Summing up the Galapagos on Celebrity’s Flora

by | Jul 19, 2021 | Photography

This was an incredible trip. We’ve decided it was the best we’ve ever taken. On the final night onboard, Captain Patricio (one of the nicest guys you will ever meet) spoke for a few minutes about his feelings regarding the Galapagos. He mentioned, paraphrasing here, that “the Galapagos should serve as a model for the rest of the earth. It’s a place where every animal and bird has learned to coexist, and the visitors who come care about these islands and do their best to nurture them.” I loved that. It reflects how I felt walking among the albatross nests, stepping over sea lions, and watching penguins who were completely unafraid, allowing us to get within inches, and so much more.

I felt the same way when I spoke with the naturalists and crew members who lived and grew up on the islands. Their love for their home was evident in the way they protected the land, animals, birds, foliage, and geology. These islands are truly magical.

One thing I love about Celebrity Cruises is their commitment to giving back. From the perfect ship, which doesn’t run on smog-producing bunker oil, to the fact that they never drop anchor to avoid disturbing the ocean floor, along with the tree planting we did and their continued support for it, the efforts are commendable. I will admit that during our time on Santa Cruz Island, I wasn’t thrilled to stop and plant trees in the rain. However, looking back, it became clear that it was more than just a symbolic gesture on Celebrity’s part. It challenged us to reflect and provided an opportunity to give back to these incredible islands.

One aspect that makes Flora different from every other Celebrity ship (besides the other two small ships in the Galapagos) is that there is no caste system on board. I believe I mentioned that after 21 cruises with Celebrity, we are switching our cruising to Viking Ocean. This decision is due to the fact that on their other ships, if you aren’t in a suite or aqua class, you do not receive the same experience as the others on board. You have a much better trip if you’re willing to spend significantly more money. On their larger ships, you can sail in a suite without ever interacting with those in the “economy class” staterooms. They can relax in “The Retreat” and enjoy a “luxury” experience without needing to mingle with the riff-raff. However, on Flora, everyone is equal. Unless I stood outside the door of the largest suites, I would NEVER know who occupied them. That’s not the case on the other Celebrity ships, where there are many areas those in suites could access that I couldn’t. It’s disappointing.

This post summarizes this cruise and addresses some final questions while providing a few more pieces of information I missed in previous posts.

Let’s start with the questions:

  • What was the weather like?
    When we were there in early July, it was magnificent. The temperature was in the 70s every day and nearly every night. Before we decided to go, we did a lot of research on the weather. Our naturalists informed us that from mid-June through mid-August and mid-November through early January (the transitions between seasons) are the best times to visit. Here’s a chart on the weather:

