Galapagos and Beyond

I´m sure you know that by now we have returned from our trip to the Galapagos, and tonight we do in fact begin our journey home. It´s funny, the Galapagos Islands were incredible, possibly the highlight of the entire trip in fact, but I´m not that excited about reporting our experience on them. I´ve noticed that I much prefer writing about the things that go wrong on our trip rather than those that go smoothly. I think it´s a combination of being a well travelled whinger and that I´ve never enjoyed reading about other people´s amazing trips to the most beautiful places, all I get is bored and mildly jealous. That said I´m fully aware that I have included plenty of boring recounts of the aforementioned beautiful places, and will include at least one more in this very entry. It´s just how things seem to be done in travel blogs.
So, we enjoyed a brief and hassle free flight to Baltra Island, from which we were escorted to our amazing Yacht, it had 4 levels, including a sunbathing deck. We were granted the luxuries of a TV and DVD player, hot showers, flushing toilets, airconditioning, washing machines, and an incredible kitchen from which the most amazing meals were prepared. We soon met our tour group and found them to be a mostly pleasant array of people of different ages and nationalities, we also met our guide, who we soon found to be useless.
We were shown to our rooms, Ness shared with a girl we became good friends with called Abby, and Sarah and I were to share a room. We found to our horror that we had again been given the matrimonial suite. This was most complexing. There were two married couples on the cruise, and a long term younger couple, and none of them were given a double bed. It was incredibly strange. On top of this the bed was very small for a double, and it soon became apparent that this was not going to work. Luckily we were able to organise to swap rooms with someone who had a room to himself with two single beds.
Over the next five days we enjoyed some of the most incredible day trips that I have had the privilege to experience. We explored several fascinating islands in the most perfect of weather. We saw hundreds of iguanas, some eating, some sleeping, some fighting, some swimming, and some just hanging out. We saw too many sea lions to mention, playing, barking, sleeping, and feeding their pups. We saw plenty of boobies (Blue footed and Nazcan, not the lady bits), lizards, crabs, Frigate birds, Giant tortoises, penguins and much more. And we saw all of it closer than you could imagine, the zoo will never be the same. All of this was just during our land visits, during the snorkelling we saw a hell of a lot more.
In crystal clear water at a constant 26 degrees Celsius, we saw, Giant turtles scrounging for moss, penguins and sealions fishing and playing with us (many sealions even brushed me as the came to get a closer look at me), thousands of the most spectacularly coloured fish, all different types of rays, including giant sting rays swimming in schools that you could have reached out and touched if you were dumb enough to try, we saw a bunch of sharks (some of them very big), eels, sea snakes, and from the boat we even saw some dolphins playing as the sun set. The girls also saw a few jelly fish, and they were even lucky enough to feel what happens when you get too close to them (I think the welts have finally faded). I saw everything I thought I would and so much more. On one occassion when Ness and I were snorkelling by ourselves in shallow water, four sealions led by a giant Bull sea lion suddenly surrounded us. They circled us very closely and as Ness and I tried to keep our eyes on them we tripped over each other, got all tangled up, basically making quite a scene. We soon got some bad vibes from the Bull Sea lion, who was much bigger than I am, and decided we had better get out of his territory. The females followed us out quite playfully, they were really very curious, but I was relieved when there was some distance between us and the Bull.
I could go on and on about everything we saw, but I´ll leave that until I get home, suffice to say that it was about the most incredible trip I have ever been on, and I could spend months their given the opportunity.
We flew back to Quito, this time it wasn´t such a hassle free trip, and spent a night in a really fancy hotel as part of our Galapagos package. Over the last couple of days we had dinner with some friends that we had met several times throughout our travels (including Christmas), we went to an animal sactuary that was really impressive, we attempted to go to a female prison, but missed visiting hours, and today I went to a barber and had my beard shaved off.
Now this, Í am much more interested in reporting. First of all I asked if I could keep my side burns, and I am sure the hairdresser understood me, she just messed up. She started with the clippers and was careful to keep a sideburn on one side of my face at the length I had requested, but on the other, quicker than you can say ´´side burn tan lines´´ she slipped and sheared a vast majority of it off. I saw her face freeze with fear, waiting for me to yell at her, but I gritted my teeth and smiled, as Ness and Sarah both covered the mouth in a mixture of shock and amusement. She tried to compensate by leaving the other sideburn a little longer, but I would have clearly rathered she even them up. Then as she was shaving me with the razor, she slipped again, this time imbedding her razor quite deeply in to my mole, looking at it now, it appears as if she took half of it clean off. Of course it bled like a bastard, and she freaked out. As it didn´t particularly hurt I told her not to worry about it as she kept trying to stop a rather constant flow of blood, eventually I got her to let me hold a cotton bud to it. I think she also shaved a bit too close as I have come up with a bit of a rash. I left only having to pay two dollars, but with a cotton bud stuck with thick blood to the side of my face, an imminent rash, and ridiculous tanlines where my sideburns of probably 8 years used to be. Are you looking forward to seeing me now Brit?
I´ve decided that taking the timee to ensure that the person you ask to take a blade to your face, has both the skill and pride in their work to request a payment of more than $2, is time well invested. On the plus side I don´t look like a hobo anymore... I more closely resemble someone who´s paid a visit to Sweeney Todd.
Well that just about sums it up.
That was our trip to South America.
I may try to get one more entry in to sum things up, tie up loose ends and all that, but if not, thank you for your patient attention. I don´t know if it´s possible for psychologists to write anything interesting, but I´m not quite a psychologist, so there may have been hope for me. For your sake hope that´s true.
Till next time (if there is one),
Chuckles