Imagine a place where the animals don't fear humans. This Eden is a rocky, volcanic place; a tropical land that doesn't get much rain.

The irregular landscape is a result of volcanos pushing up through the earth's crust with a deficit of silicon, resulting not in the conical shapes of famous volcanos, but in irregular features on a mostly barren landscape.

This site is the result of a five day cruise through the Galapagos archipelago in April of 2002 on the Galapagos Explorer. Since there isn't much written on various parts of the journey, I've put together this website to tell a little bit of the town of Guayaquil, Ecuador that we started our journey from, a little about the food of that region of Ecuador, a bit about the boat and why we chose it from a number of choices, and of course the pictures of the animals, the focus of any trip to the Galapagos.

By the way, that's a typical land iguana there on the left. It's maybe two feet long. On the upper right is a giant tortoise, the poster child of the Galapagos Islands. They attain ages of over 150 years.

In the Glapagos Islands, the animals pretty much demand you photograph them close up! See more photos in the Gallery.