    From what I see, there may be a better time for snorkelers; you might want to go when the water is warmer.
  • I like cocktails. What were they like on the ship? Are they expensive?
    First, everything is included onboard, including all alcoholic beverages. That said, as much as we enjoy our wine and cocktails, we drank less on this cruise than on any of our 25+ previous cruises. Why? I think there are two reasons. We knew we had to get up early every day to meet the ship’s schedule on the islands. Being even slightly hungover or dehydrated was not an option if we wanted to be at our best for the excursions. The other reason we didn’t drink as much is that there was less time to do so. Seriously, on other cruises, we would gather in our favorite lounge before and after dinner to socialize and sip, but that’s not the case on this cruise. Before dinner, you hear about the islands and what you’ll be doing the next day, and after dinner… you go to bed.
  • What was the one thing you bought for this cruise that you could not have done without?
    That’s easy: my dry bag. I would have been lost without it. I owe my decision to get one to my Instagram friend, Marvic_212. He is a crew member on Flora and takes the most amazing photos of the islands. He and his family live there too, and one of my biggest regrets is not meeting him when we were there. He was supposed to come back onboard a few weeks after we left. If you love my pictures, you’ll love his. When I asked him what I needed to keep my camera dry, he said, “get a dry bag.” So I got the one I linked. I also ordered a strap so I could carry it with me. You’ll need a backpack with straps to take on the Zodiacs. The reason for the straps is that you must have both hands free to board the ship or get off at a wet or dry landing. This is the strap I got. I’m really glad I chose this because on the first Zodiac trip, the bag got soaked. If I hadn’t had it, my camera would have been wet too, and there would have been none of the great photos I captured.
  • What was the best thing that Kathleen got before the cruise?
    She says, “That little turtle backpack.” Celebrity gives you a small mesh backpack but it is just too small. This one was the envy of all our fellow cruisers.
  • Are there bathroom facilities on the islands?
    Nope, the only facilities are the bushes and trees. Seriously. I asked Ellen what people do if they have to go. She said you tell your naturalist, and they will direct you to a place (hopefully out of sight of others, but sometimes that isn’t possible) where whatever you do causes the least damage to the environment. On all our trips (always more than 2+ hours), I only saw one person “using the facilities.” It was a young lady, and I felt sorry for her because she was wearing a wetsuit and a one-piece bathing suit, so she pretty much had to change. And it was on an island with hardly any bushes or trees, just lava. Everyone just looked the other way. As for me, I stuck with one cup of coffee every morning ?.
  • Can you say a little more about the motion of the ocean? Will I get seasick?
    Kathleen says, “A couple of nights were rough. The wind blew in one direction while the currents moved in another. So if you struggle with motion sickness, you should consider possible preventive measures.” Kathleen always brings her “Relief Band” on any cruise. It has saved her numerous times since she learned about it from our friend Carol. The ship offers Dramamine if you need it, and some of our friends onboard used a behind-the-ear patch.
  • What was the best thing about the ship?
    I loved the bed that faced the ocean. That, along with deck eight, where we went to see the stars on two nights (DON’T MISS THIS!), was fantastic! Kathleen says hers was definitely the shower. It was so well equipped and designed. For example, there was a towel rack on the outside of the shower door that opened inward, so you didn’t have to reach out and get the floor wet. Brilliant!
  • What was the worst thing about the ship?
    Kathleen mentions the lack of electrical outlets, especially none on her side of the bed. The two that weren’t on the desk were on my side of the bed. If you ask me, I would say the pillows were an issue. I’m a side sleeper, and the two we had were just too soft. I had to use a couch pillow under one of them, or my neck would be sore all day.
  • What was the most amazing you saw on the ship?
    Kathleen says that for her, everything we experienced off the ship was truly magical. I completely agree with her and would add that one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed a person do is how the crew on board managed the Zodiacs. They performed feats with them that left me in awe—such remarkable skill. You don’t realize until you ride in one that they NEVER tie them up to the ship or any dock. They control them during loading and unloading using the throttle and steering. It’s astonishing.

We are more than happy to answer any other questions, but this will be my last post about this trip. I believe I have covered everything quite thoroughly, and I cannot think of anything I might have overlooked. I hope you have enjoyed traveling with us. We have many more adventures planned, or you can browse through the archives to revisit our Iceland trip and our Mardi Gras trip from 2019. You can also visit our other website by clicking here to see all our travels since 2002. And be sure to come back after Thanksgiving when we will journey to Portugal, Amsterdam, Prague, Nuremberg, and the Christmas markets in Vienna, Krems, Passau, and Budapest.

The Galapagos Islands are probably the most famous wildlife-watching destination in the world. And no wonder – it’s almost impossible to exaggerate the sheer spectacle of the place that provided inspiration for Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking theory of natural selection. – Mark Carwardine

 

 

 

Flora—What a ship!

by | Jul 17, 2021 | Uncategorized

Now that I have told you all about the cruise and the adventure and shown you the islands and the animals, it’s time to talk about the ship. I can honestly say, Flora is my favorite ship we have ever sailed on. She is also the smallest ship we have ever sailed on. But I wanted to give you a little bit of an idea what our overall accommodations were like and the public areas of the ship as well. First, as you can see above, she looks wonderful in the water. Almost like a private yacht…a BIG private yacht.

