[IbanezGod]

Figured I would share pictures!


Well I'm back from a trip to Ecuador & the Galapagos. Just a quick write up. Trip was awesome as expected!! Spent 8 days total, 4 days in Quito, 4 days on Santa Cruz in the Galapagos islands. I had no clue there were so many islands and that they were all so far apart when I first started planning the trip. Based on our time frame and trying to keep a reasonable budget we just stayed on Santa Cruz. There are a lot of great 7-8 day cruise trips that visit multiple islands, those can be had for $3k+ per person. Time was well spent, in Quito we stayed with my gf's uncle/aunt who are only 35 y/o so they like to go out and have fun. Time on Santa Cruz was well spent and we kept busy, probably should have relaxed a bit more, but we tried to see as much as we could with the time we had.

Here are some pics:









Pelican haven, must have been 20 of them hanging out diving after fish


Room before we got moved to a King bed. Gives you an idea


The amazing crabs. These guys move like lightning on the rocks, so hard to catch, strong little buggers too




Face-off Crab vs. Iguana...






Grande Tortugas! These guys aren't afraid of humans at all, they just chill and eat their greens


This was fun to watch! Round One.... FIGHT! I have a cool video of them going at it.


Inside the national park, you can pretty much go anywhere


Pelicans hanging out on the dock looking for fish guts the fisherman throw at them


Walk to Tortuga Bay... 3.5k... we nicknamed it the Great Wall of Galapagos. Took 30-40 minutes to walk this loooong path to the beach. The walk back we got stuck in a huge rain storm... fun but a pain walking this up/down path on rocks in flipflops :facepalm:



Finally!


Warning signs of strong currents, there were strong currents, but honestly not that bad






Baby sting ray... this thing was fun to watch!


One Iguana on the beach just chillin... he must have weighed 20lbs. Big guy. I have a TONNNNN of pictures from our DSLR camera that I haven't loaded yet. These guys are EVERYWHERE on the rocks. Hundreds. Really great pictures I can share once my gf loads them online.


Ok so this is hard to capture or explain, but cliffs: These islands were formed by volcanos, volcano chambers became empty after eruption and eventually caved in causing these HUGE craters. So big I would need a panoramic camera to capture them.




More giant turtles, some of these guys are 120-180 years old. Unreal. They live off plants and fruit. Island is full of Guava trees, dunno if you've ever had Guava before, but it's delicious. Highly recommend picking up Goya Guava Wafers delicious!



Guava, just pick it off the tree and eat it, or feed it to a turtle mmmmmm.


Next... Giant Lava Tunnels, kinda crazy, these things get to 30 feet high inside. Probably about 1/2 a mile long being underground. Scary to think of a collapse, truly unreal to walk through them, my gf is 5'1 so you can see how high the ceiling is in the one pic. If you look behind her you'll see a crevice about 20 inches high. Umm... that's the way out. Was very interesting to crawl through considering the floors are soaked and dirty.





Seal just chillin


Next we went snorkeling and took a trip to a hidden cove where you can do cliff diving off a 35-40ft cliff. Water is 8 meters deep so it's safe to jump. Scary as hell standing on the edge

Me swimming down below!




Puerto Ayora at night coming back from snorkeling


Poor Sea Lion got attacked my a shark, we saw a couple off the side of the boat swimming around. This guy wasn't happy, you want to help but the poor guy is super defensive, hope he made it! He actually chased a group of us off the dock, he was blocking us from getting to our boat!


Had a sh*tty underwater camera, water was rough due to all the rain, best pics I got





Back in Quito, Ecuador we went to Mitad del Mundo aka the "Center of the World", Latitude 0.0.0. You can see where they marked the Equator, Yellow Line





Awesome area of Quito, completely revitalized and full of music and fiestas!




Amazing mural


Some awesome food with the love of my life.





That's all folks, I took about 500+ pictures of the trip. We had an AMAZING time, my Spanish definitely improved. Got to meet my gf's amazing family. Such a blast, I'll be going back at the end of the year, possibly to visit either Argentina or climb machu picchu in Peru! :thumbsup2: :halm:

[bmwmthree]

Looks like a lot of fun. Thanks for posting the pics.

Your gf's aunt/uncle are only 35 years old?!

[IbanezGod]

Originally Posted by bmwmthree

Looks like a lot of fun. Thanks for posting the pics.

