All of the swimsuits are now officially taken by other members of the group. If I’m going to snorkel I am going to have to do this in just my trunks, mask, flippers and mouthpiece (a la James Bond Stylee!).

I am a reasonably a good swimmer so the swimming part of it wasn’t bothering me it was more the fact the current was behind me so each and every stroke I made would mean I was going to go faster then usual. Now I tried my hardest to master the snorkeling and breathing technique but with no experience in this area ever before I was finding it hard to breath underwater longer then for a few seconds and then of course as I am now seeing other members of the group quite a distance away from me, panic starts to get better of me. Our emergency dingy boats are out of my sight and I am now swimming literally on my own in incredibly deep water with hundreds of all kinds of fish beneath me with no life jacket! One fish I really don’t wanna see right now and can’t get out of my head is of course ….SHARK! If there is one here then I am an absolute goner for sure! I am very much out of my comfort zone and as gutsy as I have been this whole trip with everything else I have done and achieved so far this was the first time I felt potential danger without me being able to take any control of my own destiny. Sounds dramatic I know but for me this is kinda a big deal!

So now it’s up to me to try and remain calm and forget snorkeling for today and try my hardest to swim back to our boat Xavier. I was in the water no longer then twenty minutes and impressed myself that I managed to make it back there in that time. The crew members on board saw me and helped me back on board. That was enough testing my nerves for one day! There will be more opportunities to snorkel again over next few days and if there is a lagoon with no tide I am all over it! This is something I really want to overcome and achieve.

Now I’m not sure if I’m getting the order of play in the right order here but if my memory serves me right we had lunch after the attempted snorkel and next stop was a dingy sail on to Black Turtle Cove. The plan was to hopefully see obviously some turtles of course but also some sharks hopefully also to! We were in luck! We actually got to see both and a few more sea lions too just for good measure! Here are a few more pics…

One thing on our dingy we wasn’t expecting though was for our chord to get pulled off by accident by our dingy crew member! So what on earth do we do now?! Well fortunately there were two dingys an so being as the other group were in absolute hysterics about this our boat drivers had some spare rope luckily and tied us up together so we could piggy back as such behind them but only obviously at a slower pace then normal! If we go too fast and the rope snaps then we are all swimming back to the boat if thats the case, sharks an all! It had been an eventful day and after getting back on board we had dinner and it was actually a very peaceful sail that night back to South Plaza. See below!

We got back for lunch and sailed on to Santa Fe. It was during the sail that the crew who was looking after us all had cottoned on to the fact I was into football by me wearing football jerseys on board and I got asked by a few of them if I wanted to play some actual footie on a part of some of the Islands? I’m left scratching my head? Are there actually pitches on Galápagos?! Now anybody that knows me well enough will know and tell you I eat, sleep and breathe football and if an opportunity came up to play some South American football it was going to be an opportunity too good to miss out on! However with me being fully kitted out some way or another with my Toms, footie jersey and shorts I find out after waiting an hour on Santa Fe Island itself that the crew are late on schedule for the next sail so football was sadly cancelled :(. I could of snorkeled that afternoon but I put the football first. Silly mistake that was! Never the less there was going to be a final opportunity to snorkel the next day, that was going to be in San Cristobal.

Surrounded by Islands I am slowly getting used to the early starts now being as the food has been fantastic and what with our own coffee machine on tap upon deck it’s making me settle into the lifestyle of living on a boat in general (won’t lie though I am itching to know the footie scores and get some wifi!). This is a huge change for me as most who know me know exactly I’m a bit of a social media fiend!

Anyways back to my third day. We are now on South Plaza and it’s another guided tour with yet another double dose of yet more snorkeling today, morning and afternoon. Here we get to see tons of beautiful birds including eagles, flamingos, a heap of iguanas and of course what Galápagos is accustomed to, crabs and sea lions. The snorkel in the morning I was bit more fortunate with this time round as the water wasn’t as choppy and I was quick enough to bag a swimsuit on this occasion however I did struggle with getting the blinking thing on! After my earlier attempt I felt a bit more comfy going into the water today although the trying to breathe properly underwater was starting to get on my nerves can’t lie. Surely it’s not as difficult as I’m making it out to be. After a while the dingy crew members picked me and the others up and gave me some much needed encouragement making me feel even more determined that I’m going to nail the final snorkel tomorrow.

