Where 21 - Galapagos Islands, Ecuador --OR-- Dancing with Sealions

HI there,

It doesn´t seem 5 mins since I left the cold and rain of England for the slightly warmer climes of the equator, but time is moving on, unfortunately faster than I am and the Xmas trees with flashing lights are taking over the shops and houses here making me think it is time to think about where I will be for Xmas and new year - Colombia or Venezula seem to be the very likely answers right now, but who knows.

Since leaving on 11 Nov I spent as little time as possible in Quito (Ecuador) and flew out to Galapagos where I have spent a couple of weeks (several days too long - see later) but then they are a unique ecosystem, infact a whole string of unique ecosystems as each island has it´s own.

The Best Bits
- The whole of the Galapagos is wonderful, its animals, some unique others not, are more friendly than an especially cuddly cat! In particular...
- Dancing with sealions - on the beach they are approachable (within a metre) but most of the time just lie there sunbathing. In the water they are not only agile, fast and curious they actually play games with you. Imagine a torpedo whizzing past, by the time you realise what it was, it´s gone. But it returns, this 1.5m sealion, effortlesly accelerating through the water straight for your mask and veering away when only a metre from your nose, then going eyeball to eyeball with its enormous drugged out bulging eyes, and having it swim round you, do backflips in perfect circles in front of your nose, bubbles pouring from its mouth, squarking 'can´t you do this' before it picks stones from the bottom in it's mouth and tries to give them to you. After a while you realise that it is trying to teach you tricks - just a bit of role reversal, after all we clumsy people can teach them nothing about agility in water. After 20 mins or so with the same animal you begin to understand it, know what to expect next. Then it hangs upside down in the water grinning at you - too close to take a picture as it will be out of focus - somehow I feel it knows that - Just Playing it is. It made my day, I hope I added something to its.
- Blue footed boobies - And yes there are loads of t-shirts on sale with a piture of 2 blue feet and the line ´I love Boobies´ underneath. They really are birds with blue feet and so entertaining they are named after the spanish word for clown ´Bobo´. They look pretty stupid and act even stupidier e.g. showing its blue feet is the way of attracting a mate, whether it washes them first I dont know. They are the best fishers though, zipping vertically into the water with swept back wings at incredible speed and gobbling its catch before surfacing else the Frigate birds (with huge red, heart shaped inflated chests will nick its fish).
- Pelicans - The most clumsy animals I have ever seen. They crash in to the sea with a large element of random precision and rely on scooping out a huge slice of water with their expanding pouches filtering it for small fish. In the air they are flying dinosaurs, and on land waddle awkwardly over each other and anything that gets in their way, usually resulting in them falling over each other or into a hole, constantly using their unweildy wings as surrogate arms to stop themselves or pull themselves up. They even steal the fisheads from the fishermen, store them in their pouches and sit their quite contentedly until they are alone, then having to spit out the fish only to realise it is too big for them to eat. Next to them stands the super efficient heron, bewildered by their antics and losing out to the numbers and brute force of its clumsy competitors.
- Penguins - yes they have penguins on the equator - watching them fly through the water chasing shoals of fish is remarkable. Where their power comes from is not clear, but they are elegant and ..... and they are penguins ... what more do you need!?
- Tortoises of the Giant kind - 1.5m long and living to over 150 years old - the oldest know one was 152 when it died in an accident, but no-one knows how old the current ones are. The are prehistoric, stretching their wrinkled necks out to reveal toothless grins, they rip the grass out by its roots and clamber with painful awkwardness over to a new patch of grass. Each one has a different personality, retracting with a hydraulic hiss, in its mountainous shell or posing elegantly for photos, they are magnificent animals - though why anyone thought it necessary to invent them is difficult to understand...
- Hanging out with the white tipped reef sharks about 10m down whilst scuba diving in the harsh and unpredictable currents whilst scuba diving. More evidence of our clumsiness as we desperatly cling onto the rocks to avaid being swept away, they just hang in the same spot hardly making any movement. They swim within a couple of metres and look curiously at me with their tiny squinty eye. I wonder what it was thinking? I know what I was thinking ... that´s probably close enough... And then a 4m hammerhead shark cruises by with eyes sticking out of its hammer - strange them sharks.
- Getting bored yet, well there was hanging out with the turtles as they fed on the weed on the rocks just below the surface, calmly being swept back and forth in the swell; The yellow, 2m long land iguanas, black marine iguanas unique to here - every few minutes they spit out salt to keep their bodies pH balanced - they are dragons with wry smiles, wrikled skin and spikes along the back and head - punk rock started here!

Enough Enough - we want to hear some bad bits! I hear you, so here they are:
- Missing Englands triumph in the world cup - it wasn´t on tv in Galapagos - England World Champions! (rugby that is, and for all you who dont know the game - its like american footbal witout the padding or the time outs - and more than one team competes in the world champships). And to all those Aussies reading this ...Unluckly mates HaHaHaHaHaHa....etc.
- Rice, rice bloody rice. Asia is the home of rice and South America the home of the potato.... so why do they serve rice with everything? Potato comes with rice, spaghetti comes with rice, and if you are nieve enough to just ask for rice you get a double helping. Rice twice a day really is too much of a (cheap but) indifferent thing.
-The Galapagos cost a fortune, over US$1,000 to: fly there from Ecuador, national park entry, 8 day boat trip, so l will have to survive on the delicious rice they serve here from now on!
- Taking the round trip to the airport twice and failing to get on a plane (7 hours each time inc the 4 hours waiting at the airport). Third time I was lucky.
- The equator at sea level. It's got to be really hot right. No. Its cloudy nearly all the time and there is a slight chill in the evening. I mean it´s not like an english chill, but this is the equator - I had to wear long trousers in the evening, how ridiculous is that ... But the water must be warm? Sometimes - but then sometimes the cold Humboldt current from Antartica suddenly rises to the surface and it is like having an ice cold shower! BBBBrrrrrrr.....
- In a protected area of the Darwin Research station there is Lonesome George - a giant tortoise just hanging out. He is lonesome because he is the last of a species. They very last tortoise from a particular island, all the rest have been killed by man. They dont know how old he is, but he wont mate with similar species of tortoise from other islands at the moment, maybe he will in 50 or 100 years time, who knows. Imagine being the very last of a species .. now that´s tough.

