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Sharks, Boobies and the Beginning of Time - Galapagos Island Eco-Adventure
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Ecuador - Galapagos - Sharks, Boobies and the Beginning of Time - Galapagos Island Eco-Adventure
Snorkelling 1000 kilometres off Ecuador's coast in their Galapagos Islands is like diving into your television to find yourself in a very Finding-Nemo-inspired watery world. In fact, the entire Galapagos Islands experience is a surrealistic adventure that can be found nowhere else in Nature.
It's not just that the Sally Lightfoot crabs look like a punch-drunk Picasso tried out paint-by-number on their backs. And it's not that the marine iguanas piled hundreds deep on the black lava rocks have a definite sci-fi twist to their wise old faces. And when you first see the blue-footed boobies, it won't be the weird turquoise feet that take your breath away, but that you can practically kiss them and they won't flee.
Ditto on the flee-factor for those aforementioned iguanas, the 150-year old tortoises, the flopping and rolling sea lions or the seagoing turtles. Even sharing a moment with two penguins on a rocky outcropping no bigger than a sofa cushion, the theme is the same…they are oblivious to your existence. They don't fly, waddle, swim or walk away. How cool is it to be standing on a path when an albatross with a 9'wingspan lands directly in front of you, pretends you're not there, and greets his lifelong mate with a bizarre bobble-headed mating dance before doing a clicking-beaked kiss?
Of course, this also means that when you're snorkelling and see that a five-foot long, white-tipped reef shark is coming at you, that there's a pretty good chance it's not going to go away either… In my defence, a little background is in order. It needs to be understood that my husband is a true gentleman. He walks on the outside of me when we're on sidewalks to save me from splashes. He opens my door.
In short, he acts like my gallant protector, which surely must be why I grabbed him, made sure he was between the shark and me and then tried to climb directly up and out of the turquoise sea using his back as a stepping stone…all while screaming through my snorkel. No mean feat I assure you.
Luckily, the shark was rather blase and I finally remembered the naturalist telling us that the sharks were non-threatening. Good thing, cuz it's really hard to climb out of the ocean, even if you use your husband as a raft.
It felt a little safer on our daily shore excursions when our naturalist guides walked us through lava fields that look like bulldozers broke up a massive parking lot of asphalt. We hiked up dusty trails and magnesium sand mountains to have a birds-eye vantage on islands that have only recently been birthed from the ocean's depths. It's easy to see what inspired Darwin to shake up the entire scientific world.
At the end of every amazing day, we'd tuck into our ship-shape bunks and be rocked to sleep by the rolling waves. We floated for a week in this emergent world surrounded by animals that embody Darwin's rather harsh epiphany…Adapt or Die".
For the eco-award winning operator of choice: www.ecoventura.com
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