3rd Nov - Medellin Day 2

Struggled out of bed and went to check my email. Curiously, one of the lads had sent a mail saying simply: lads, go to google, and search "Neil Prendeville sex plane". 

I thought this a bit strange obviously but did what the man said! Found a link to a breaking story at home - in Cork, there's a radio DJ called Neil Prendeville who's on every morning from 9 to 12. He can be best described as a total and utter <insert your own expletive here>. Right wing, always whipping up hate and condemning people for small things. Just an odious human being. But hugely successful and popular. Until now. Because on a recent flight to London, while sitting in the middle of a row, he decided that a spot of impromptu masturbation was in order! Whipped it out and started working away. To the horror of the girl In the window seat and the lad in the aisle seat. Even when the flight crew demanded he stop... he didn't. Karma's a bitch Neil!

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/aer-lingus-to-complain-radio-hosts-sex-act-to-gardai-135321.html

So I'd a terrific smile on my face, when I checked my next email from John O'Reilly, an acquaintance from Cork. I'd sent him a link to this blog and wondered what he thought of it. His mail was the following:

Jes*s chri*t, i checked out that blog last night. What the F*ck ?? Seriously what the f*ck.

I can only assume your writing it to impress some bird, or get a job for the national geographic.
You know how I hate learning, and it sounded like you were actually trying to educate, a few pictures would have done ie. here's a seal........didn't need to know its breeding habit. 

I sent the link onto Eoin, John Paul and Seanie; here's a selection of their comments

"I hope he gets humped by a whale" - John Paul

"Just looked at Enright's blog on my phone, He's got 47 entries all about the wildlife and people he's met on his travels! I'm not sure who he thinks would be interested in reading it!!" - Seanie

"Does Enright think he's Micheal Palin or something?, There was a thing in the Ross O'Carroll Kelly book about people who send updates of how they are getting on travelling but nobody basically gives a f*ck." - Eoin

Hilarious abuse! I was in tears with laughter. Serious spring in my step now as I set out towards town as I wanted to look around Medellin. Got some juice from a street vendor, saw some statues by Botero and then decided to head to the cable car to get a view of the city. Also the total trip on the cable car took about half an hour and ended up in a forest which was supposed to be lovely. 

Juice stall - there's one on every street corner!

Botero loves the fat figures - here's a fat cat!

And a fat banker

And indeed it was lovely. Very quiet cos it's being developed at the moment but there was some nice stuff there. Did a zipline which was fun though it didn't last that long. 

View of Medellin from the Teleferico up to Parque Arvi

Parque Arvi

Very enjoyable day there, came back to the hostel and into the bar. Couple of drinks and a game of pool with Daniel the sound Aussie barman. Bizarre. Here's a lad working in pubs for a good while and he was completely inept at pool! Like totally rubbish! I had to deliberately miss shots to keep the game going. Shocking.

Finished him off anyway, and headed out to the same pizza place as last night. My motto to eating is simple. Find a place I like and go back there cos I know it's nice! No notion of trying new stuff. Had exactly the same pizza as last night too. Delicious.

Back to the hostel and it was supposed to be quiz night. But there were only about ten guests in the hostel so that couldn't happen. But Daniel had written the whole quiz anyway, and as there were about 8 of us in the bar, he went through all his qns over the next 4 or 5 hours with lads at the bar shouting out the answers. Great craic again and good to meet a few new people. But I was thinking of leaving for a different hostel cos I wasn't overly gone on this hostel. Anke and Mor are moving to a place they'd heard about called Casa Kiwi in the morning so I'll prob go with them. But what a way to finish my time here in the Pit Stop. Up till 4 or so, having great craic with sound people. 

2nd Nov - Medellin Day 1

Up around 11, shattered after the punishment bus. Got up and had a look around. Good news! We appear to have a pool in the hostel. Nice one. However, it's quite cold and rainy a lot of the time, so temper that excitement!

