Sunday, July 17, 2011

we hiked, we biked, then we kayaked ... but first we had to walk there ....

 after our tour de galapagos, we hopped off our bikes, gave them to the bike guy that had led us down the mountain in his truck .... and there we were at the entrance to the beach .... and the entrance was a narrow path opening .... 

so right off the bikes, we took off our helmets, gathered some things from jaime's following van... things like sunscreen and hats .... and off we walked to our next adventure ..... at el garrapaterro beach on the northern coast of santa cruz ... close to bella vista .....


 we walked half a mile to the beach ... galapagos park designators pay no mind to parking close to where you are going .... all parking lots are far from where you are intending to go!

the ocean was gorgeous ... we saw the same three dutch men from our boat ride the day before and the hike in the morning ... they weren't kayaking though, and seemed surprised by how active we were being ....

and then we kayaked ... we started with dora the explorer and e, drew and jj, andy and so .... midway, after much to do, jj switched to dora's boat and i went to drew .... just in case you are wondering, i did not abandon dora ... she was not tipping me over on purpose .... she was not jumping off the boat and leaving me alone in the front ... she was not trying to get tipped by waves intentionally ....but perhaps those are the reasons jj abandoned ship ....

drew wins the award for most inefficient kayaker ..... andy and so had the best boating success ....

we kayaked long and hard and far ... heading out to a far lagoon was tough .... but, thankfully, getting back was a breeze ... riding the waves in was fun ....
and above? it could have been our christmas picture this year .... so, jj, e, a, and drew in the back ..... i think the combination of water on the lens, rocking boat, and dora figuring out a camera ... and there you go ... a little blurry ....

an interesting bit about this beach: it used to be a place to go visit flamingos in the wild .... but, the last tsunami here left the flamingo pond brackish and unsuitable for flamingos ... so there are none left ... presumably they all flew off and found more suitable homes .... tsunamis have been in the news a lot in the last couple of years .... seemingly new to our news cycle, but they are fairly common occurrences ...  here is an interesting blog post of a tsunami day in the galapagos .... our hotel, galapagos safari camp, is in the highlands, and many people evacuated to it, including our guide, dora ....

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