Let’s start with the staterooms. Here’s an iPhone pano shot of the bedroom part of our “suite.” Celebrity calls it a suite. Other cruise lines would call it a suite but to me a “suite” means you get more than one room. At the EB Hotel in Quito we had a suite…a bedroom, two bathrooms, a dressing room and a living room. That’s a suite. The really big “suites” on Flora are true suites.

Those suites have other rooms as well (living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms). But we had a traditional verandah stateroom. That said, it was the LARGEST stateroom we have ever been in. It was even bigger than the suite we once had on Century. At more than 330 square feet with an 84 square foot verandah we had more than 400 square feet to ourselves. To give you something to compare, on our last cruise on Reflection to Mardi Gras our stateroom had 194 square feet with a 54 square foot verandah. We found it interesting (at least to us) that we are going to go from the largest stateroom we have ever had on a ship to one of the smallest we have had on our next cruise. In December we take a Viking River cruise to the Christmas Markets on the Danube. Our stateroom on that ship will only be 204 square feet with the verandah. We were very pleased with this one. I did a quick video tour of the stateroom and the bathroom (the largest and nicest we have ever sailed).

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The ONLY complaint we had about the stateroom was the lack of places to charge electronics. This ship was built three years ago. It’s not like she was built in an era before we all carried numerous gadgets. But there were exactly FOUR electrical receptacles in the room (not counting one above the sink in the bathroom for shavers).  One of those was a European plug. I always have a converter but the receptacle was inverted so my adapter/converter would not work with it. That left us three. One at the desk and two in the wall next to one side of the bed. Except that the two next to the bed were vertical and VERY THIN! So thin that if you plugged any kind of adapter or charger in to one of them, you could not use the other. That is crazy. No USB plugs at all. They have those on other, older Celebrity ships.

I know what you are thinking…how many things can you have to charge? Well, we travel with the following: Kathleen has her iPhone, her iPad, her Kindle and her Apple Watch. I have my MacBook Pro, my iPad, my iPhone, my Apple Watch, my Nikon battery charger, my Kindle and my GoPro battery charger. Twelve items to charge with two plugs. That’s crazy. I certainly hope when they dry dock Flora in a few years, this is one of their big upgrades. It is needed.

The rest of the ship

Flora is beautiful from top to bottom. The best way for me to show you that is to add some pics and explain in the captions. So here you go:

A couple of the places on board that I don’t have pics of include The Boutique and Darwin’s Cove on Deck 3. The boutique has a few trinkets, magnets, shirts, jackets and postcards but they are very spendy. See my previous Q&A. Also on Deck 3 is a science lab where you can investigate things like geological samples from the islands under a microscope. As much as our interest in science was piqued while onboard, we never got there. One cool thing to do when you back from an excursion is to go to the Boutique and look through the windows as they bring the Zodiacs in and store them. It’s a really cool operation. Also on this deck is the infirmary, but let’s hope you never have to visit there. Decks 1 & 2 are either crew quarters or storage for the Zodiacs.

On Deck 7 forward there is the Observatory. It looks like a very quiet place to just relax and face forward on the ship. It is right over the Bridge, so it has great views but they play loud techno music in there so it is NOT peaceful at all. They need to turn it off or  change the music. On my first night while trying to find somewhere to write I found the music BLARING at 3:00 am.

Just above the Observatory is the Stargazing deck. DO NOT MISS THIS! We went up twice (cloudy other days…or we forgot) and it is worth the trip. They keep the area very dark and you would be amazed at the stars you can see when there is no light pollution from the ground. And your perch is right at the equator. You can see the Milky Way, the Southern Cross, the Big and Little Dipper and so much more.

This ship is amazing. We can’t wait to sail on her again. Other than my two very small complaints about the outlets and the techno music, it was about the best a ship can be.

More Questions…More Answers

by | Jul 16, 2021 | Uncategorized

So I have had a lot of questions from both the comments on this blog and from Cruise Critic, I thought I would do those first and it would give me a chance to add some additional info I haven’t covered yet. So let’s get to those questions. (BTW: I may have answered these on Cruise Critic or on this blog before but not in both places. This will give me a chance to do both.)