Pool - nice

Had breakfast in the hostel, then booked myself on the Escobar tour. This was leaving at 2.15, so walked to the local shopping centre for lunch. Totally weird place! It had clothes shops, shoe shops, a cinema, a food court, then completely bizarrely, on the second floor it was all IT shops. Not selling PCs or memory cards, but all hardware. Systems, networks etc in every single shop. It was Twilight Zone stuff - nightmare!

Twilight zone or maybe it's a Star Trek convention.

I barely survived anyway and made my back to the Pit Stop hostel where I was staying. Ran in to the sound Irish girls from back in Peru! Brilliant - there were only 3 of them on the rip in Mancora but now there were 5 of them. And they were heading on the Escobar tour as well. Excellent! 

So the bus for the tour came and we all got on. 8 of us. And now this is a bit ridiculous, all 8 of us were from Ireland. The 5 girls, 2 lads from Dublin, plus me. Turned out that one of the girls was a software engineer and the other 7 of us were accountants. 8 people on a random tour in a random city in Colombia and 7 of us were Irish accountants. There was some craic on the bus. 

Only Elaine on the right (green top) is not an accountant. Her loss!

Anyway, we drove to a different hostel to pick up one more lad. He was Irish too! So now 9 of us were Irish! We didn't ask his profession though. 


Tour guide was excellent and had lived in London for a yr so she had great English. And if she didn't know something she'd just ask her boyfriend for help as his English was spot on too and he came along on the tour too. One time she asked him "how you say sangria in English?"

Sound tour guide and the boyfriend

First stop was the house where Pablo Escobar used to live and where his brother Roberto still lives. Roberto was his right-hand man back in the day and gave up his professional cycling career to join the business.

Tatiana with the Escobars's first motorbike. Bought in the late 40s to transport drugs around the country

Blue car is Pablo's first, which he bought in the 60s for $7. The moved to this and away from the motorbike to transport drugs around Colombia

Sitting in the bullet proof van. Doors were seriously heavy and had space to put your gun to allow you to shoot out special holes if in the middle of a shoot out!

Roberto's bike from his cycling career - on that wall are loads of photos and newspaper cuttings from his career

Roberto's a bit fukked up though. He's nearly deaf and nearly blind and hasn't really got over the fact that Pablo is dead. All the furniture is from the 80s and it's really sparse in there. His prized possession is his photo of Pablo which he has enlarged and hangs near his front door. It's a photo which has never been used in any newspaper or magazine so means a lot to him. 


Weird thing was that this picture has a fresh bullet hole in it since just three WEEKS ago when armed raiders attempted a kidnap! 

Me with the rare photo of Pablo with the new bullet hole just beside my left elbow!

The guide was telling us that she had 10 lads in the minibus ready to do the tour when she got a call saying that she couldn't visit the house. They wouldn't tell her why. Turns out it was because they'd got wind of the kidnap attempt. Police were there when 6 raiders came, a bloody shoot out left 3 raiders dead and 3 arrested. And to think that if they hadn't had advance warning, all the backpackers would've been caught in the middle of it... scary. 


Got some photos with Roberto including one in the back of a revolving bookcase where the Escobars used to hide when anyone came! 

One of my favourite photos so far - me with Pablo Escobar's brother in the hideout they used to avoid being shot dead in their home in Medellin!

We left there anyway and we went to the house where Pablo was shot dead back in 94. Turns out that our driver on our tour bus used be Escobar's personal bodyguard and was also his driver for years! In 94, Jaime was a bodyguard, 2 wks on, 2 wks off with another lad. The day Escobar was shot, Jaime was off. Just as well as the bodyguard on duty was shot dead as well that day. 

House where Escobar was shot dead. He died on the roof of the first red building in the background

Then we went to the house that Pablo owned in his heyday. Massive compound, but it had all the best technology and decorations inside - we saw a video of the inside of the compound on the bus later. They had to leave it when a bomb exploded outside and nearly killed them. The location had always been a secret and now that it was known, they had to go!

