Even if I'm not a great fan of soccer it
was nice that Sweden won their group and went
further. A pity we lost the next game against
Senegal though. Soccer is a religion down
in South America and Ecuador was very happy
due to the fact that they entered the world
cup for the first time ever, even if they
didn't do too well.
Instead of watching the game Sweden lost
against Senegal I went to the Galapagos Islands.
$1200 is sure loads of money for eight days
of vacation, but then it was seven effective
days of pure paradise. Since almost no animals
have any predators no animals are afraid of
you. So you can in general get as close as
you want. You can walk up very close to birds,
iguanas, snakes, lizards and sea lions. I
actually had two birds, playing, flying between
my legs. When a male enormous sea lions did
the same in the water it's a bit scarier since
the males can be a bit territorial and aggressive.
It was fantastic though to swim and play with
the female sea lions and their babies, penguins,
tropical fish, sea turtles, manta rays, eagle
rays, white tipped reef shark and the Galapagos
shark. On land we could see all kind of different
birds as frigates, blue and red footed boobies
and other animals like land and sea iguanas,
turtles... I was really lucky with the group
on the boat, altogether 10 passengers. It
was a good mix of people. We were lucky with
the weather all days except from one, so we
did spend a lot of time snorkelling, walking
the islands watching the animal life, eating
loads of great food, sun-bathing, trying to
avoid the sun, re-applying sun lotion all
day and dancing at some pubs and on the boat.
Two Swedish girls and I tried to educate the
other people about the Swedish midsummer which
occurred last Friday. We had a few drinks
and we danced the traditional frog dance,
which got mixed with swing and salsa.
After leaving the paradise of Galapagos and
the good new friends, I'm staying one more
night in Quito getting my things together,
saying goodbye to some people I've met here
and the home stay family before heading towards
Baños and southern Ecuador.
Love Emil
|