Thursday, 21 April, 2011. 09:20. Lima.

Well, we’ve had our bad news for today. We have put our dirty clothes together ready to be washed by the hotel laundry service, only to be told that today and tomorrow are holidays (being Holy Thursday and Good Friday), and the earliest they will do it is Saturday – the day we leave Lima!

20:23

We’ve had an interesting day exploring Lima on our own before our tour starts tomorrow. We began by trying to get our laundry done by the hotel and failing, so we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It was a simple continental style affair, with bread, ham, cheese, and fruit, although a bit of asking about an empty spot on the buffet labelled “cereal” produced two bowls of corn flakes. It also turned out you could order eggs for extra cost, but we didn’t bother. M. liked the peach yoghurt on the corn flakes.

After eating, we grabbed our laundry form the room and went to go for a walk to see if we could find an open laundry. I’d seen three of them within a few blocks of our hotel yesterday, so knew we’d find some – the only question was whether they’d be open and able to do our wash before closing for Good Friday. By amazing good fortune, we ran into a guy from Intrepid who was looking for us in the hotel lobby. His name was Edwin and he had information for us about tomorrow’s tour, which would be led by a woman named Alejandrina. He also said he was here to help us with anything else we needed and said, “I see you have laundry!” I explained the hotel wasn’t accepting it today because of the Easter holidays and he said there were a couple of laundries nearby that were good and inexpensive, and gave us directions.
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Wednesday, 20 April, 2011. 17:57. Hotel Leon de Oro, Lima, Peru.

We have arrived in Peru for a couple of days in Lima before joining our next Intrepid tour. We were up and packed by 05:30, and then at Guayaquil Airport by about 06:00. The first thing we encountered was a gadget staffed by two men which they were using to encase people’s luggage in great reams of plastic wrap. A lady tried to push us towards it, and at first we thought it was some sort of security requirement. But the guy said it cost US$10 a bag, and it seemed to be optional, so we started to walk away towards the check-in desks. The woman urged us in Spanish again, this time miming rainfall, and we realised that the plastic was meant to protect bags from the rain that was pouring down outside. Given the chance that our bags might be exposed to that while in the care of the airline, we paid our $20 and had the bags encased in plastic. It was a good thing too, because when we collected them, the handles (the only exposed bit) were soaked, and I saw some obviously water-damaged bags on the baggage claim carousel in Lima.

The flight was only 1.5 hours, and we had our breakfast on board – just a sandwich – but we also had some chocolate that M. bought last night while we were waiting for our hotel pick-up. On landing in Lima, we passed through immigration and customs quickly and were met outside by a helpful woman from Intrepid, who led us to a four-wheel drive driven by a woman called Alice to take us to the Hotel Leon de Oro. The Intrepid woman (we didn’t catch her name) warned us to only carry enough cash for what we needed when walking around Lima.
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Isla San Cristóbal to Guayaquil. Tuesday, 19 April, 2011

This morning was an early start, after another cruise during the night to the island of San Cristóbal. We assembled at 06:00 on the top sun deck of the boat for a view of the approaching Léon Dormido (also known as Kicker Rock) – a volcanic lava cone now exposed as a bare chunk of rock jutting from the sea several hundred metres off the shore of the main island. The aim here was to do a couple of circuits of the rock to observe the nesting and courtship display of frigatebirds.

The rock is split by a narrow channel of water, otherwise presenting a steeply sloping profile that gives it its Spanish name of “sleeping lion”. There are only a few alcoves where a sea lion can haul out of the water, and these were populated by dozing beasts. We also saw lots of blue-footed boobies nesting or streaking the rock with guano. But the major attractions here were the magnificent frigatebirds, which nest on the rock. As the boat did a circuit, we could see several nests with birds on them, and as we watched the males inflated their large red throat sacs in their spectacular courtship display. They were necessarily one or two hundred metres away, but we got good views through binoculars or telephoto camera lenses.