Pablo's house - opulent

Next we went to the graveyard where Pablo is buried. Strange kind of place as Escobar is revered by many people because he was the first lad ever to offer hope to millions. These millions of lower class people who could never previously get jobs could now get jobs in the drug trade. In a country where there's no dole, unemployed people starve. So the respect these people had for Escobar is huge and they leave fresh flowers at his grave every single day.

On the other hand, Tatiana the guide said she was ashamed of the late 80s and early 90s. If there was one period of Medellin's existence that she could erase, it would be then. To see the contrasting views of the driver and the guide was fascinating. 

Back to the hostel then after the tour and the Irish girls fancied McDonalds. I said i'd head along for the craic even though I don't usually eat McD's and no way I was going to it in Colombia.

The girls seemed a bit embarrassed about lowering themselves to McD's so it was video time. My favourite bit is the way they all hide their faces but still horse away into their bounty!




Then we found a shopping centre and the girls went bananas with excitement at all the shops that were open. Exit Enright - stage left. I went looking for the Zona Rosa, where all the bars and restaurants are. Had a delicious pizza and usual wine, had to get a taxi back to the hostel with the downpour of sudden torrential rain. 
In to the bar, and there was the other lad on the tour who it turns out was from Galway. Time to see if he was an accountant too. Turns out that he was indeed an accountant but changed profession and is now in equity finance. Compleeeeetely different!

Had a couple of pints with him and a couple of girls who were in the bar. Anke from Germany but has lived in England for years and Mor from Israel. 

Then the Irish girls came in for a pint. There were 2 towns I really wanted to go to in Colombia called Salento and Manizales. Both supposed to be beautiful, both a couple of hours north of Medellin and the Irish girls were heading there next! Excellent They then told me that Salento and Manizales are actually south of Medellin, not north. Not so excellent. I'd ended up spending an extra couple of days bored in Cali cos I couldnt face the long 9hr bus to Medellin and all along there was this beautiful town just 3 hours away that I really wanted to go to. KRYYYSTE! Gutted. I wish I'd looked at a map!

Anyway, the barman was an Aussie called Daniel. And was actually sound! He was playing music over the bar's speakers from his laptop but anyone could take over if they wanted. Well I wanted. My exquisite taste meant we heard a few good songs. Then I discovered a song called "New Slang" from The Shins which comes from the excellent soundtrack to "Garden State". It's described in the film as a song that will "change your life", and while it's definitely not that good, it's still class and I was delighted that I was about to educate the girls on great music. About a minute into it, Anna stood up and announced that they were all heading to bed. I was completely outraged. Outraged! Fine... just go, see if I care! Huh!



After the Irish girls were gone, I chatted some more to Anke and Mor. Mor was telling us about her national service for Israel.  Sounded like absolutely zero craic, with her friends dying in wars etc. And she's only 21 now. 


Next couple of hours were spent looking up stuff on YouTube. I had never seen a video called Double Rainbow where a crazy Yank starts wailing with excitement about seeing two rainbows together in a National Park. Here it is:





And here's our reaction to watching this nonsense!




The night finally ended about 3am with us all crowded round the laptop watching Father Ted on YouTube. I was drunk and Speed 3 is one of my favourite episodes, so I spent the full half hour laughing uncontrollably and snorting at length. Charming.

Here's a clip from it:



Brilliant brilliant day.

1st Nov - Cali to Medellin

Right, I've to get the 9am or 9.30, I'm not staying here for another day. Got up at 11. Ah kryste!

Found a lovely place for lunch. I really found the hostel staff useless here. I asked a few times for somewhere nice to eat and eventually had to go and walk for about half an hour on my own looking for somewhere nice. Also asked her if buses were running today as it's a bank holiday here. She looked at me blankly and told me that it's impossible to know. What! Just ring them like! No, it's impossible to know! She rang a few times and said that no-one was answering. My patience was gone at this stage so to hell with it, I got a taxi to the station and chanced my arm. 

