The Travel Blog - Insider Tips, Hidden Places, Local Recipes

Galapagos V - Baby Sea Lions and gigantic waves

On the last day of our Galapagos Cruise the Island San Cristobal is on the agenda. The wind had become strong over night and getting to the island in the dinghy or even worse, getting on land, turns out to be quite a challenge.

Hector, our dinghy driver, has a lot of fun in the high waves and tries to surf with the dinghy - smiling pitifully at his colleague in the other dinghy, who takes the long way around the highest waves.

When we get to the island, a hearty jump onto the wet and slippery wooden platform is needed as well as a short run to the end of the platform to avoid being splashed by the big waves, that wash over it.

We all make it save and sound to the shore.

A colony of sea lions with many babies await us. Cuteness overload…

Galapagos IV - Beautiful Española

Española is one of the oldest islands of the Galapagos, about 4 million years old. It slowly becomes a rocky, barren island with few vegetation.

But the large sandy bays are a playground for sea lions.

That’s what Gardener Bay is famous for. Crystal clear water of an incredible color, white sands and cute sea lions.

Authentic Peruvian Ceviche - there are some tricks to it!

Maybe you are like me?

You love ceviche, and when you did it at home it was good, but somehow different to the ceviche you ate in your vacation?

To finally find out, me and a friend from Lima took a cooking class in Peru with the well-traveled peruvian chef Hector Aguilar Valle.

Very good choice, as Hector not just showed us what to put into it, he also made us try the sauce at every step, hinted on what is missing and showed us some tricks!

So here’s the first of the dishes we cooked:

Authentic Peruvian Ceviche

Galapagos III - Santa Cruz and Isabella

Next stop on our Galapagos Cruise is the Charles Darwin station on Santa Cruz Island.

They breed giant tortoises there, and if you don’t have the luck to see some in the wild, this is where you have to go.

There are tortoises in every age and every size in their compounds. They spent their time eating, fighting for the best piece of salad and trying to mate. And that’s also when the relaxed giants can get evil and develop an almost breakneck speed! :D

Galapagos II - Genovesa and Bartholomew

The next day of our cruise lead us to the islands Genovesa and Bartholomew.

We got up at 6 am to make sure we would be alone on the island.

Tired we had a strong coffee and set off to the island in a dinghy.

Flaming red crabs covered the lava stones, when we tried to get off the dinghy.

They didn’t even move, when you almost stepped on them...

Galapagos Islands I - North Seymour in the pouring rain...

The Galapagos Islands are located about 900 km west of the equadorian mainland and were formed by uplifts of submarine lava formations.

The islands and the surrounding waters form the Galapagos National Park, which is famous for a huge number of endemic species, that Charles Darwin and his Beagle explored between 1831 and 1836.

Here's the first article of our Galapagos cruise.

But beware, contains cute pictures of an incredible wildlife...

An unbelievable experience - building houses in Argentina

A friend told me about her experience with TECHO.

This is about building homes together with the families and lots of other volunteers in the poor parts of South America.

I was intrigued and decided to help at a TECHO construction in Argentina.

And I can't begin to describe what an awesome experience it was.

I really hope that I can transport the feeling in the following lines - maybe you have to read between the lines.

Equator experiments

Yeah, there’s a line drawn on the floor for people to do their pictures.

And yes, of course we did them too ;-D

Interestingly there’s more to it.

There are some experiments you can do, that might leave you stunned.

They definitely will leave you thinking and discussing.

Think of Mad Max. New Years Eve in Ecuador

Cuenca is a beautiful colonial town in Ecuador. We decided to celebrate New Years Eve here and we didn't regret it - we actually had a blast!

We got drunk with some locals, burned lots of rag dolls on the streets, jumped over the fire and danced around it with lots of drunk Ecuadorians in a crazy pandemonium.

Comedy stories - a hospital in Ecuador

Nobody wants to see the inside of a hospital during their holidays. Having to go to a hospital in a foreign country leads you to deal with additional challenges like a foreign language (what the hack does „mitral valve prolaps“ mean in spanish?) or a different kind of bureaucracy and organization (no, you don’t just storm into the emergency section unless you want to be knocked down by the armed security guard :-)).

When I finally decide to see a doctor with what would later turn out to be a pneumonia I am prepared to spend hours in the „VozAndes“ hospital in Quito, Ecuador.

Who would have thought that it would be rather a slap stick comedy… :-D

Medellin is a surprise, in many ways

What terrifying things we heard about Medellin from our friends and family. A murder city with an incredible high rate of crime. It’s incredibly unsafe, especially at night. You might be shot by some drug dealers or will at least be robbed. You must be crazy to go there.

Well, the city still has a very bad reputation due to the events in the 80’s and 90’s. The famous drug lord Pablo Escobar lived in Medellin. But he is just one of the famous persons involved in the drug war during that time.