Ecuador, mostly the Galapagos Islands

I spent just over a week in Ecuador before ducking back to Australia for 3 weeks. The majority of my time there was spent in the Galapagos, so this blog post will be heavy on the photographs and not so much on the words.

Landscapes

The Galapagos Islands had stunning landscapes, each island unique in both its geology and ecology.

Our boat with a rainbow in the background

A barren island with cacti 

This is actually the edge of a cliff dropping down into the ocean. I particularly liked this island (pictured immediately above and below) because of the cacti and the bright red succulents 

Another tour group hiking on the horizon

A lonely sea lion on the beach

Waves crashing against the shoreline

Species #1: The Sally Lightfoot Crab

The Sally Lightfoot Crab is a bright red crab endemic to the Galapagos

Here is a Sally Lightfoot Crab in close-up

And here are several of them (ie, a typical coastal rock scene in the Galapagos)

Species #2: Tortoise

We did not see any tortoises in the wild, however we did get to visit the Charles Darwin Research Centre where we saw some that are in the breeding programme. 

Species #3: Birds

The Galapagos is renowned for its unique birdlife. Arguably the most iconic of these birds are the frigate birds and the blue-footed boobies.

Here is a Frigate bird

The red puff of the neck is a signifier of male sexual prowess, so this was one stud of a bird

Boobies are quite hard to photograph as they spend much more time grooming than posing

Got it!

I loved boobies because of their endearing goofiness

It was booby mating season, so we saw a bit of this...

...and consequently a bit of this (baby booby!)

In addition to the unique birds there were some more conventional birds that were nonetheless amazing. Spot the bird in this picture

Thank you 16x optical zoom!

This gull is actually unique to the Galapagos, but I just couldn't bring myself to list a gull under unique

We saw a whole bunch of pelicans

But they didn't stick around for long

We saw a bird feeding frenzy

It was really something

Species #4: Iguanas

Apparently these were seeded onto the islands by a bunch of rafts from mainland South America after a storm. Just take a moment to think about a raft (consisting of trees uprooted by a storm) covered in iguanas sailing to the Galapagos. 

(I'm sick of writing captions, and also my captions are lame enough for Buzzfeed, so no more captions)

Species #5: Sea Lions (my favourites)

Species #6: Humans

There are a lot of humans on the Galapagos Islands

A delusional human pretending to be a sea lion

Quito and Cotopaxi

Quito is a particularly charming South American city, definitely one of my favourites out of all of the cities that I've visited on the continent so far.

Here are some photos from my sightseeing in Quito:

We (Joe, Sue and I) also did a day trip to Cotopaxi Volcano, which is beautiful and breathtaking (literally) for me as I had not acclimatised to altitude at all!

Santiago

After Ecuador I flew to Santiago and spent a day there before flying to Australia where I spent 3 weeks seeing friends and family, refuelling and restocking.

Santiago is a super cool city. Here are a small collection of photos:

Next stop: (3 weeks in Australia, which I won't be blogging about) then my South American adventures continue in Bolivia, Chile and Argentina!