  • We’re on the July 25th sailing, and I’m starting to think about what to pack. How quickly does the laundry turn around and do we need to bring slacks or just shorts? 
    I got away with one pair of decent shorts, three pair of hiking shorts and the jeans I had worn on the planes (I don’t like flying in shorts). Took a bunch of izod shirts I didn’t have to iron, my hiking boots and my Tevas, underwear and socks. That was it. You get two free bags of laundry and we left both of them out in the morning before we went on our morning excursion and our stateroom attendant picked them up when she serviced the room. In both cases, they were back by that evening while we were at dinner. We did not ask for rush service but we got them back that fast. I am guessing part of the speed was because there were only 57 passengers on board.
  • How cold is the water? Have the snorkelers mentioned this? We’re Floridians and I’ve packed second skin so I won’t be cold. Is this necessary? 
    Since I didn’t snorkel or swim that much I asked three friends (one of them was Celebrity’s scientist in residence Ellen who does the Galapagos 3-4 times a year) who did snorkel and swim everyday it was available and their answer was that the water was really nice. The times I got in the water, I did not find it too cold. But Ellen mentioned that it will get colder until the fall. Ellen said the second skin is a good idea. Many of those snorkeling wore a rash guards under their wetsuits. All three of them said that no matter what you bring to wear under the wetsuit you need to wash them out EVERY NIGHT. Two of our friends said they came back after dinner on the first night they snorkeled and the smell was overpowering. Ellen says she always just wears whatever was under the wetsuit into the shower, soaps it up and then rinses it out. Be prepared to take it off in the morning wet. I had a rash guard that Kathleen had gotten me and since it was also sun protective I wore it a bunch. Pretty much on every walk. She got it at Land’s End and I loved it.
  • Can you buy postcards or souvenirs on board? Should you?
    Yes and no. We are kind of old school. We like to send postcards. I even pre-print address labels to take with us. So we went down to the very small ship store on deck 3 and bought 15 postcards. Kathleen saw a tee-shirt there that she liked and got that too. And we bought a magnet as we kind of collect those. Total: $80. Didn’t realize that until we settled our account by the end of the trip. Later we found out that had we waited we would have paid half of that in the airport in Baltra on the way home. Save your money. Also, the airport in Baltra has a lot of souvenirs. Not knowing this, we bought something before we went through security. And then we found there were tons of places to buy things.
  • Did you get any take home gifts from X? 
    Yes we did. I need to preface telling you what we got by saying that we don’t know how many were given to us because we were the first cruise back after the pandemic or are given to everyone on every cruise. We got a really cool hand carved wooden tortoise, two Galapagos-themed coffee cups, two really nice metal water bottles, two backpacks (not that usable) a fanny pack, a baseball cap and Ecuadorian chocolate. All are awesome and we will use them. The wooden tortoise is sitting in our living room right now reminding us of all the good memories. Oops! I almost forgot the best thing we got. A small USB thumb drive on the very last day just before we got off the ship. It wasn’t the drive but what was on it. Every picture taken by the naturalists/guides during our week as well as pictures of the entire crew we had shared the week with. It is awesome. Especially if you were afraid you didn’t get enough pics.
  • Do you have a packing list? 
    I detailed above what I had with me. I did the entire cruise with a 24 inch carry on bag. Unlike other cruises you can wear whatever you want to the dining room and no one will say anything. Also, if you look on Cruise Critic there is a super great thread we followed to get ready. It is tremendous and there is a complete packing list on it. You can find that thread by clicking here. You may have to join Cruise Critic to see it though but that would be a very good thing if you cruise.
  • What was the average age of the people on board? What were your fellow cruisers like?
    There were all kind of people. The youngest were two outstanding 8th graders who entertained us all and there were people in their 80s. If you are a regular cruiser, remember that this is not the cruise where you will meet fellow cruisers with like backgrounds. For about half the people onboard, this may have been first time cruisers. They were there for the Galapagos and not the ship. We were there for both.
  • Coffee and booze—what’s the story?
    Coffee was available from about 6:30 am until around 10:00 pm in the Discovery Lounge. You could get your usual variety of coffee drinks you could get at your local Starbucks. We loved their cappuccinos. The Ecuadorian coffee in the dining room was wonderful.
    As far as alcoholic beverages, the same bar in Discovery Lounge will make you whatever you ask for but the liquor selection is very limited. For instance, there was one tequila, one gin, one vodka, one whiskey, etc. Much of this is because it is very expensive to ship it in and there is very little space to store it. This also reminds me to tell you that when it comes to wine for dinner, you get a choice of red or white. That’s it. For the same reason—importing and storage. We had red every night (yes, even with fish) and it was always from South America. Many times it was either Malbec or a red blend of Malbec and something else. Our favorite was a Malbec/Cab blend from Chile. They had maybe four brands of beer. Plus in your stateroom there is your typical mini-fridge with two bottles of an excellent Ecuadorian pilsner as well as four soft drinks. They get replenished as you drink them and they, like everything else on the ship are included. No charge!
