We wrapped up the last few days on the islands hanging out with large tortoises, adorable sea lions and a few sea turtles.  The last day we woke up early,  6:30 AM starting out with a zodiac ride to what they call a wet landing.  This means you get out of the boat and get wet before getting to land, so creative.  We completed a strenuous hike then some snorkeling followed by hanging out with sea lions on the beach.  While snorkeling Linda saw a baby sea turtle (an endangered species) sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor about 10ft down, she called over our naturalist, Danny, and other snorkelers to get a view of the turtle as well.  Danny dove down to get a closer look a realized the turtle was caught on a fishing net.  He pulled the turtle up, placed it in a zodiac that came over and then proceeded to do some minor surgery by cutting away the netting.  The operation was a success and Danny dropped the turtle back in the water and it swam away.  After the turtle rehabbed for 10 minutes he swam back our way, we knew it was the same turtle because we could see hand prints on its back shell where algae was wiped away.  So cool to interact and help.

Greg being attacked by sea Lion

We have always enjoyed nature and wildlife but now we have a real appreciation for both conservation of the earth and how creatures live their lives just like us inferior humans.  After all, we are the species that need all this extra help to live; houses, restaurants, cars, doctors…  A tortoise can live to be 170 years old, not saying I would like to sit in my shell and move a few feet each day but it’s still twice as long as our life expectancy.

Blue footed boobies have a dance ritual they do to attract a potential mate, the mate on the other end will determine how well they dance and how pretty they are before engaging.  We all know Linda loves to dance, enough said:)

Blue Footed Boobies

 Most sea birds eat fish, they can fly over the sea a few hundred feet up, spot and fish and dive down at 40mph head first into the water and pull out a fish.  They have a gel sack around their head to lessen the blow to their brain, imagine doing this everyday, we get brain damage from just heading a soccer ball and I have a headache just thinking about it.  I will try to continue to write about useless knowledge so if you get bored of hearing about our travels maybe you will still read the blog because you are learning something 🙂

 It’s the last night on the cruise, We had dinner with a few Ecuadorians named Carlos and Christian.

Greg Wrapping with dudes

What did we learn?

-They love the United States but when people from South America move to the US they look down on people who stay in South America, not very nice.

-Although I could barely understand their English they thought they had no accent when speaking English.

-Their political voting system is better than ours.  Simply put, whoever gets the most votes wins, these people are crazy:) And yes, this is a political statement I am making.

-We made them try to talk in a southern slang and a New York accent, it was hilarious.

-When you barbecue don’t eat at the table, just hang around the grill and eat as everything comes off the grill.  And never cook with propane. As Carlos said “just take a big can of oil, cut it in half and throw some wood in what else could you need.”

-We went back to our room to find that our room steward made a person out of our towels…complete w clothes, a laptop and baseball hat. So clever. The animals were great but the dude takes the cake!  We were laughing historically. Linda made a dummy laying across our bathroom threshold in a funny retaliation!

-Everyone is so gracious to the dumb gringos trying to learn spanish…not the same in the US when a South American person is learning English!!!! Here they help, encourage and give tips.

Flying out to Quito, the capital of Ecuador.  At 9,350 ft above sea level it is the highest capital city in the world.  (more useless knowledge)