Galapagos Part 2 : "Interesting" Characters

As at time of last writing, we gained a whole load of new travellers (and lost some lovely ones, booo). We went from our cosy, youthful group of 9 people to a somewhat, er, more experienced group of 16. Most of the newcomers were interesting and completely pleasant but there were certain characters who were rather less fun.

1) Tweetie Pie aka Budgie Smuggler - a German fellow the colour of Milla´s Mulberry handbag who wore matching speedos and bandana. Had a rather nasty bout of BO and sweaty feet following him, meaning we tried to remain upwind of him. He´d been travelling for 8 months and ALWAYS slowed us down taking thousands (seriously, I thought I was bad) of photos. Despite never snorkelling even once, he felt the need to remove his trousers to reveal the speedos at every possible opportunity. He also made the sweeping assumption of "Oh you don´t speak a word of German do you?" when speaking in German with the Painted Lady in front of me. Actually matey, my speaking is not up to scratch but I did in fact understand most of what you said.

2) The Painted Lady - another German (I´m not racist), this lady had the build of a channel swimmer, and a face drawn on. I´d love to say perfectly but it was quite... different. As condescending regarding our life choices (I know, having a job? Disgusting.) as Tweetie Pie, she was, admittedly, one of the less annoying members of the three I´m writing about.

3) Bahn-nie - Pretty much everything I despise about Americans in one package, minus the obesity (she had at least taken care of herself that way). The most definining characteristic? Money-obsessed. Seriously, about half of the questions she asked were about money. "How much did you pay for the trip? Was that included? How much will you earn when you start? How much did you pay for dinner? How much was this? How much do you plan to spend per day in the rest of your travels?". Loud, obnoxious, very self-centred when not asking about money. I think the realisation came to me that she was a few dollars short of a wallet when she said "Oh I didn´t think you could do ANYTHING with a physics degree!".



ANYWAY - the rest of the Galapagos!



Espanola Island was our next stop, we spent the morning doing a 3 hour walk around the island. Despite it being 7.45-10.45, we were SO hot. Easily the hottest day on the tour, Milla and I drank a good 2l of water between us on the walk alone. I´m sure it would have been better if we´d not stopped for 7 years to allow 4 millions photos (I may be exaggerating a little). The effecyts of the water were felt by Milla but bizarrely not by me... somehow I´ve held on to a LOT of water. Afternoon was a smidge more snorkelling - I know, our lives are so tough - but we mostly messed about on the beach after discovering that the marine wildlife was fairly minimal.

Floreana was our final full day of tour - luckily it was considerably cooler than the previous day. We visited post office bay in the morning, where travellers leave postcards and pick up those from the place where they live, meaning that postcards could take a long time to arrive, but it´s all free. We then snorkelled a lot in the water with our guide (that´s how you know it´s a good snorkelling area, if Hansel gets in the water too!) around "Devil´s Crown", a submerged crater, and saw LOADS of things - sea lions playing, sharks and a whole swarm of golden rays. We walked on a beach as well in Floreana and saw two baby sea turtles, recently hatched, make their way to the ocean. In true natural selection style, they were eaten by frigate birds once they got to the water (well, stupid turtles for hatching in the middle of the day!).

The very last day of the tour involved getyting up early to go to see Lonesome George, the last Isla Pinta giant tortoise and then having a slight nightmare with flights being super delayed. Nevertheless, despite being trapped with Bahn-nie for 4 hours longer than anticipated, we made it to Quito in one piece.



A marvellous trip all in all, despite a few bouts of seasickness and some colourful characters.


Special mention goes to Miguelito - engineer on the boat who was a particular fan of Milla´s chest (well, why not?) and to whom we grew quite friendly. Bless. He did have a rather obscene tshirt which translated roughly as "I´m no gynaecologist, but I wouldn´t mind checking you out". Lovely. Weirdly he did have a girlfriend who´s a partner in a London law firm.