Simply put: the Galapagos trip was amazing (view all pics). It was the end of the rainy season so everything was so green for volcanic islands. In about five months, all the plants will be dead. But, in March, the rain was dissipating, and all the animals were in mating season. Just the perfect time to go. Highlights:

• We started in Quito, Ecuador, where we took a day trip to the Bellavista Cloud Forest. (Unfortunately, the rain forest was a bit too far away.) They had amazing food, for both humans and hummingbirds. Beautiful birds, cool snakes, and elixir-filled trees. The leaves of ferns were used as ponchos by the locals.
• Also, in Quito-proper, we found this amazing restaurant, La Boca Del Lobo (The Mouth of the Wolf). They had great empanadas, shakes, eggplant, and desserts. Chicklet was very happy.
  Then we flew to the Galapagos! The animals we out to welcome us. The highlights of the first Island (Chinese Hat): nursing sea lions, pelicans, north-of-the-equator penguins (!), lava lizards (so many you almost stepped on them often), iguanas, crabs, Darwin’s finches singing their mating songs, and herons.

• Oh, I should mention the cruise ship. A 99-person vessel, with a 70-person crew. We bought the cheapest cabin possible, but we were pampered. Beds changed three times a day. Two bars. Swimming pool. Sauna. Salsa lessons! (I found a great partner.) Our group of 14 (who we went on most of our treks with) included: a worldwide-traveling couple, two families from New York, and this family from Norway who now lived in Venezuela with a Romanian father, Russian mother, and two daughters, the younger of whom was a riot (Maria). Maria could speak five languages (Roamanian, Russian, Norwegian, Spanish, and English), and she didn’t stop speaking the entire trip. I think the funniest story was that to calm Maria down at dinner one evening, I taught her the “Questions Game.” Chicklet thought that this game would be too tough for a six-year-old, but Maria (after a five-minute learning curve) was equal to the task. Her standby reply was “Why do you want to know?”, but the funniest round came when I asked her to start us off. She led with “Do you like to feel sexy?” How do you respond to that question to a 6-yr-old?! You can’t, and I couldn’t, partially because we couldn’t stop laughing. So Maria won that round. We only left the ship twice a day (two islands a day), so Maria and her family made the entire trip that much more enjoyable.
• Back to the islands, the next of which was Cerra Dragon (on Santa Cruz). The highlights were flamingos (including on in flight!) and land iguanas. Other than that, it was just your standard Galapagos island.
• That afternoon, we visited Floreana for a trek and snorkeling. More flamingos, finches, sea turtle tracks, and our first look at boobies from afar. The real adventure came snorkeling. Sea lions were right next to us as we hopped in. Chicklet took the underwater camera, and took a picture of tiny fish when I stopped her and reminded her that we only had 27 exposures on the underwater camera. Since we were going scuba diving in a few days, I said that we should only take pictures of really cool things. So I took the camera, and went out snorkeling. About five minutes in, I met this neat school of fish and debated whether it was picture worthy. Possibly hypocritically, I took a picture. Just as I was finished winding the camera to ready it for the next picture, this SHARK blindsides me from the right. After my heart skipped half a beat, I took an action shot and prayed that it came out. I think I did pretty well, given the circumstances. Thank goodness that shark didn’t come three second before when I was still winding! (Aside: I don’t know much about sharks…does anyone know what kind that is…dogfish shark maybe?)
• On our way back from Floreana we saw this beautiful rainbow.
• Española island was next. We saw lots of boobies, and this pile of aquatic iguanas. Seeing an iguana swimming is an odd site, but it quickly become apparent why they have their long, thick tails: they need them to swim! The main attraction on Española was the birds (including two hawks). But, one cool scene was iguanas battling over territory (more benefits of mating season!); I captured a small fight in this video.
• At night, the ship would shine external lights, and the sea lions were attracted to the boat so that they could see their prey: flying fish (impossible to get a picture of them unfortunately). Hard enough to photograph the slow-moving seas turtles.
• San Cristobal island was the only island we visited that was pretty much full inhabited. Mostly farms — the conditions looked very third-world. We visited to tour the tortoise breeding facility. At first we could find any grown tortoises in the reserve and only got to saw the caged young ones. (Very Jurassic Park — the only thing that was missing was “Frog DNA”.) But eventually, we caught sight of some females and a couple of the huge males.
• The last stop of the cruise was North Seymour island, which included the famed red frigates. The males have pouches under their necks; the females don’t. During mating season, the males fill their pouches with air in an attempt to attract the females. The frigate flapping its wings in this picture is really trying to attract some attention, but needs some more air in that pouch of his. Note the male adolescent watching and learning how to (unsuccessfully) woo a mate.
• On our own, after the cruise, we headed to the Charles Darwin Research Center, another tortoise breeding center. We started in the female pen, which we had to ourselves. When we headed over to the male pen, we found out why: everyone was watching male gay giant tortoise sex. I expected Scalia to appear any moment with his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas to put a stop to the whole affair. Oh, and if you’ve ever wonder why tortoises’ shell bend down/inward near the tail, it’s apparently because they fall off during sex.
• During scuba diving, we saw more sharks (no good pics though) and rays. The coolest thing though was being surrounded by a tornado of fish. I learned from Planet Earth that swimming in a cyclone is a defensive mechanism against predators, so getting out of the swarm is diffifcult, as the fish will not break ranks. Instead you have to swim under the tornado.

That’s about it. By visiting the Galapagos, you really get a sense of what Darwin was thinking. All of the islands look pretty much the same (they come from the same underwater volcanic hot spot), but the mockingbirds and tortoises that Darwin encountered were unique to each island in small but visible ways. (So were the finches, but despite legend, Darwin didn’t realize this.) It didn’t make sense for these animals to be of different species when it appeared that one species would do the trick for all the islands (from an intelligent design point of view). So maybe when isolated on their respective islands, each species changed slightly…an the Origin of the Species was born. (I recommend reading The Beak of the Finch for a good accounting of this train of thought and the evidence for evolution. If you have read that book, you may find these pictures of Daphne Major interesting.)