Heading off to learn a bit more spanish in Banos and then into Colombia - maybe then it will get mote interesting - for you at least!

Bye for now
LuvPete

Where 11 Sydney, Australia --OR-- Searching for Culture through the Bottom of a Beer Bottle (Stubbie)

Wherever you are in the world - chillin' out at a new age encampment between Brisbane for Sydney, for example (which I was), as far away from reality as I could get at that moment, there are things that happen that grab me by the balls and remind me that I am still part of that world that I am trying to get around, like these events in New York a week ago. With these events in mind it is difficult to get my little world in perspective. So for the purposes of this email I have decided to ignore perspective and the real world, and concentrate on the insignificant happenings of the past 6 weeks..... welcome to my world........

Since last time when I was in Bali I have flown to Darwin, toured round the national parks there, gone down to Alice Springs, tripped out to Uluru (Ayres Rock)and The Olgas. Then flown to Cairns at the north end of the east coast and travelled down the east coast stopping off at a variety of (mainly) interesting places en route. Finally I have reached Sydney.

Note : Written with due apologies to any Aussies who may be reading this.

Firstly I should say that Oz is a confusing place e.g.
- the Adelaide river is nowhere near Adelaide
- the Victoria highway does not go to Victoria
- Saltwater crocodiles live in freshwater (this is important when it comes to swimming in fresh water as the Salties may eat you! (or me!))


Up Top (The Good Bits)

- The main highlight of my time in Oz is obvious..... Stuffing Germany 5-1 in their own backyard. I met several Germans after that and mysteriously all claimed to have no interest in football. Odd that !!

- Kakadu National Park (NP) near Darwin - fantastic scenery and waterfalls - although the water was COLD (very).

- Uluru - the climb up was very steep and so windy that halfway up I wished they had closed it - I thought I was gonna be blown off but fortunately there was a heavyweight chain to hang on to (and I did - with both hands). An amazing place, great sunset and sunrise although it would have been better if we hadn't had to stand with a few hundred people sipping champagne to watch it (we had one warm beer between about 10 of us....) The Olgas are worth a mention - they are similar to Uluru but from certain angles they look like Homer Simpson lying down - Yes Really!

- Diving off Cairns with a rather large Green Turtle (although it was brown in colour). I swam along next to it for a few minutes. Amazing complany, it was very friendly waving it's flipper at me as we swam along together although, to be honest, it didn't say that much.

- Seeing kangaroos, dingos, koalas, camels and a duck billed platypus all in the wild (though not at the same time). The dbp was a bit tricky as we had to wait 1.5 hours for it and then only saw it for 5 seconds - but hey I saw one ! PS It was unimpressive ! The koala was better - got to within 2m of it as it munched it's way through loads of leaves ....... OK so that wasn't that exciting either...... my tiny travelling companions thought it was cute though !

- Humpback Whale watching in Hervey Bay - didn't see many of them but the ones we did see were on form as the enormous mammel jumped high out of the water just so we could take photos of them jumping high out of the water.....

- Whitsunday Islands - 3 days on a racing yacht (not that we raced) more of a cruise really, to the fantastic white sands of Whitehaven beach (reckoned to be one of the top 10 beaches in the world - and we didn't even take a bucket and spade; Damn !)

- Driving a 4x4 on the largest sand island in the world and getting stuck loads of times (everyone else had to push but I was OK - I was driving - nuff said).

- Surfing - Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.

- Learning to play the didgeredoo - Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.

- The 'occasional' Party nights with loadsa beer - Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.



Down Under (The Bad Bits)

- 'Occasional' Hangovers every morning after the 'occasional' party nights out.

- The cost of it all - it may be cheaper than UK but it's about 4 times the price of SE Asia from whence I came so it seems really expensive.

- The aboriginals many of whom are displaced and apparently without hope or motivation. Most of the ones I saw just sat around all day doing nothing.
(Not to be mistaken for fellow travellers who may act in a simiar manner!)

- The whole country is culturally devoid (almost).

- The endless number of small and lifeless towns with near negative populations that are strewn about the country. I think some of them may have stopped breathing!

- There are no Australians here (cos they are all working in pubs in London). Everyone is English and surely half the point in getting away in the first place was to meet some different people. In some places 'a local' is an English person who has been in Australia for more than a month.

- The rest of the travellers on the east coast are teenage girls. OK OK ...... so there are some advantages in that ........ but I shall restrain myself and say no more ... not even ...Well you just have to ! After all this is Australia.


There is loads more i could say but you would get really bored and I would run out of internet time....

Tomorrow I'm off to New Zealand for about 6 weeks, and then to some south pacific islands - and they really will be the middle of nowhere...


Bye for now

Luv Pete