Sound receptionist

Bizarrely, I actually think that I'll miss this hostel a bit. It's not the most happening place in the world, but in fairness, everyone was dead on and it had a real family atmosphere, only a few but v sound guests, sound but useless staff and best of all a couple of mentals. Overall, a gas place!

Casa Blanca hostel - my home in Cali!

Lad from Bristol who I only met briefly and the sound French lads who I ran into again - I first met them at the poker match back in La Paz!

Anyway, it was 4pm by the time I got to the station - next bus 5.30, that'll do fine. Pleasant hour in the pub that had wifi and away I went.

Oh! First bus in Colombia and it's a Merc! Plush...

Got to Medellin eventually at 3.30am where it was pissing out of the high heavens. Got totally ridden for a taxi but at that stage I was only too happy to pay it!

31st Oct - Cali Day 3

Woke up around 11, then followed Bolton vs Liverpool on a website on my phone from my bed. Got up to go to the jacks after 20 mins and the match was on the bloody tv! Stayed up and watched it all though I'd little interest! Not a whole lot else to do!

Some superb entertainment was provided all right by Michael, a Scottish lad who's in the hostel. This fella's completely different to the Yank asshole, this lad was just a bit not all there. Some of his best quotes;

Seeing BOL 0 LIV 0 in the top corner of the screen, he said completely earnestly: "so it's Bolivia v Liverpool is it?"

"Best thing the IRA did was to blow up that place in finance district in London (Canary Wharf). It was all the English money, the IRA killed no one but they got away without paying the tax you see. The British government couldn't touch them you see. Cleverest thing they ever did"

"Ireland has 4 different currencies"

"Irish people are very clever, they can speak languages. And they can do sudokus in ten minutes"

I particularly enjoyed when he was giving advice to the French lads in his very strong Scottish accent. They understood not a single word. Gave them advice on when to shave (always after a shower, never before) temperature of water (cold is fine) and what to use (lather with soap, shaving cream takes up too much room in your backpack when you're travelling), none of which they understood!

It was all highly amusing random gold but I felt bad for the lad. But then again, I suppose he's happy out in his own way. But it always fascinates me when you meet lads like this in hostels sometimes and you wonder just how on earth they can afford to be so far from home and perennially travelling. 

Went and got some disgusting pizza for breakfast/lunch and with literally nothing to do, I said I'd treat myself to a shave. Popped into the kitchen to boil some water as only cold water in the taps. Michael was there.

John: Hey, is there a kettle here do you know?
Michael: What are you boiling water for?
John: <to myself> oh Kryste here we go... <out loud> ah... I'm going to have a shave man.
Michael: You don't need hot water. 
John: Yeah but I prefer it really. 
Michael: But you don't need it.
John: I just prefer it.
Michael: But you don't need it.
<stalemate - luckily he moved on!>
Michael: Did you have a shower yet?
John: I did
Michael: Ok, that's ok. <pause>... have you got soap, that's what I use... look <sticks face v near mine>
John: I have these shaving drops I use, they honestly take up v little room in my backpack.
Michael: That's ok.
<exit John>

Having received his blessing, I had my shave eventually, then hung around the hostel watching tv. Updated this blog for a while, more comedy gold as Michael bashed his keyboard beside me trying to log on and failing miserably.  


One thing that really frustrates me over here is how people spell my name. The Spanish version of John is Juan. Well that's fine. But bizarrely a lot of people in South America have the English version of the name as their official title. But they misspell it Jhon. So when people ask me my name, I spell it out in Spanish J-O-H-N. And they write down J-H-O-N. AAAAAGH! Drives me mad. I haven't much to be worrying me I suppose. 

