Bedouins and Boobies
December 15th, 2011Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
You know it’s time for a new blog when Ben ”the saviour of Bangkok” starts demanding a new update!
After Russia I spent some time in the Middle East. First enjoying the good weather in Tel Aviv and then on a trip to Jordan, meeting great people in Amman and traveling around the beautiful rough landscapes in the south of the country. At the end of October I made the very long journey to Las Vegas to enjoy a weekend of crazy partying for Halloween. And since 5 nights in Vegas is about as much as I can handle we made sure to fly out when all the bunnies and batmans were leaving Sin City. Our next destination was Quito, Ecuador. We spent 2 nights in the highest capital of the world, trying to recover from our Halloween hangover at 2800 metres altitude, before we were headed to the Galapagos Islands. More about the Galapagos later but first an impression of Jordan, a great country to visit…
(click on photos to enlarge)
Sven and me were on a 4×4 desert trip in Wadi Rum when our Bedouin guide told us we should check out the valley while he takes a break enjoying a mint tea in the shade. So we start climbing the rock formations that are starting to get tougher and tougher for us Northern Eurokids when we get passed by some Bedouin guys climbing like monkeys and laughing at us Gringos..
Follow! Jalla Jalla, he said. Sven and me didnt want to be called pussies by 17yr old Jordanian kids so we tried not to think about what would happen if we break a leg in the middle of nowhere in Jordan, and followed. I haven’t oftenly felt that scared and uncomfortable but with a lot of help we managed to reach the top. They basically pushed us all the way on the steep parts, Never again!
Our mountain guides!
In front of the treasury Petra, Jordan’s pride and voted one of the 7 wonders of the world.
Find the Galapagos Islands 1000km of the coast of Ecuador. Because of it’s remoteness the islands developed their own ecosystem with lots of endemic and indigenous species. Galapagos is known for being the place and inspiration for Charles Darwin’s evolution theory, which he started to develop on his voyage to the islands in the early 19th century. I went on a 8 day cruise around the islands and will show some pictures of all the beauty we saw…
Bartolome Island
The birds don’t have any predators on land, so they just approach people up to one metre.
A young red footed boobie yelling at the camera on Tower Island.
A Nasca boobie feeding.
Sven’s chilling with the sea lions.
The Alpha male Sea Lion.
Newly born sea lion.
We visited so many amazing islands, I already forgot the name of this volcano!
The Galapagos giant tortoise was almost extinct because pirates took hundreds of them on their ship as a source of fresh food on their journeys. The specy survived because a few of them were simply too big to carry to their ships.
A baby turtle seeing his first sunlight! We saw a few birds sitting around a turtle nest waiting for the turtles to come out, when we saw this 1 hour old baby sea turtle sticking his head out looking if the coast was save!
We went snorkeling every day and I don’t think it gets better than the Galapagos anywhere in the world. I took all these pictures with THIS CAMERA that I bought for the trip.
On some spots we were snorkeling around groups of up to 30 turtles, there were turtles everywhere, absolutely amazing!
Because the water was quite cold and we only had 3mm short-sleeved wetsuits I was wearing 2 wetsuits and long-sleeved shirts for in the water.
Turtle going for air.
Hungry tutles.
Fernandina Island, if I’m not mistaken.
I also went SCUBA diving at Gordon Rocks off Santa Cruz island. It’s one of the best divee sites in the Galapagos Islands (apart from Darwin and Wolf island) and famous for it’s large groups of Hammerheads.
It ended up being one of the highlights of the trip. I did 2 dives and they were both great adrenaline rushes. The dives weren’t easy with very strong currents and big differences in hot and cold water streams, but the groups of hammerhead sharks and eagle rays we saw, were absolutely amazing. I’ll have to go back and do a dive oriented cruise to the Galapagos islands some time!
We saw one group with very big spotted eagle rays.
The most impressive thing I ever saw SCUBA diving. Large groups of Hammerhead Sharks coming very close. This one closest by was about 4.5 metres long. According to the dive master they have never shown any aggression towards divers in the Galapagos…
Marine Iguanas in their mating colours.
Baby sea lion teasing an Iguana. The Iguana just tried to walk away while the sea lion was holding it’s tail… nothing too bloody 
Sea lion chilling with the marine iguanas in their normal colours.
Did I already mention the snorkeling was fantastic? 
I chased around this white tip reef shark until I had the perfect shot, he wasn’t impressed
Abundance of underwater life.
The sea lions approach you to play in the water. This one thought it was funny to slap me with his tail
They’re very hard to find but we found one! Octopus, master of camouflage.
The picture doesn’t really show it but these Waved Albatrosses are massive birds. They have a wing span of 2.5 metres and need a cliff to jump off in order to start their flight. They breed only in the Galapagos Islands.
Finishing off the Galapagos photos with a Blue Footed Boobie, The Galapagos Signature bird.
I hope I convinced some of you to visit the Galapagos Islands at some point, it is very much worth it!
I’ll finish with a great photo from The Marvelous City, Rio de Janeiro. Summer has really started here and i can’t think of a nicer place to be right now…
Happy Holidays and make 2012 a great year!
-Veron
