Today is our big day! We fly from Quito to the airport on Baltra Island of the Galápagos Islands.

First, we needed to start off with a great breakfast. They have a very nice buffet, along with making you fresh eggs, pancakes, waffles, etc. The fresh fruit was fantastic. It was much better than what we were getting in the US at that time.

I had them make me some fresh waffles. Even something simple like a waffle has a pretty presentation.

Next stop is the Quito airport, with a two-hour flight to the Galápagos. The airport at Baltra Island was medium sized. Last year, over 300,000 people visited the Islands – Wow! They are predicting up to 1 million visitors by 2041. I honestly don’t see how they could support that number of visitors without destroying the islands. There are about 28,000 people living on the Islands. That is plenty for keeping the unique environment of the Galápagos Islands intact.

Anyway, here is a picture of our arrival entry at the airport…

Outside of the airport, we saw our very first Galápagos wildlife – a colorful land iguana. Hard to tell by the picture, but he was large. His body was about 2 feet long, not including the tail.

After flying to Baltra, we had to take a boat across the channel to Santa Cruz Island. It was a small boat, just enough to carry our fellow passengers who came in on the same flight.

After the quick boat ride, we loaded up onto a bus which brought us to the Highlands to see the Galápagos Tortoises – a highlight of a trip to the Islands!

During all this shuffling, we met our two WONDERFUL guides – Monica and Cornelia. We can’t say enough good things about both of them. They truly made this trip outstanding. Here is a quick picture of Monica on the bus. Cornelia is squeezed in the front seat with her. 😉

A great guide can clearly make or break a trip to the Galápagos. We were so lucky to have them!

After about a 30-minute bus ride, we arrived at a ranch in the Highlands area. This is a nature reserve area where the Galápagos Tortoises live due to the lush, tropical greenery. It is not fenced in, but it is protected environment.

You can see a sneak peek of a Tortoise just to the right behind this sign.

It was lunch time when we arrived, so they fed us a BBQ buffet lunch. We got to meet the other passengers on our boat, too. This location is super lush – wet and green.

We had a great view from our lunch table. There are 6 Tortoises scattered in this picture. The further away ones just look like rocks. 😉

After lunch, we got to walk around the area. Since it’s very wet, it is also muddy. So, they had all of us put on galoshes so we didn’t ruin our shoes.

Then, we were off to view the Tortoises up close in their natural habitat! This one posed perfectly….

Monica took a picture of us while the Tortoise just carried on eating grass.

Tortoises also like to rest in water.

This one is asleep in a puddle. It’s funny how his neck stretches so far to reach the ground.

It’s amazing how many Tortoises we saw here. They just ignored us, continuing to eat or walk on by us. Here is a very short video of a slow moving Tortoise.

After wandering around with the Tortoises, we walked through some underground lava tunnels.

These weren’t very long, but they were neat.

This shows our wonderful guide Cornelia on the left and two fellow passengers on the right.

After this, we left to finally head over to our boat. At the port, we saw the ubiquitous Galápagos Sea Lions lying around everywhere. Here, we had to pass right by them to get to the dinghy. These sea lions are endemic to the Galápagos Islands and only one other small island off the coast of Ecuador. You shall see that we saw a lot of sea lions on this trip!

And… here is our boat for the next two weeks… The Grace. She is named after Princess Grace Kelly because she was gifted this yacht for her honeymoon. This boat was a submarine chaser during World War II. After that, it was owned by various tycoons. Of course, it has been totally retrofitted to be an expedition boat in the Galápagos.

The Grace has a max of 16 passengers. We did have 16 during our first week, and only 14 during our second week. When I looked for the best company for our visit to the Galápagos, I wanted a small boat that had a good naturalist guide-to-guest ratio. Quasar Expeditions, with The Grace, had the best – with two guides for 16 passengers. We saw large 100-passenger ships unloading as we were leaving a couple of islands. That looked awful!

The staff on The Grace was all outstanding – from the Captain (Jorge) on down. It was truly an exceptional experience with a great boat and exceptional staff and guides!

Here is the back area (aft) of the boat, where we had all of our meals…

We took a quick walk around the boat after settling in our cabin. Here is a path towards the front (bow) of the boat. I love all the wood on this boat.

At the bow of the boat, they have a hot tub! Most guests jumped in after the snorkeling (in the very cold 68 degree water), but we didn’t. Jeff isn’t a fan of hot tubs, and I just didn’t see a way to easily fit in with so many other people.

This area near the hot tub is where the wet suits were stored (on the left side of picture). And, after every land or water visit, we went up front here to have our shoes or other gear rinsed off. It was important to rinse the bottom of shoes so that we didn’t track unwanted things between different islands.

The next floor up is the bridge, and above that is the sun deck. Up on the sun deck, there was an area we could hang all our wet snorkel clothing out to dry. With usually two snorkels a day, this was very helpful!

Finally, going around to the aft part of the boat and up a deck, we have the bar area. This was a very nice area to hang out, with an outstanding bartender, Diego. Of course, Diego did much more than tend the bar. He seemed to do some of everything! Here is Diego, helping serve lunch…

The bar is where we hung out when not in our room. I was able to stand there, which was great for my back problems.

Since I wake up so early, I was up here early every morning while it was still dark and no one was about. I just turned on the lights and got comfy. The first morning I was up there in the dark, I was trying different switches to figure out which lights I wanted on. Well, Captain Jorge saw lights flipping on and off from the bridge and had no idea what was going on. So he came back to find me there, flipping switches. No worries! He was fine with me doing that. 🙂

We want to say that Captain Jorge was fantastic! He was around and helping with things every day. As we left and returned to the boat for our excursions, he was always there to lend a helping hand and ask how our trip went. Clearly, his friendly and caring style showed in how the entire ship was run.

This is jumping ahead to a different day, but here is a picture of us with Captain Jorge as we came back onboard from the dinghy…

Also, here is a picture showing the names of our crew. I want to honor all of them – they were great!

Hard to believe, but we forgot to take pictures of our cabin! We were in cabin C2, located down a deck from the dining area. Here is a picture of cabin C1 from Quasar’s website. C1 is similar to ours, but not quite as large as C2. We thought our cabin was a good size, with a reasonably sized bathroom.

After a very long day, we had dinner and then slept very soundly in our cabin! Tomorrow will be another adventure.