No you idiot, it's J-O-H-N-N-Y! Nightmare

The dogs in Cali are very excitable:



Later on I ended up having the guts of a bottle of red wine (a lovely Casillero del Diablo in fact!) Had a bizarre exchange in the off licence, I asked how much the bottle was - 28,000p including taxes. Which is about €15. That's a lot of bloody money over here. I chanced my arm and asked if he had one where I didn't have to pay taxes. Sure, that's only 18,000p! Very strange but I wasn't complaining!

I am definitely doing my 9 hour journey to Medellin tomorrow. Want to get the 9am bus so I'm there tomorrow night. 

30th Oct - Cali Day 2

Got up v gingerly after last night's nonsense. Went for disgusting chop suey in a Colombian restaurant with the dulcet tones of Enya as accompaniment! Didn't work.

Went back and met the French lads again. They were utterly shattered too, which was good, I wasn't suffering alone! Listened to Ireland v Australia in the Compromise rules at 2pm Colombian time - Micheal O Muircheartaigh's last ever match. Still don't believe it though!

And met the Yank lad in my room again. Bit of a knob this lad. He was telling me that he's only been here a week (moved down after 3 yrs in Medellin) but he's already got 3 women on the go. Turns out that one of them, by his own admission, he hasn't even met yet! He's chatted to her on Facebook. Ah sure yeah, that's the same thing. Another girl is actually a doctor don't you know and is super hot. But there's a problem - "There's only so much making out you can do in a car" - oh so this girl's a doctor driving a convertible and what, she doesn't have a bedroom that you can go back to? And all that stuff about how much money you have and you can't afford a hotel room for a night? Oh that's right, you haven't even kissed her yet, have you chief? If she even exists like...

He had a rant about black people, with unacceptable liberal use of the N-word, then he turned to me and said:

"Irish people are very serious. I hate to generalise but you guys need to lighten up. You've no sense of humour. Hey man, I'm from Chicago, I just tell it like I see it."

Mmm... it could be because us Paddies don't really want to engage in banter with you, you self-important, full of shit, racist prick. Or yeah, you could be right, we're all a mad boring race.

Went for a delicious dinner later on, and ran into the lad from the tourist office who works in a restaurant near the hostel. Fierce nice lad, bit of a chat, couple of pints and a much quieter one than last night!

29th Oct - Cali Day 1

Shattered today and I needed a bank. No joy in the first couple and fear was it wouldn't work in Colombia. That would be an utter disaster as I've only one card left! Eventually I found one to work which was brilliant.

Walked around town for about an hour, eventually found a small place that did fruit juice. Started chatting to a few girls who were in there on their lunch break. I needed a new pair of shoes and wondered if they could point out a shoe shop. With typical Colombian hospitality, they insisted on walking with me for over an hour, going to different shoe shops, advising on what was nice and eventually I got a lovely pair of shoes and a lovely photo. Brilliant girls!

Lovely girls and lovely shoes!

Everyone in Cali is so sound. No one points out directions. Everyone walks with you. I asked a security guard at a school where the tourist office was. Walked with me for a couple of blocks and he kept looking back with a guilty look on his face as if to say "yeah, I should be guarding the kids really!"

So a good day spent wandering around the town. One bizarre thing I've begun to notice is that mobile calls are v expensive. So people on the street set up stalls and sell mobile minutes. This is bizarre to me but it's quite common to see 2 or 3 people at a stall making calls to mobiles! Like this woman here, she's talking on a phone owned by the lad in the flourescent jacket. The phone is attached to his jacket by a wire. These lads are absolutely everywhere ie every 50 metres or so in places!



Quick phone call!



Had a bite to eat later and in the hostel, I ran into two French lads who I played poker with back in La Paz, my 3rd night in South America! Gas lads, we ended up going on the lash. The lads had heard about this great place but we'd to get a taxi there, drove for about half an hour, lost, eventually found it! It was pretty much empty! Nightmare! Drove for another half an hour somewhere else, empty. A dreadful old man was giving a "concert" in this disaster of a place we ended up in! Empty except for old girls in their 60s. So so bad that it was weirdly enjoyable!

