kpc
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Three years ago, I had only vaguely heard of the Galapagos Islands….all I knew was that it was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, near South America, had interesting wildlife, and Charles Darwin had visited the islands in the 19th Century, and it had helped him formulate some of his ideas on the theories of evolution, published in 1859 in his famous “On the Origin of Species”. I’m no academic / historian so these facts posed little interest to me.
Around this time, having just purchased a new Plasma TV and Play Station 3, I was recommended the [FONT="]BBC Blu-Ray DVD, Galapagos, [/FONT]as the vision from this documentary would be apparently stunning on my new purchases.
The DVD was truly visually stunning but I became very intrigued (well my partner would described it as more of an obsession) about the Galapagos Islands. The islands’ geographic isolation, over 960km off the continental west coast of South America, has led to the evolution of numerous endemic species here. The islands were formed over 5 million years ago by volcanic eruptions, and through a quirk of evolution, large predators failed to evolve here.
Over the next 3 years, I read as much as I could about the Galapagos, and soon it became a “must visit’ destination on my bucket list. The geographic location of the Galapagos made it a difficult destination to reach from Australia. The 2 main options for getting here were either via North America or South America (Santiago).
Late last year, I decided to attend a conference in San Francisco, and I asked my partner as to whether we could do a “short” side trip to the Galapagos after the conference. Unfortunately, my partner’s concept of geography is not the strongest, and she readily agreed. With leave restrictions, I only had a week to fly to / from the Galapagos as well as the time for sight seeing.
To get to the Galapagos (which is part of Ecuador), one has to fly from either Quito or Guayaquil in Ecuador. So the following plan from San Francisco was hatched:
We would fly SFO-MIA-UIO and stay 2 nights in Quito, which would give us one full day for sightseeing in Quito. We then would fly from Quito to the Galapagos to start a 5 day, 4 night cruise around the islands. At the time of planning, the return trip to Sydney, GPS-UIO (Overnight hotel)-MIA-SFO (Overnight hotel)- LAX-SYD seemed pretty straight forward, a series of flights that I subsequently found to have nearly killed me from exhaustion!
Next….to the Galapagos Islands via Quito!
Around this time, having just purchased a new Plasma TV and Play Station 3, I was recommended the [FONT="]BBC Blu-Ray DVD, Galapagos, [/FONT]as the vision from this documentary would be apparently stunning on my new purchases.
The DVD was truly visually stunning but I became very intrigued (well my partner would described it as more of an obsession) about the Galapagos Islands. The islands’ geographic isolation, over 960km off the continental west coast of South America, has led to the evolution of numerous endemic species here. The islands were formed over 5 million years ago by volcanic eruptions, and through a quirk of evolution, large predators failed to evolve here.
Over the next 3 years, I read as much as I could about the Galapagos, and soon it became a “must visit’ destination on my bucket list. The geographic location of the Galapagos made it a difficult destination to reach from Australia. The 2 main options for getting here were either via North America or South America (Santiago).
Late last year, I decided to attend a conference in San Francisco, and I asked my partner as to whether we could do a “short” side trip to the Galapagos after the conference. Unfortunately, my partner’s concept of geography is not the strongest, and she readily agreed. With leave restrictions, I only had a week to fly to / from the Galapagos as well as the time for sight seeing.
To get to the Galapagos (which is part of Ecuador), one has to fly from either Quito or Guayaquil in Ecuador. So the following plan from San Francisco was hatched:
We would fly SFO-MIA-UIO and stay 2 nights in Quito, which would give us one full day for sightseeing in Quito. We then would fly from Quito to the Galapagos to start a 5 day, 4 night cruise around the islands. At the time of planning, the return trip to Sydney, GPS-UIO (Overnight hotel)-MIA-SFO (Overnight hotel)- LAX-SYD seemed pretty straight forward, a series of flights that I subsequently found to have nearly killed me from exhaustion!
Next….to the Galapagos Islands via Quito!
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:shock:
