Diving With Giants - The Galapagos Islands

Our last day in the Galapagos! We had our last breakfast on the boat and then packed up all of our gear. At 8:30 we took the panga to shore and headed to the airport. No one was quite sure what time the flight left, so we just hung around with the passengers from the Aggressor 1 and traded stories from the week. The flight ended up leaving at 1pm, (complete with another screaming and kicking child right behind us!).

Back in Guayaquil we all picked up our luggage and piled into a shuttle back to the UniPark Hotel. We decided to walk a couple of blocks to the water and see the Malacon 2000, a waterfront park that extends for about a mile along the water. Jimmy and Sage came along with us and we had fun with them. There were monuments and walkways and even a botanical garden section that was really nice.

We walked back to the hotel for a recommendation on dinner. At first we tried the Tasca Basqua which was about 100 feet from the hotel, but it was oppressively smoky inside, so we went back and caught a cab that took us outside the city center to Lo Nuestro, a really nice 'typical' restaurant with some great food and great atmosphere. We had lots of fun chatting with Sage and Jimmy and learning more about them; we had a great time hanging out with them the entire week. After a somewhat crazy cab ride back to the hotel we went right to sleep.

Our whole group met in the lobby at 7:30 after breakfast and we all headed to the airport for our 10:45am flight. When we arrived at the airport we found that our flight was delayed until 2:15pm. We'd miss our original connection to Tampa, but they had booked us on another that would get in 2 hours later, ah well, the fun of international travel. We found a quiet corner to camp out in until the flight left. On board the plane the flight attendant was really nice and chatted and joked with us for much of the flight.

In Miami we made our way through immigration, customs and a huge security line just in time to make our 8:15pm flight to Tampa. We finally made it to Randy's Dad's house at about 10:30pm... a long day of travel!

What an incredible trip! The Galapagos is such an exotic destination and it definitely lived up to all of our expectations. The Aggressor crew did a fantastic job of making our trip so amazing, we really appreciated their efforts. Our fellow crewmembers were lots fun and we had a great time with them, maybe we'll see some of them on another dive trip some day!

So the only question is: where's our next dive trip?

Dive Gear: Uwatec Smart Tec dive computers, ScubaPro regulators, Aqua Lung Pro QD+ BCs. Henderson Hyperstretch 7mm wetsuits and hoods.