Different club then which was almost as bad. I hit the wall then and taxied home. A hilarious disaster of a night!

28th Oct - Quito to Cali, Colombia

So got the bus at 1am from the station. It was fine though, it left at about 1.30 and there were a couple of Kiwi lads in the seat behind me. Slept a bit and then we stopped for breakfast at one of those usual roadside dinner places. Met another kiwi lad from the bus there, seemed a grand lad too.

Got to the border and despite the fact that I didn't have some piece of paper I needed to leave Ecuador they waved me through no hassle. The kiwi lad I met at breakfast got stopped though. Turned out that he was a bit of an odd fish. He had a 3 month visa for Ecuador but had stayed for over 4 months. He told the lads that he'd been "sick" when they asked him why he stayed so long.
He spoke absolutely zero Spanish so insisted on shouting at the border guards in English. Ah yeah, sure that's just a super idea! He also brought zero cash with him to the border, so couldn't even bribe his way out of the situation! He was kicked off the bus anyway and detained in Ecuador. Bizarre lad.

I went over to get my passport stamped at the Colombian side - no problems. Then a lad who was selling Colombian pesos came up and started chatting. Normally this is a shake-down to get to know you, then pounce selling his wares. This lad just wanted banter cos he seemed genuinely interested in banter. Even after I told him that I'd already exchanged my cash earlier he still just wanted to chat away! Good first impression of the Colombian people!



Colombia... nice




We stopped a couple of hours later for lunch. There was a mad rush as everyone on the bus ran to shower when they had the chance. Myself and the kiwi lads had no notion of it! There were a couple of sound Peruvian birds on board and they were doling out the savage abuse back on the bus! These poor girls live in Venezuela and were on the bus for 5 full days to get home and 5 more to come back! Brutal. They've a good excuse to take showers anyway!



Friends! Friends! Bus friends!





One of the 2 drivers came down the back to chat to my new bus friends. And of course to do his classic porn star pose!



The bus turned out to be a 21hr trip.  I don't usually mind the long bus journeys too much. I write this blog, watch tv, listen to music, read a book, research the next place I'm going to but this was a tough journey.




19 hours into the 21 hour journey. Utterly shattered.



Got in anyway for 11pm, taxi to the hostel recommended in the book that Mike and Sam wanted to go to. Welcome to Colombia!

27th Oct - Quito

Did very little today as I was absolutely shattered after the week in the Galapagos. An admin day. Got up early enough, packed, sorted out laundry, rang home for an hour. Then went to buy my bus ticket in the bus station for tonight. Bus delayed for a few hours - could leave at anytime tonight. Nightmare. Had a good walk around town for a few hours and decided to copy all my Galapagos photos on to disc just in case anything went wrong. Well wrong it bloody went, my 2Mb card no longer works. Hopefully I'll be able to sort something out when I get back home but it's a disaster for now!

Headed back to hostel and pottered around for the evening. Got very lucky that when I was on the Galapagos, Hester the Dutch girl asked if she could copy a load of my videos on to her laptop. Of course she could! Luckily we were still in the same hostel, and i was able to copy all those videos back on to my working memory card! Which was good. Treated myself to another steak dinner, then got a taxi to the bus station at 12.30.

26th Oct - Galapagos to Quito

Went to Darwin reserve in the morning. We were up earlier than usual cos the 4 of us catching the flight had to leave the reserve by 8am to be safe to make the flight.

Went to see Lonesome George and other giant tortoises. George is the only one of his species of tortoise still left - I hadn't realised but the giant tortoises from different islands all look different.

I detest zoos but I suppose they're acceptable if survival of the species at stake which it is here!

Baby Giant Tortoises in the breeding programme all have numbers on their shells to identify them. Some of these lads (and they're tiny right now) will probably still be alive in 2200!