  • What kind of weight limits did they have on the Baltra flight?  Was it full?  Did they have any diabetic passengers…they couldn’t go that long without food or the ability to carry food with them?  
    We were told they would limit us to 14 pounds for carryons (ONLY ONE ALLOWED) and 44lbs for checked luggage (again, only one). We were well under the checked luggage requirement but my camera bag weights at least 30lbs but no one checked it. The flight was not full and would not have been even if the ship had been full. It is a charter and most couples had a row to themselves. There was food served (a pretty lousy ham and cheese sandwich) but I don’t know if there were any diabetics on board. Kathleen says, “when they offer you food, take it because you don’t know when you will be offered food again.” Unlike a regular cruise when there is ALWAYS some food available, this is not the case on Flora since there is no regular buffet, only the dining room and the grille upstairs.
  • Would this cruise work for someone who is in a wheelchair?
    Sadly, no. There would be no way to get on or off the ship if you can’t go up or down the stairs on the Zodiacs. There is an elevator and it always cracked me up when people used it because there are only five passenger decks and we were on deck five which meant we only had to go up or down two levels no matter where we wanted to go
  • Was this a good post-pandemic cruise to take?
    We don’t think you could find a better one.  All except one day, we were completely in a bubble. There is no COVID on any of the islands other than maybe Santa Cruz. That was the only island we saw people who were not sailing with us. Celebrity did a great job with COVID precautions and testing. It is the perfect post-pandemic cruise.
  • “You take amazing photos! What kind of camera do you use? What lenses did you take?”
    Thank you! Photography is my favorite hobby. If you click here you can see the best of my previous travel pics. And yes, I do sell them on that site but feel free to just look. I shoot a Nikon D810 DSLR. It’s a big heavy, full frame camera. I took two lenses with me; a Nikor 24-300mm zoom that I shot every photo with. I also had a 50mm lens with me but it was just as a backup. Every single photo was taken with the zoom lens. I will also mention that prior to this cruise I didn’t take a lot of wildlife photos. But to prep I watched a ton of videos on YouTube and read a lot. You should do the same if you want the kind of moving action I got.
  • We were recently informed by the Galapagos Desk that all travelers in our party would need coverage for both medical  and evacuation. Were you asked to provide proof of either?
    We were also told you HAD TO HAVE medical and evacuation insurance and it was REQUIRED by the National Park of Ecuador. We have friends who had taken the cruise before and they had to show proof of insurance but we did not. I think that may have been because of all the COVID stuff just got in the way.  If you go without either of those insurance policies, you are NUTS! Even though there are two doctors onboard Flora, there are no major medical facilities on the islands. Medical Evacuation insurance is a MUST. 
  • We are interested in booking a private tour on the last day when we return from Balta, as our flight home leaves at midnight.  But also concerned about last minute Celebrity changes and what the schedule will be for testing on the last day to return to US.
    If it works as ours did, once you fly back from Balta you will be given an appointment in the later afternoon when you must go for a COVID test. You get the results in about an hour. You can’t get a boarding pass from any airline leaving Quito without the test results. I would not make any plans for that day. We didn’t reach the hotel until 4:30pm and our test was at 6:20pm. We went to dinner (X paid) and then got the test results. By that time it was too late to get a boarding pass so we got them at the airport at 4:30 am the next morning.
  • After all the hassles you had with your air cancellations we are worried we will have problems as well. Any advice? 
    Yes! Check your airline reservations all the time. Verify them daily in the week or two leading up to your cruise. This is true no matter where you are flying. I want to make it clear that we do NOT hold Celebrity responsible for the cancellation of our original flight to Quito. American Airlines (WHO I WILL NEVER FLY WITH AGAIN for so many reasons—I would rather walk) who cancelled our flight to Quito with less than a week to go and did not inform us even though I had given them our e-mail and phone number. But that does not excuse Celebrity Air from not notifying us either. I just happened to be checking seats and found out that way. Check, check, check. Especially if you are flying with one of the big carries like United, American or Delta. They fly so many flights that they can cancel them with impunity. Keep in mind if they do cancel you and don’t offer you a flight within six hours of your original flight they must refund your airfare. It may take a while but you will get it. Not a voucher, a refund.

