The Passionate Traveler

Green Iguanas After my great holiday in the Galapagos it was time for me to start working again. There are many pros to travelling for work. The most important of these is that you are looked after by local people. This is great, as they know where they are going and normally ( no - always) look after you very nicely. After landing in Guayaquil after the flight from the Galapagos, I was met by the local representative from the company (Basicpharm Ecuador) and the first order of the day was lunch. We went to a great local seafood restaurant for a great meal. Thereafter I was dropped off in my hotel for a bit of a rest. The next day would be a busy day with 2 presentations to various clients. Between the presentations, they took me to the Park of Iguanas. This was a real surprise. Right in the middle of the city is a typical city park, but this was not like any other typical park. Lunch time Once through the gate of the park, there were many beautiful green iguanas. Ther...

Ecuador is a very mountainous country. A truly beautiful country and one of my favourite travel destinations. Being on the ring of fire, there are many active volcanoes and one of the must do activities in Ecuador is to travel along the avenue of volcanoes. If you are lucky, you will also get to the very beautiful Mt Cotopaxi, but you do need a bit of luck to she her. The mountain is normally covered by cloud and on this trip to Ecuador, she was pretty much covered up again. There are two options to travel along the avenue of volcanoes. The first is by road. This is the main highway South of Quito. The roads in Equador are really good and for much of the central part, the roads are mountain passes. Another way to travel along the avenue of volcanoes is by train. There is an effort to make use of the rail system in Ecuador again and the main service is tourist trains. At the station A very well organised day trip is a train ride from the Old city of Quito to the station of El Bla...

In this final post after my trip to the Galapagos, I will just be posting more of my photos of the beautiful and interesting wildlife on the Islands. Early morning coffee on the boat Marie Iguana The most iconic of the unique animals of the Galapogose Islands must be the giant tortoises. The tortoises are believed to grow to over 200 hundred years old. If the lines on the tourtoses' shell can still be seen, the tortoise is under 100 years old. Sea Lions Just chilling on the beach Other interesting animals (birds) and the one which was high on my Wish list was the blue footed booby. The other boobys were also very beautiful and being in the middle of a nesting colony of Nazca boobys was a memorable experience. The Red Footed Booby is actually the most interesting of the Boobys. They are web footed birds, yet they peach and nest in trees. Nazca boobys Beautiful other birds which were seen on the Galapagos included the mocking bird, pelican, penguins (I did s...

Man they are big! The final day of the trip and we had still not seen the most iconic animal in the Galápagos, the giant tortoise. It was a very early start and we needed to have our luggage outside the door of our cabin by six am. During the night the boat had moved to Santa Cruz Island and was anchored in a beautify bay with many other boats.  While waiting to get onto the dingy, a massive Galápagos shark cruised past the boat. Apparently these are quite aggressive sharks so not a good time to fall into the water! After arriving at the jetty, we boarded a bus and headed up into the hills, which were all extinct volcanoes. There was a mist around and we were told that this was a pretty regular fixture on the island. This meant that there was fresh water on the island. This looked much more like an island on the equator! Green and beautiful. There was still plenty of evidence of the volcanic history of the island with large volcanic rocks everywhere. There were green fiel...

Sunrise on Day 4 Day 4 of the wonderful trip to the Galapagos started off with a wet landing on Cormorant Point on Floreana Island, another Island in the Galapagos archipelago. This was a beautify oviline green beach, which gets its green colour from the small oviline crystals in the sand. The first sighting of the day was a Galapagos penguin in the water just off the beach. I was very excited to see the penguin as it was one of the species which was very high on my "Wish List". I would have loved to have seen them outside the water, but just seeing one was great. Nice wet landing There were also flamingos on the lagoon, but on the far side. I did get a few photos, but not good enough to put into the blog. There were, however, some very  photogenic Galapagos ducks which were posing quite nicely. Over the ridge, we came to the beach were turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. There was evidence that one came ashore in the evening to do the deed as there were very fre...

Marine iguana Day 3 of the trip started on a different island. We were now on Espanola island, one of the oldest of the group of Islands. In the briefing the night before we were told that this was another difficult walk. No climbing but lots and lots of rocks and very uneven pathways. This would also be a dry landing as there was a small jetty at Suarez Point. On this island, the marine iguanas are quite different from the other islands and are the most beautify with the males in full mating colours having a lot of red in the skin. This red colour has to do with their diet of marine algae and around Espanola Island, there is a lot of red algae. There were no shortage of marine iguanas on this island! Just after landing, there were many iguanas on the path. So much so that it was quite difficult to walk! The guide told us to make sure not to stand on their tails as they  would give you a nasty bite. They just don't move out of the way. So many! All of the wildlife on...