The boat circled the rock twice, allowing us plenty of time to see the various birds. We also spotted a Pacific green sea turtle in the water at the base of the rock, watching it surface to breathe a few times before it disappeared again. Having completed our circuits of the rock, the boat set out for the small town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the capital of the Galapagos province of Ecuador, on the southwest coast of San Cristóbal.
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Isla Española: Punta Suárez to Gardner Bay. Monday, 18 April, 2011.

Overnight the boat sailed for Española Island, in the far south-eastern corner of the archipelago and the oldest of all the Galapagos Islands. We began our day with breakfast, which included fried eggs and small cake-like objects made of plantain, with a haloumi-like cheese inside them.

The first expedition of the day was an excursion to Punta Suarez, on the western end of the island. On the beach at the landing site here we saw many specimens of the distinctively bright coloured Española variety of the marine iguana, with large patches of bright red on their flanks. Again there were also plenty of blue-footed boobies and bright red crabs, though only a few sea lions. The day was again warm and muggy, with chaotic looking clouds that threatened either rain or bright sunshine at any time.

The first new bird we saw on our trek was a Galapagos hawk, sitting on a small rock outcrop poking out of the vegetation. It seemed completely unconcerned with us. We also saw brown pelicans, preening on rocks or flying around. And while watching from the beach we saw several boobies diving into the water to catch fish. They circled around about 10 metres above the water, spotting fish below with their keen eyes. Then suddenly one would break from horizontal flight and dive headlong straight into the water like a bullet, pulling its wings in at the last second before impact. The bird would surface a few seconds later, presumably with a fish in its beak.

William had warned us this morning to take insect repellent, but there seemed little need for it yet. As we set out on a walk across the island, another tour group appeared at the end of the loop walk we were about to take. Their leader warned us to make sure we had plenty of insect repellent, as there were loads of mosquitoes on the walk. Undaunted, we set off, crossing the scrub-covered lava rock of the island, and were soon set on by clouds of the mosquitoes. Our repellent, being 80% DEET, was the most effective of any used by the people in our group. While some others were swatting mosquitoes and busily applying more repellent, we walked through unaffected.
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Isla Plaza Sur to Isla Santa Fé. Sunday, 17 April, 2011

The boat sailed in the night, picking up its anchor about 02:00. This was a noisy affair, and then the engines added to it, and we slipped out of the relatively gentle waters of the harbour into the open sea, where the waves rocked the boat more vigorously. Not that I was sleeping anyway – the rocking of the boat made it difficult to even stay in one position on the bunk without rolling slightly. I dozed fitfully until morning, when we arrived at the sheltered bay between the small islands of North Plaza and South Plaza, off the eastern coast of the much bigger Santa Cruz.

The dawn looked gorgeous in the islands and this washed away the drowsiness of the night. A few other large boats were moored in the same bay, and we could see groups of people making excursions on to the land via dinghies. Our turn would come later, after breakfast. There was a selection of cereal, fruit, bread, and pancakes, plus French toast, which Anne declared to be her absolute favourite breakfast, thanking Francesco for it. It was made on a slightly sweet brioche-like bread, and was nice.

Following this, we assembled at the aft deck for our first land excursion on an uninhabited island. South Plaza is a small island of volcanic rock, only a few hundred metres long east to west and a few tens of metres wide north to south. The island rises on a gentle slope out of the bay between itself and the parallel North Plaza until it reaches cliffs maybe 10 metres high on the southern side that drop into the sea below. The dinghies took us to a concrete landing platform, where we had our first encounter with real Galapagos wildlife. This consisted mostly of sea lions, sprawled out on the rocks everywhere. They were totally unconcerned at human presence, ignoring us as we walked around and in some cases over them as they lay across the path. Some of them were moving around, splashing in or out of the water along the shore, or clambering around on the rock, but most seemed to be asleep. We saw some pups suckling milk from their mothers. They were of moderate size, friendly, and unimposing looking, which was good, because I know how large and dangerous some species of pinnipeds can be. At no stage did any of them make so much as a hostile gaze at us.
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