8 days on the fantastic Samba, sailing from island to island will be hard to put into words. It will be even harder to whittle down the 2000 odd photos to a manageable “best of” for Flickr. But here goes…

Nearly everyday of the trip started with breakfast at 7am, followed by a landing on one of the islands at 8. The island trips normally lasted about 2 hours, but the time flew by thanks to shear number of different (and unbelievably tame) animals, and our fantastic guide, Juan. We would normally squeeze a snorkelling session in before lunch (check out the underwater photos at the end of the post) before heading onto our second location in the afternoon. The island visits were via panga boats and were either dry landings (normally a small pier, but sometimes just a rock!), wet landings (jumping out of the boat on a beach before the next wave hits you!) or panga rides around the mangroves.

We were lucky enough to encounter (sometimes within touching distance); Sei Whales, Dolphins (2 types) Penguins, White Tipped Reef Sharks, Galapagos Sharks, Sea Turtles, Sea Lions, Seals, Giant Tortoises, Lonesome George, Marine Iguanas (the black ones) Land Iguanas (the orange ones) Lava Lizards, Frigate birds (pirates), Blue Footed Boobies (and their chicks), Nazca Boobies, Lava Herons, Galapagos Hawks, Darwins Finches, and a whole host of others! There was also the interesting flora and fauna which has had to adapt to the various volcanic landscapes.

Apart from all the above we also got to venture down massive Lava tunnels, where Juan would tell us gruesome stories from the human history of the Galapagos (in the pitch dark!) We visited the oldest post office on the islands (over 200 years old) where the postcards don’t even require stamps, and I got to play a part in the Galapagos “2nd Division” football league, helping the Samba team ensure victory! All of the other 12 guests on board were great company and we thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality of the great crew and capitano!

In an attempt to keep this post fairly brief I have left out many of the great memories (maybe I will write a proper round up at some point). And here are the photos (warning, there are 60 photos in the “best of” slide show, and 43 in the underwater slide show).

The “Best Of” Photos:

Underwater Photos:

A short 3 hour train ride was all it took to get from Leipzig to the beautiful city of Prague. We might be going halfway round the world in January , but it would have felt wrong not to have visited such a famous city which is almost on our doorstop.

Highlights:

• Finding a hostel in a perfect (central) location thanks to Hostelworld
• Walking the Charles Bridge
• Visiting the Prague Castle, which is apparently the largest castle in the world. I am not sure it really qualifys as a proper castle in my books, but impressive none the same.

Lowlights:

• Not enough time to see the whole city. There are so many amazingly old and interesting side streets, we could have wondered around for a whole week and not got bored!
• The sheer number of tourists. We only added to the problem, but once we found the quiet side streets, we wished the whole city was the same!

And now time for the photos…