I think that about covers it. If you have any others, please let me know in the comments. Tomorrow more about the ship.

Day 7–Santa Cruz and the Giant Tortoises

by | Jul 15, 2021 | Photography

Our last full day in the Galapagos found us on Santa Cruz Island. This was a very different day as there were no choices to be made about where to go today. Everyone on the ship was going to the same place…to drive across Santa Cruz Island. One thing that was different on this day were that we were all asked to wear masks for the first time off the ship in the week. This was because we would be meeting others who were outside our ship’s safety bubble.

After our Zodiac ride to the northernmost point on the island we hopped on busses to drive the entire length of the island to the Charles Darwin Research Center. But on the way an amazing thing happened. You see, so far every island we had visited had either been dry lava rock or dry scrub brush and rock. But Santa Cruz Island is split in half and as we drove south towards the Darwin Center and climbed in elevation, the dry, arid land turned to…rain forest. Seriously, all of a sudden we were driving through clouds. And it was raining. What a huge contrast to the entire previous week of weather.

After driving through some rain, farmland and finally a small town, we arrived at the Darwin Center.  The Center is all about keeping alive all the different species of giant tortoises from all the different islands. They have hundreds of turtles of all ages. The smallest are segregated by the island they came from. Then as they get older they are put into the same pens but with numbers on their shells that indicate the island of their origin.

In still another enclosure were some fully grown giant tortoises. They are truly amazing creatures. These were being kept apart because they can’t be sure which island they came from and they do not want to cross-pollinate species. As you can see from my photos, these animals are amazing. Later in the day we would see them in wild.

After our visit we headed back into the hills to visit the Manzanillo Ranch for lunch but before we got there we stopped to do some community service. Celebrity supports a reforestation project that removes invasive species and replaces them with the kind of plants that are native to the island. It was an interesting experience. Because we were planting them a ways off the road, our bus stopped (blocking half the road) and we got out and found a row of chairs and a pair of rubber boots that we swapped for our shoes. We then grabbed a trowel and two seedling trees and then we headed into the jungle. There we found pre-dug holes that we dropped the seedlings into and from there we just covered them, took pics of each other, changed our boots (while they stopped cars—it was almost funny to see this row of chairs standing on the road) and we were off to Manzanillo Ranch for lunch.

At the ranch they had a very nice covered area where a delicious buffet lunch was served. Again, just like the ship, no one was allowed to serve themselves and all the servers were masked. Lunch was tasty and was followed by an Ecuadorian folk dance performance by students from the island dressed in colorful, traditional colors . Celebrity has been supporting this group for a while including sending them to a folk dance competition to Italy.

I need to mention something that was so typically Galápagos. While I was taking these photos of the dancers in a covered area at a ranch, all I had to do was turn around in the exact spot where I was standing to take this photo. A giant tortoise that seems to have come along to see the performance himself.