Then again there was a lonely iguana there as well, just kept around so that tourists who come all the way to the Galapagos but who are too lazy to leave Santa Cruz can have a look at him in his cage. Ridiculous.

Anyway, it took him a decade or so, but George eventually mated with the two tortoises in his pen with him. These lads work slowly! Unfortunately the eggs haven't hatched the last 2 yrs so George is still all alone!

Moved on and saw a fight between a pair of tortoises! Two of them tried to bite each other. I just caught the end of it on video. Here's the loser sprinting away in disgust.



And here's the victor celebrating:

VICTORY!!

No problems getting to the airport, got on the flight and turned out that we'd been bumped up to first class without being told! Nice one!

First class... <swishes hair>... because I'm worth it.

Stopped in Guayaquil for half an hour to pick up more passengers, I love this shot of the city with the 2 sports stadium among the urban jungle.

Got to Quito for 4, investigated flights to Cali cos otherwise it's an 18hr bus but they were $400 one way. No thanks!

Went back to Secret Garden cos I loved the staff so much! Only joking, I travelled back with Hester, the Dutch girl, to Quito and stayed in a different hostel. Swiss-owned. Very far up its own arse, no bar, but it's grand.

Ate a delicious dinner. Watched a bit of the World Series. Shattered and off to bed. Only bus to Colombia is at 11pm tomorrow night so I'll get that.

25th Oct - Floreana to Santa Cruz

Up earlier than usual as it was the last day. Plus the crew wanted to get to Punto Ayora as quickly as possible as it's their only night off every week and they wanted to spend as much time as possible on shore. No fault.

First we went to the oldest postbox in South America. No stamps needed, the trick here is that the next visitors to this spot take your postcard and hand-deliver it to your home address. I'm sceptical but left a postcard there anyway. Took our only group photo of the tour, we decided to go Japanese-style.

Mushi Mushi!!

Then we went down another lava cave. This was great. Only walked about 200m along and it was dark and silent. When we turned off flashlights, it was just pitch black. Our eyes had nothing to work with to adjust. Fun.

Looks like I'm lost in the dark. I'm not really, the whole group was there!

See? Here I am with Hester and Jamie!

Went for a walk then but it was v dull. Flamingo pond with no flamingos is apparently meant to be the highlight! Walked to a nice beach though and mooched around. Then watched some crabs mating, then back to the boat. I decided to opt out of the snorkelling today, I'd have to jump from the little boat and apparently there would be v strong currents. Not good. Plus only a few were going and the rest were going to laze around the boat. Sounded good to me! When the lads came back they said that it was just as well I didn't go as the current was ridiculous and v little to see! So a good call!

Crab sex. Oh yeah!

Lunch at around 12, then we set sail for the final stop Punto Ayora. I spent the afternoon trying not to get sick and copying the best photos from everyone else's memory card.

At one stage a pretty alarming siren went off. I was hopeful that this wasn't a fire siren because we were in the middle of the ocean and I've explained already that I'm not the strongest swimmer in the world! Thankfully it was just to let us know that dolphins were around. 3 of them up the front at one stage swimming along with the boat. Superb. Here's a video of one of them milling around:



They're an amazing animal. Katja got this photo of one of them:

Landed in Puerto Ayora and had our final dinner on board. Delicious as ever and there were goodbye speeches and emotional scenes with the crew. In fairness to the cook, he had a tiny kitchen to work with and cooked up 21 different meals - usually with more than one course - for 15 staff and passengers over the week. He was a bit choked up when we praised him! All good stuff. We then went into the town and had a few drinks, 2 for 1 Caiprinhias in the pub we went to like! I was up for staying out for a good while, but one of the girls, Jamie, had a panic attack about losing her wallet and it killed the mood a smidgen! We were all back on board before midnight.

Enjoying a well-deserved drink. Before the wallet panic obviously.