T o HELL with the galapagos Islands!

I hate them and their specialized Darwinian long beaks etc.! What Islands do you hate!

fuck u they have some of the most chill fauna extant

http://www.galapagosmap.com/pictures/galapagos_tortoise.jpg

I'll take that damn thing and make the world's biggest ashtray! Or make it my Torto-bitch and ride it to work!

i dislike the scilly isles, the balaeric islands, los malvinas, réunion, new guinea, st kilda and the kuril islands

pitcairn is full of wrong'uns too

ambivalent about the shetlands....i suspect they have very little to recommend them and are windswept and nordicky without being grandly remote and burzumian

I love this place though - I wish to be buried here "after death"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machias_Seal_Island

Yeah, can't look too far beyond Pitcairn for this. Willing to believe that Andaman islands are just misunderstood.

pretty sure the Isle of Man should be sunk

land in general highly overrated imo

Those giant stone statues on Easter Island, who do they think they are? With their faces and their eyes and noses! Bah!

In fact, it should be stripped of all trees, imho.

Matt Smith innit?

Not that I know of, no - does he have issues with Easter island too? I was j/k btw, I quite like those stupid heads with their ridiculous hats.

I hate those crabs!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab

i am planning on blowing all my savings on a Galapagos Islands trip in the next 6 months.
has anyone been?

i am uneasy with overwhelming such a fragile ecosystem as a tourist but completely obsessed with this place atm and feeling an inescapable pull

i have traveled > 50 miles-ish from where i grew up exactly once in the last 10 years, so that is saying a lot.

I went around 6 weeks ago, and it was pretty amazing. The whole trip was one week: Quito > Galapagos Islands > Guayaquil. The islands I visited were Santa Cruz (where the Tortoise Reserve and Darwin Research Center are. Plus the hotels are here, so it will be your Galapagos "homebase"), Bartolome, and North Seymour Island. The snorkeling at Bartolome in particular was unbelievable. Maybe it was just good timing, but nobody else was there at the time other than the group (15 people) I was in. Clear blue water, lots of schools of fish, a few penguins (!), sea lions, baby sharks (!!)...
Note that Ecuador entered a state of emergency earlier this month, so I would keep an eye on that situation before making plans! This is a good summary of how it started: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67912242

oh damn, you were just there!!!
i'm insanely jealous

ideally i want to go in may, because of the weather and the animals and the ample time to prepare. i plan to do a boat tour for at least 5 days because i want to see some of the far flung islands that wouldn't be reachable in a day trip from Santa Cruz or Isabela.

there are 2 dilemmas:

-given the state of emergency, should i go right away despite my extreme unpreparedness. i don't want to defer, i need this badly.

-i want to do some diving (i'm certified) but balanced with other activities like photography, exploring and swimming/snorkeling. the boat trips with diving seem to be all about diving.

a few penguins (!

just a few?? swimming with penguins off Bartolome is prob what i'm looking forward to most.

that and the boobies.

if i have any money left, i'd go from there to Salar de Uyuni and the Siloli desert in Bolivia which is my other bucket list destination in South America. it's much, much more affordable than Galapagos, so that helps.

who am i kidding, this is never going to happen lol

Re: penguins at Bartolome, our naturalist guide said that we would be lucky if we saw one, but we saw four. I guess it varies depending on the time of the year?
Hope it works out for you!

i had heard that swimming with penguins at Pinnacle rock was a popular activity, and that there are many of them. going on this detailed account it sounds like you were exceptionally lucky to get to swim with them at all

https://greenglobaltravel.com/swimming-with-galapagos-penguins-video/

i hope i can be so lucky
god i love penguins so much 🐧🐧🐧♥️♥️♥️