So day four, we are here already!? I have seen so much over past four days but nothing could prepare me for what was in store for myself and the group on this day.

We start an hour earlier today due to the big load we have to cram all in within one day. 06:00am start are you serious!? Yes said Nickolas! We head on to San Cristobal Island and to all of our joy this day in particular is going to be extra special as we are going to be witnessing everything from birds, sea lions, funky coloured crabs and of course more marine iguanas. All habitats that all get on with one another and don’t seem to be at all phased by each other one bit. You simply will not get this anywhere else in the world and it’s a true privilege to be amongst it all.

Took heaps of photos and that includes a video of a sea lion giving birth which im pretty sure people aernt lucky enough to get to witness every day. Here it is, see below that special moment and cute photo of Mother and her new born!

After a long walk round it was time to grab dingy back to the boat and get ourselves ready for one more last dose of #snorkeling. I am ready for it mentally as well as physically today. I want to achieve something I never thought I could or would. Yes I know it’s only a bit of snorkeling but to a novice like me it’s kinda big deal! Once getting all my gear together off me and the rest of us go. We separated up into two dingys and headed straight to our final Island. The beach here is caked with sea lions all trying their hardest to make us go play with them but what really caught my eye was when we spotted two sharks in shallow waters. Alright alright they weren’t great whites I know but they are sharks so not only am I finally trying to tackle snorkeling I am also going to be swimming with the sharks also too, literally lol!

Now this wasn’t going to be a five min snorkel. We were planned out for a good hour or so and our objective was to see all we could beneath us and take it all in one last time but also attempt on swimming back to the boat and not using the dingys this time! Believe me on that boat it hasn’t been easy rocking from side to side constantly particularly at dinner time lol. It takes some serious getting used to.

So flippers on, snorkel mask and swimsuit on and enter the water walking backwards as you got no chance against the water walking in forwards with flippers on let me tell you! Learning new things everyday this trip! I started off slow as usual but this is no race and my time to catch up the seemingly vast experienced pack of snorkelers will eventually be coming up shortly! This isn’t as bad as I imagined it to be today and I am dunking my head under water more then a Catholic Baptism! Just wish my underwater camera had been working for this trip :(. Over then came the excitable sea lions and it seemed as if they were waiting for us to arrive from the shore and then they start to interact with us all by spinning around and round showing me tons of fancy tricks. Feel like I’m in a underwater circus here! They spin at me so I do it back and they seemed to get even more excited! Sharks are the last thing on my mind at this moment! As the playing continues I swim on and get alarmingly close to the rocks where Nickolas is telling us to try keep away from. Then one of the guys near me shouts the word I feared most this whole trip… SHARK! At this point the fun and games I was having quickly turns to panic and I start to think ok now it’s time to face up to my fears! I dunk my head back under again briefly to catch a glimpse of a fish that is the most feared predator of all of the oceans and there it is within a couple feet away from me. A God Dam Shark! It’s swimming directly in and out of all of us. Hope he’s not hungry!

It was only as big as my leg but if it was hungry enough I’m pretty sure it would be able to take me on if it wanted to underwater! The sea lions are long gone and everyone I have caught up with were all as excited about this beautiful creature beneath us causing nobody any harm at all and just creating sheer excitement for everybody throughout instead! It’s a 5ft shark dammit!

Eventually the shark passes and all of us are obviously a tad emotional over what had just actually happened. Yes it was just a little shark (is 5ft small lol?) but I honestly gotta say I didn’t know how I would react with all that happening beneath me. None of us did I don’t think! For me it was very much a big deal and once again I had to face up to my demons and put them to rest. So proud of myself here that I am gleaming all the way back with my swim back to the boat. Did that just actually happen? Yes it blinking did! Another thing put to bed and a special congrats from our guide Nickolas as he himself who is very familiar with the Galápagos realised how big a deal that meant to me. With being a deep sea diver himself he sees a lot of sharks on a daily basis but I gather he must of had the same kind of feeling when he passed a shark for the first time as well. I felt like one of the rest now and this was my initiation, it felt very satisfactory indeed! That was it, it was time to wash and pack up our bags from what was truly probably one of the best experiences of our lives and yet still we have the Inca climb all to come!

