Guayaquil to San Cristobal:

Guayaquil to San Cristobal: 

After a very short night of about 3 hours of sleep we are up and at um. Our checked luggage was placed outside our door and we then went to breakfast. Breakfast was a nice buffet here at the Hilton Colon Guayaquil. Most unique item was a yucca bread. Mostly standard buffet fare, all good. There was also watermelon juice. 

We turned in our return flight information and picked up our Galapagos arrival/departure form. 

0700 we load the bus and make our way to the airport. The local guides procure our boarding passes and pass them out on the bus. We make our way through the departure hall and through security. I find the airport to be modern and very nice. 

The gates are not assigned or at least they are not displayed in a timely fashion. We learn our departure gate and soon we board. Flying a Aerogal Airbus 319.  Seems like  a slight ground delay, and we are soon pushed back and on our way. 

The skies are overcast with very flat light in Guayaquil, I am hoping for better photo conditions in San Cristobal.  

We are served a very nice breakfast of either scrambled eggs or a sweet crepe. I chose the crepe with fruit and cheese. It was very nice.

Our daily briefing indicates we will have a bit of time to walkabout the Malecon (water front) prior to boarding the Islander. This is to give the crew time to turn the staterooms over. 

After arriving in San Cristobal we pass through an entry process similar to immigration. We had a heads up to get a special stamp in our passports. All entering bags are inspected visually or with a K-9 for agricultural  items. Our bags are transferred to the boat and we are loaded onto a bus for a short ride to the dock area. 

San Cristobal is the third largest island of the group and has about 8,000 inhabitants.  80% of  electrical power is derived from the wind, using only three windmills. The Lindblad Nat Geo Islander will be our home for the next several days. It is mored in the harbor of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno.  This port city is the capital of the Ecuadorian province of Galapagos.  

We are barely off the bus and within 50 ft are several sea lions basking on benches at the waterfront. It seemed as if they were posing for us. As we walk to the dock where we will board zodiacs to get out to the Islander, we see Sally Lightfoot Crabs and a couple of Marine Iguanas. We board a zodiac and are ferried out to the MV Islander. 

Safety Drill and other orientation sessions are had before Lunch. Lunch was Wahoo or chicken, rice and plantains, with spice cake for desert. I very much enjoyed the chicken, and yes, very hard to describe the sauce it was in. 

Our Cabin is #210, down the hall from the reception area. It is appointed with a desk, hooks for clothes, a good sized closet with drawers, and a cabinet for additional storage. There are also two narrow  horizontal cabinets over the bed for additional storage.  The bathroom is rather small but will be very adequate. 

We did a load of laundry which filled the room. 

At about 3:00pm (1500) we received a briefing on boarding the zodiacs and the different types of landings we would be experiencing. Those are either wet or dry. A wet landing is where one enters the water and walks ashore and a dry landing is, well dry. 

We depart the port of San Cristobal and sail to a beach named Cerro Brujo. There we do a wet landing and see many sea lions, Sally Lightfoot crabs, some shore birds yet to be identified by us, and a Blue Footed Booby flying and plunging for fish. There was also an pair of American Oystercatcher with a chick. A Yellow Warbler and a Semipalmated Sand piper.  Looking at the landscape, the volcanic influence is there for sure, reminding me of Eastern Idaho and areas of Hawaii. The light just started to get good as we left the island. 

Back on board there is a wash station to rinse ones  shoes, from there your shoes can be taken to the top sun deck to a drying station.  We grab a quick shower and head to the lounge where we download pictures and attend a welcome cocktail party. Shortly there after we head  to dinner. Lynn had a sea bass and I had a pork loin, there was an apple crumble ala mode for desert. We shared a table with a couple from Minnesota we had met at the cocktail party.  

Exhausted we made our way back to the room as we sailed towards Espanola.