Day 3: Galapagos, here we come!

Today was a loooooong, but AWESOME day!!  A very long day of travel, but all worth it! We took the bus to the airport to head to the Galapagos.  Our flight was delayed, so we chilled in the Quito airport for a few extra hours...thankfully there was Wi-Fi to keep the natives entertained.

Our flight was 30 minutes down to Guayaquil, where we sat on the plane for 40 min before more people boarded and off to Balta, and island in the Galapagos.

Balta, a very barren island, used to be a US military base.  Basically the only thing on the island is the airport.  From the airport, we caught a bus to the ferry port, where we put our suitcases on top of the boat, and took a 10-15 min ferry across the channel.  While on the ferry, we had our first wildlife sighting...the sea lion!!!  Welcome to the Galapagos!

After crossing the channel, we then boarded a bus which took us 30 min to get to our first stop:  a turtle farm!!!

Needless to say, we were in heaven!!!!

We hopped back on our bus and headed to our hotel for a late lunch and then off to the Charles Darwin Research station. We saw little baby turtles, talked about Lonesome George, and got to see Diego, the new male turtle populating the place.

An amazing first day on the Galapagos!  The weather is quite warm!  We're glad to be out of the higher climate, but the sun and the humidity will be our next challenge...but we're up for it!!!