Your gf's aunt/uncle are only 35 years old?!

yes he was a surprise... she has uncles between 55 and 35, 7 kids.

Originally Posted by sorinel999

i wanna go there and dive but it is expensive as fuck.

your vacation looks like fun but i hate walking on my vacations so i probably wont do what you did.

vacation != walking till you drop dead from being tired.

p.s. your female is hot. i'd pick her over the beer.

It's actually not that expensive depending what you do. if you do a 7-8 day boat cruise to visit most of the islands and incorporate diving then yes... you are talking 3-5k a person. You don't have to walk everywhere, where we stayed we just did what was local. Every island is different. Santa Cruz is pretty big.

and thanks for the compliments on my girl... she's my future wifey, going to pull the trigger on a ring this year

[Bakeme521]

damn it looks like you guys had a lot of fun. Nice pics.

[CrazyJoe]

shrimp and rice looks good man loll

[leJUNd]

Originally Posted by PicassoM

Some awesome food with the love of my life.

what are these two dishes called?
looks awesome

[ben14142001]

Went there over the summer, looks like we visited some of the same places. It was awesome. We were on an 8 day cruise, so we saw some pretty remote islands.

[McMuffin]

Nice!!!

[Year's_End]

that is way too cool. glad you had fun!

[carve]

I went a few years ago. Amazing place. Did you go diving with the sea lions? Aren't they fun!? What boat did you go on? I was on the Lammer Law.









Unfortunately, I lost my underwater pics in a diving incident I had some great pics and vids of being completely surrounded in a school of fish, me posing behind a few sharks, and being surrounded by dozens of playful sea lions. The young ones are like puppies- they reall like to interact with people....the get right up in your face. Like a dream.

[iBoost]

looks awesome!! are either one of you from ecuador?

[IbanezGod]

Originally Posted by accordingi2ime

what are these two dishes called?
looks awesome

not sure of the names. The first one was rice with curry sauce and shrimp. Awesome! Got it at the street festival on Santa Cruz

Second was a traditional pork, plantain, and rice dish with hot sauce... this was in Ecuador

Originally Posted by iBoost

looks awesome!! are either one of you from ecuador?

My GF is born and raised there. She came over when she was younger. Most of her family is there which is why we went in the first place, we just squeezed in a short trip to galapagos.

Sucks we didn't get to see the penguins or swim with the sea lions. We got to get close to many of the sea lions on the shore, but not in the water. The little guy who was injured was super close, but was pissed because he was injured. We're going to go back eventually, we'll do it right next time.

Thanks for the compliments.

[Blake]

looks awesome there. def wanna visit there before i kick the bucket.

[MisterSkiMask]

Originally Posted by PicassoM

Some awesome food with the love of my life.

I love beer too.

[yakev724]

Thanks for sharing
Nice photos, looks like a great time

[wakeboarder109]

Originally Posted by carve

nice boobies

[Dave]

Amazing pictures, looks like the trip was a blast!
this has been on my list of trips to do but always end up doing something more cliche like italy or greece ugh.
Personal Q (feel free to pm me ) how much did it cost total? we talking 5k with flight? or closer to 10k with flight hotel food and everything?
only asking because you probably also flew out of jfk

[IbanezGod]

Originally Posted by comeback1

Amazing pictures, looks like the trip was a blast!
this has been on my list of trips to do but always end up doing something more cliche like italy or greece ugh.
Personal Q (feel free to pm me ) how much did it cost total? we talking 5k with flight? or closer to 10k with flight hotel food and everything?
only asking because you probably also flew out of jfk

Not even close...

Used miles for flight to Ecuador (saved $600/person)
Flight to Island from Quito was $400/person
Hotel was $130/night, however there are more expensive hotels.
Excursions ran about $140 total (snorkeling, lava caves, visit turtles) $70/person.
Food/booze we spent about $400 over 4 days
Costs $100 per person to get onto the island (tax)

However if you are an Ecuadorian resident everything is very discounted

What is "expensive" there is the BOAT PACKAGES. Those go for $3-5k per person depending on how long. IMO that is the way to go to get the ultimate experience. We also didn't go scuba diving which isn't cheap.

Remember these islands aren't close to each other! So if you want to go to Darwin island or visit 5-6 islands you will need a big boat cruise and lots of time which is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.