For underwater adventurers, Galapagos Island diving offers thriving reefs, marine life and the best underwater visibility on Earth! Diving for divers of all skill levels and extreme fun diving with the sea lions.

Visibility when diving in Galapagos can go to 30 meter or about 100 feet! This is partially due to the fact that around 70,000 square kilometers of Galapagos islands: the marine areas are protected far enough out of the way to make the destruction of this environment less likely.

Galapagos tours for diving cater for everybody, but due to strong currents, many dive areas are much more appropriate for intermediate and advanced divers. The most impressive dive experiences I had were at about 20 to 30 m deep.

I found the water to be warmer than on the Great Barrier Reef, but do ask the experienced divers on these Galapagos tours for their opinion. It could get as cold as 13 degrees Celsius when you descend to 20 to 30 m. Snorkeling at the surface is fun in water between 18 to 30 degrees Celsius throughout the year.

Since the Galapagos Islands are protected for hunting, expect an enormous variety of marine life: I managed to see lost of reef fish, some sharks, sea lions and even a whale shark!

All in all you should at least snorkel in the Galapagos islands to have an idea of the marine life underneath your cruise ship. For more experienced divers, Galapagos Island diving is a must do for a few days.

Technorati Tags: diving, Galapagos, galapagos island, galapagos island diving, galapagos islands, island diving, reefs, sea lions

What I will never forget and what sets the stage for your whole Galapagos vacation was the sea lion coming to greet us!

Sea lion’s welcome on Galapagos!

2 things are special on Galapagos:

1. you are only allowed with very tiny groups on each and every island at one time, so it’s all but mass-tourism
2. the animals just come to you in stead of you needing to wait hours in order to see a glimpse in the distance!

It’s just unforgettable!!!

Technorati Tags: animals, antarctica, baltra island, diversity, first impression, galapagos island

But when you use these finches as an educational means, then don’t stress on the names of the beaks… Always make sure your audience starts loving what you are doing, once they love nature, they will ask you more. And once you got them started asking, you will be able to teach them facts. The main thing is you start with teaching love

Galapagos Island Finches : what about their beaks?

When it comes to the finch, there is nothing spectacular about its beak: it needs to survive like you and me. And that’s what biology education should be about: how do creatures live next to each other in order to survive?

As you can see: my point of view is more ecological than just name this plant and never ask yourself why there is a plant in the first place.

Also: people will remember things that interests them. So try to get people interested in nature first and then the name giving aspects will come later.

Technorati Tags: beak, beaks, biology education, Charles Darwin, charles darwin and galapagos finches, creatures, diversification, finch, finches, Galapagos Finches, galapagos island, galapagos island finches, point of view, stress

After visiting Rabida Galapagos, our Galapagos island holiday took us to Bartolome Island.

This is a very popular Galapagos cruise destination but it is worthwhile a visit.

Especially if you love snorkeling and sea-life like we do, Bartolome Island is paradise.

Penguins are just shooting next to you and the sea lions are so curious, that they come to you instead of you having to look for them once you are in the water.

It’s wonderful how these sea creatures were playing with us and with our flippers.

Make sure to bring a disposable underwater camera when you plan your Galapagos island holiday: it’s well worth your while when you love snorkeling!

At the end of the afternoon, we climbed the Bartolome island volcano, saw a huge Galapagos snake on the way and admired to view on top of the Bartolome island volcano admiring Pinnacle rock and Sullivan Bay.

Pinnacle rock sticking out in the middle-right

We had a lovely dinner on our little Galapagos cruise ship and headed from Bartolome Island for a night’s travel to Genovesa Island. (see our next post)

Technorati Tags: bartolome island, Galapagos, galapagos cruises, galapagos island, galapagos tours, galapagos travel, island holiday

After Baltra we visited Rabida Galapagos: our second island during our Galapagos island holiday.

It took our Galapagos island cruise one complete night to sail from Baltra to Galapagos. We want to tell you to make sure you bring your anti seasick pills with you, otherwise you could be in for a very sleepless night.

But once your stomach has settled, your travel to the Galapagos becomes priceless when you wake up just before the shore of Rabida Island.

We had breakfast on our Galapagos cruise ship admiring from far a big colony of sea lions basking on the red-brown lava soil of Rabida.

After breakfast we jumped into our "panga" to set foot on Rabida. Although the sea lions couldn’t be bothered with our presence, our guide warned us not to get to close into the territory of the dominant male. Especially since there were a few newborn sea lions present

We admired lots of blue-footed boobies fishing of the coast of Rabida Island. The island itself is quite rough with only Palo Santo trees and Opuntia cacti.

The main reason however that trips to the Galapagos stop at Rabida Island is the snorkeling: we saw abundance of colourful fishes including a white-tipped reef shark as big as me, scary…

During lunch we sailed from Rabida Galapagos to Isla Bartolome (see our next post).

Technorati Tags: baltra, galapagos cruises, galapagos island, galapagos tours, galapagos travel, island holiday, rabida galapagos, rabida island, rabida island galapagos