Wednesday March 18th:

Bueno adiós Islas Galápagos, nosotros le adoramos y le perderemos. For everyone but Jane: http://ets.freetranslation.com/

The last morning to hear Liz wake us up and invite us to breakfast and partake our last tour. I was feeling pretty sad because this holiday was one of the best holidays I have ever had, it had a huge grip on my heart and not only was I going to miss the Galapagos Islands, I was going to miss our ship mates.

After another delicious breakfast, we put our luggage outside our door for the crew to take to Puerto Ayora and put on the bus. We were going to see tortoises in the wild! How exciting, since the only tortoises we saw were at the Darwin Station.

We were docked in Puerto Ayora, so we took some ‘last’ photos before climbing on the bus and heading for the “Highlands of Santa Cruz”.

Apparently the bus climbed up through all 7 “Vegetation” zones of the Galapagos Islands. It was amazing to see cattle on the steep hillside. There were Cattle Egrets with them but we did not have a lot of time as we were in a hurry to see the giant. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the loud grunting sounds as well followed the guide through the bush. I thought for sure we would see cattle as we turned the corner. Lo and behold, there were a pair of 125+ year old tortoises mating!

Other tortoises were content to sit in the pools of mud, this was the rainy season & soon the pools would dry up and the vegetation would dry out and turn brown.

At one point we were ‘hushed’ because the tortoise was ‘eating’ and we were not to disturb them.

Soon it was time to board the bus to catch the ferry that would take us across the channel. We were jammed onto the ferry, then onto the bus that took us to the airport.

I remember getting off the bus and wondering what next? Our guide had disappeared from view, but our ship mates realized that a few of us were ‘lost’ and came looking for us.

We waited to board our plane and soon we were in the air headed for Quito.

This was indeed, "a trip of a lifetime'.