Galapagos Islands

The Galapagos Islands tick a lot of boxes for me. The adventurer in me is keen to spend hours snorkeling with turtles and seals, the traveler in me wants to visit the far-flung edges of the globe and my inner science nerd just wants to geek out over bird beaks. Thankfully, the Galapagos delivered on all this and more. The local community have worked incredibly hard to ensure that the islands are preserved in as pristine a state as possible and a lot of the rules and restrictions in the area were almost entirely self imposed. It gives me hope that at least some communities are able to appreciate the incredibly rare natural gift they have and do their best to preserve it. Maybe at some point Australians might have the same realisation about the Great Barrier Reef (I’m not going to hold my breath though).

We were staying on the former private yacht of Princess Grace of Monaco, gifted to her and Prince Rainier by Aristotle Onassis for their wedding and where they spent their honeymoon, cruising down the coast of Corsica and Sardina. Olivia and I had been concerned we would be the youngest on board by a number of decades but almost everyone else on the boat was family with adult children like ours, a huge relief. Our first day on board was unexpectedly eventful, as we cruised around the small volcanic island of Daphne Major we witnessed a feeding frenzy. While we never got a glimpse of what was pushing the small fish up, we did see the hundreds of sea birds that were swooping down to collect them.

Our first full day started with a wet landing onto a beach that was covered in sea lions. This served as something of a nursery for the sea lions with lots of pups left together on the beach as mum searched for food. I’m not sure there is anything in the world cuter than a sea lion pup and it took all I had not to give them belly scritches like a might a dog.
Eventually we dragged ourselves away from the lions for a little wander inland to look for the yellow land iguanas that were endemic to this particular island.

That afternoon was spent snorkeling, there was a little bit of looking at fishes, but the main attraction was the juvenile sea lions we saw. We quickly realised that they only want to interact with you if you’re being a bit interesting so Olivia and I were soon doing flips and twists in the water in order to keep them entertained. They seemed to enjoy playing a game of chicken where they would swim right at your face only to twist off at the last possible second. It was evident that sea lions are as graceful in the water as they are ungainly out of it and even with fins on I could barely keep up.

Most of our days followed a fairly similar pattern. Walks, snorkelling and then more walking in the afternoon. It wasn’t until our third full day that we caught sight of the famous Galapagos Giant Tortoises. We had spotted a few ‘small’ tortoises off the side of the trail in the scrub. The were about the size of a basketball and tucked back fair way from the trail. We were all very excited to see them but out guide seemed keen to keep us moving and after walking for a few more minutes it was clear why. We rounded a corner and in front of us was a huge tortoise, walking right down the middle of the path. Unfortunately our appearance seemed to have put him off and he soon turned off the track into the bush and ambled out of sight without a good photo opportunity. It’s easy to see how well their shells serve them when they beat a path straight through the dense underbrush, forcing branches and sticks out of their way. If we’d attempted to follow I probably would have been scratched to bits within a few meters.

Thankfully luck was on our side and after about 10 more minutes of walking our trail had looped back around and we saw the same tortoise walking down the path again, but this time right ahead of us. We cleared a path for him and he walked right through the middle of our group. I was crouched down to the side and there was a long moment where he stopped and looked me right in the eye, definitely a surreal experience.

We got even luckier when just a few minutes later two huge tortoises joined the path just ahead of us an we got to witness a tortoise fight, up close and personal. It was one of the most adorable forms of conflict resolution I have ever seen in the animal kingdom. Both tortoises squared up to each other and opened their mouths while stretching their necks as high as the could go. After just a few seconds of this, they agreed that the taller tortoise was the winner and the smaller one moved out of his way as fast as he was able (aka not very fast at all). It was a really cool moment to witness.

This wasn’t the only animal fight we got to witness, the next day we went to an island that was absolutely crawling with marine iguanas, their darker colouring making them near indistinguishable from the basalt lava flow they lived on. Here we witnessed a number of male iguanas fighting over females. They would circle each other and then charge, trying to either ram the other iguana with the horns on their head or trying to grab hold of their opponent with their mouth. This went on for ages but at the thirty minute mark, with both combatants covered in blood and there being no sign of stopping we decided to leave them to it.

Our time in the Galapagos Islands has got to be one of the best experience of my life. The incredible concentration and diversity of wildlife as well as how close we were able to get to these animals in their natural habitat is something I will never forget.

• Saved: South America, Travel