After lunch we were allowed to go onto the rest of the grounds on the ranch to see the tortoises close up. Some notes about that short walk. As we started to leave the enclosure, the rain picked up and that meant my camera went into my dry bag so I didn’t get very many pics of the big guys in the wild. But I had so many from the Darwin Center, that was OK with me. Another thing that was very interesting was when a fellow traveler asked our naturalist who owned these tortoises, the ranch or the National Park that bordered it? His answer was, “No one owns them. They own themselves and can go anywhere they want on these islands. That is our  law.” In fact we were told if you were a rancher or a farmer, you could be fined for using any fencing that would block the tortoises from migrating. Speaking of migrating, our friend Fausto who runs the Celebrity operations in the Galapagos told us he had been to the ranch less than two weeks before to finalize the lunch plans and when he was there he saw two or three tortoises. Two weeks later while we were there we saw hundreds. They were migrating to the higher elevations. There were so many on the road leaving the ranch, it made it hard for our bus driver to get off the property. Think of driving in a sheep ranching area and running into a bunch of sheep on the road and have to stop until they moved. Now imagine it at tortoise speed ?.

After our tortoise experience it was back to the ship for our final dinner, packing to leave and sad farewells. But in the meantime, here’s the balance of today’s pics.

I will be back tomorrow with some notes on the ship and our room. See you then.

 

Day 6–South Plaza and Santa Cruz

by | Jul 13, 2021 | Photography

Good day readers! As I write this I am sitting in our good friend Cathy’s living room in Wellington, Florida. As I think I mentioned before I am planning on doing four more posts after this one. One to cover Day 7, another to answer questions, a third to talk about the ship and our stateroom (with video) and the last one to kind of sum things up…with a very few complaints, so stick with me please.

South Plaza Island

Just off Santa Cruz Island (the Galapagos most populated island) are two very small islands, North and South Plaza Islands. On a map they look like two halves of a circle with missing pieces at the top and bottom. Smaller boats (up to 30 people) anchor in between them during the night. Here’s what our schedule looked like:

This morning we again had the choice of a long or short walk. Kathleen took the short walk and I took the long one. This one was a real eye opener. Not for the fauna (because as you will see in the photos, there were plenty of the usual suspects) but because of the flora. All of the islands we had been on before this had been either green (foliage), black (lava) or brown (scrub brush) but South Plaza was lit up like New England in the fall. Not on trees but on the ground. And the cacti looked like a forest sometimes…after a fire when only a few good trees are still standing.

It was drop dead gorgeous. Especially since the weather was also pretty good or a long walk. This was the windiest island we were on. And that meant the amazing seaman who drive the Zodiacs had a heck of time getting us on and off. We thought that was the toughest we had seen them have doing a dry landing…until that afternoon. So here’s my pics of our morning hike. I truly loved this walk as it was like being in an entirely different type of island.

Dragon’s Hill, Santa Cruz Island

In the afternoon we headed to the island of Santa Cruz for what we were told would be a “fast walk.” Which meant as our cruise director Betina told us, “More walk, less talk.” But it seems we found time for both. I want to add here if you take the longer walk, it is fast. We were moving. I walk 4-6 miles a day at home at just over 15 minutes per mile and I found this one to be strenuous. Mostly because of the trails.

This is called Dragon’s Hill because of the plethora of land iguanas of very large size. So you will have to endure a few more to those. But to me the big revelation (for the second time that day) was the geology. Many of my fellow walkers felt it looked like Mars (with water) or the Moon (again with water ?). Check out the photos to see what I mean.

One thing to know if you take this walk—it is HOT! Even with a breeze. So take lots of water. You will need it. And thus ends day six. I really liked this day. Just when I thought they couldn’t show us anything different, they did. These were two awesome hikes I would not have wanted to miss. But day seven was even more different. I should have that for you tomorrow but later in the day as we don’t fly from Fort Lauderdale today until 6:30 pm EDT and don’t arrive in SEA until 10:00 pm PDT. So who knows how we late we will get up. Plus I want to walk, need to shop for groceries and then collapse ?.