I made some fantastic friends and met some amazing people on this trip. Some were even going to be joining me on the same adventure to tackle the Inca Trail and these two people I was particularly close to and had bonded with were Lisa and John Birch both are from Toronto Canada. Somewhere I had visited earlier on and knew a little bit about. Lisa is a senior nurse (which was handy having on a trip like this!) back in Toronto and John is a professional vet who runs his own business. Very envious.

Lisa I felt really looked out for me like a Mother on this trip which I really appreciated. It was a time in my life where I had been away a long substantial amount of time in general and when you are away from not being able to contact anybody you normally do it’s tough. Especially when you want to show how excited you’ve been past few days specifically in a place like Galápagos. With no wifi for four days I was never going to be able to tell them or loved ones back home anything about what I had been getting up to. It was all something I simply just had to wait until I was able to.

John I made a lot of time for as his vast interest in Baseball and Ice Hockey particularly the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Blue Jays made me want to find out a lot more about how both games worked exactly and why these specific sports are so big in the States and Canada. I had been Toronto so obviously there was plenty to conversate on during our time away and in a weird way I always saw John as the older brother I have never had. Being the eldest of four comes with a lot of responsibility and it’s probably mutually agreed between us all I have not ever been seen as the most mature but it’s not an easy label to get lumbered with. I’be always tried my hardest to present that responsibility back to them and show them that if Big Bro can do all this on his own then there is no reason at all they can’t themselves one day, should they ever wish to!

I would not change it for the world and anybody else who gets this rare opportunity in life to do something like I have, don’t even give it a second thought to think about it! DO IT! Yes it’s incredibly tough and scary at first particularly if your going to do it on your own like I have but if you stick at it I assure you that you will be reaping up the rewards afterwards in due course. These memories are forever. Nobody can ever touch that or take it away from you, it’s yours for life. There is more to life then working 9-5 in an office everyday believe me!

With John being a vet I was intrigued to hear his take on what his views were on a Bull Mastiff we used to own in our family called ‘Monte’ who we sadly due to unfortunate reasons had to have put down due to his nasty aggressive streak he particularly had in him. Being as my family has always been the type to have a dog involved in our upbringing as children that was one of the hardest things I think any of us had to be put through as Monte certainly had a connection with us all. Sadly for me I was unable to be around on his last day with us as yet again work always seems to get in the way of everything these days but I really had to hear it myself for closure on it from a qualified vets perspective on whether we made the right choice on going ahead with what we had to reluctantly all agree to do.

Sorry if I am going completely off subject here but hoping I still somehow have all of your attention! Promise it won’t go on too much more but after explaining it all to John about Montes behaviour it was more comforting to hear that we had infact simply tried all we could to prevent the inevitable from happening. The aggression thing was something he had been born with and there was sadly nothing we could do to repair it unfortunately. We then went on to get another Bull Mastiff named ‘Matilda’ who lived in his shadow and she couldn’t be any more of a complete different dog, even if she tried to. The best family dog a family could ever wish for and I say this with a tear in my eye as she also recently passed away from us due to cancer after six years. I missed her heaps when away and miss her even more now she is also no longer with us. Us humans get attached to our pets and their love for you is unconditional and loyal right up and until the very end. Tildz was always one of us. We love you Tilda. xx

How John does his job must be incredibly tough especially if he knows it in himself the animal has more life in it then the owner thinks yet the owner can’t bear having it anymore. John is sadly left with doing the hardest part. Must be very upsetting and hard to do for him solely. For that he will always have my upmost respect in doing what he does for a living.

So any ways back to finishing off a trip of a lifetime in Galápagos (Thanks Sis!). I am a very very lucky individual to have ever got the opportunity to go to a place like this where even the locals can’t even afford it as I mentioned earlier. The memories and the experience in itself will live on with me forever and a day. My only regret is not being able to share with you all the photos of all the things I had swimming beneath me but that is something I am only too lucky to have to myself forever. Although this photo below one is one of my favourites at sunset…

All I can say back from this short trip and what I have learnt is live your life to the fullest, seize every opportunity that’s put infront of you, impossible is nothing and always dare to follow and chase your dreams.

Seat 21 on my flight back to Quito?! Come on seriously?! Coincidence?!

It’s time for yet another emotional experience….. The IncaTrail!!!