Day 236: Golindrina Yacht – Galapagos Islands – Feb 8th

Today is an exciting day! We’re going to board our boat and go on an 8 day cruise around the islands! There are a lot of remote places you can’t reach within a day, and the cruise includes the mandatory Galapagos guide who would (hopefully) educate us a bit on the special animals that live here.

We were told to arrive at the airport by 10:30am to meet our guide. We got there before 10…and ended up waiting until 12:30pm until all 16 of the passengers got together. Arriving on the boat, we had a nice little lunch (everyone was STARVING) and began setting sail for our first destination, the strangely named islet, Chinese Hut.

Our first impression of the guide was rather strange, as somehow he sounded bitter and made some unwelcoming remarks. And our first activity was to snorkel in the bay, but when we got changed and was ready to go, they told us they didn’t have enough snorkels…. W T F? You’re taking us on an 8 day cruise with 8 days of snorkeling/swimming with a set number of passengers, but they somehow didn’t have enough snorkels? Eventually they got us what we needed, but they just didn’t feel like they were trying very hard….

Snorkeling though, was extremely fun! There was such an abundance of fish, really cute and strange looking dolphin fish, and Jiajia even saw some white tip sharks and sting rays! Seems like Alan never has the luck to see everything.

Next, we landed on a beach for a wet landing, meaning you’d be landing on a beach and likely to get yourself wet because of the waves..haha. The tour of the island, strangely named Chinese Hut, was brief but saw the standard sea lions, iguanas and crabs… they’re EVERYWHERE! The sea lions were as cute as always, and the several baby ones just makes you want to take one home… There were also some penguins diving around shallow waters where we landed, doing their thing and catching fish. The sand here was white, and apparently each location has different types of sand, even on the same island! The islands are really amazing!