Saving The Planet by Lesley and John - The Galapagos Islands



Right. Now this is what I want you all to do. Put down your cup of tea, turn off the telly/computer/game boy, stop EVERYTHING. Right now. Now get down your local travel agents and book a trip to The Galapagos. Because the Galapagos is truly, honestly, totally magnificent. For those of you who’ve seen programmes or pictures of these islands - that’s what they’re like. Unspoiled, beautiful, peaceful and TEEMING with wildlife. Animals that are not one eensy, weensy bit scared or worried about bleedin’ great human types treading over and between them every day. They do not bat an eyelid. They do not move a muscle. Frankly, my dears, they couldn’t give a damn. WE LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A group of 15 of us sailed around these gorgeous islands for a week, living on a very lovely boat and visiting different islands every day. We would hike around for hours amongst hundreds of sea lions, many different types of weird and wonderful iguanas, giant pelicans, bleedin’ great big red crabs (charmingly called Sally Lightfoots!?), giant tortoises and loads of mental looking birds, the blue footed booby being our very favourite and undoubtedly most stupid looking. When we weren’t hiking we were swimming and snorkelling amongst sting rays, mad looking fish, sharks (yes, sharks....), HUGE Pacific Green turtles and just the occasional dolphin or 40....

In the evenings we would eat very super 3 course dinners and drink just a bit of wine to wash it all down. Well it’s very thirsty and hungry work doing all that hiking and snorkelling, as you can imagine....

Please check out John’s photo blog website thingy, all will be revealed. The address is http://picasaweb.google.com/john.boylan3 Now in case you’re scared to do this (’cos we all know how John likes to take a photo or 200....) please let me assure you that I have monitored his editing process VERY carefully, and from the 440 photos he took, you will only receive 56. Which is not bad at all, ’cos there were some bloomin’ LOVELY photos to sort through, let me tell you.

A perfect trip really - apart from my broken rib, of course. Well I don’t know that it’s really broken, ’cos I really don’t feel the need to visit another bloody hospital when I’m trying to save the planet, so can’t have it confirmed. But it hurts. It hurts a lot. Only when I’m laughing, coughing, sneezing, moving or breathing, mind you, so maybe it’s not so bad after all. It was Uli´s fault you see....he was a fellow passenger - lovely young German chappie with a very marvellous sense of humour - and a penchant for breaking young fair lady’s ribs. All I was doing was trying to scramble back onto the boat, in a very unladylike-more-like-a-beached-whale-like manner and Uli INSISTED in hauling me up on deck. Except, I didn’t reach the deck: instead my rib cage just smashed into the side of the boat, breaking at least 10 of my ribs. Well maybe 3…….alright, just the one then. Or maybe it was just cracked. Or bruised. Whatever. It hurts.

But worry not, despite my unbearable pain, the planet will continue to be saved. As from tomorrow in fact. Me and the wee fella are off to wildlife centre for a month, in The Andes, a lovely place surrounded by volcanoes. It’s called Santa Martha - if you get a chance, look it up on the web. Lovely bloomin’ animals there to look after, including giant Galapagos tortoises, though how they managed to swim 1000km to the mainland from their bit of paradise is beyond me. This centre looks fab - with the one exception that we will be sharing a dorm, undoubtedly with very young skinny people that party late and snore a lot. God help ’em if they start, that’s all I can say. Watch this space. I will keep you posted.

Ok my lovelies, that’s about all from me. We’ll have internet contact near the centre, about half an hour’s walk away, so will be able to remain in touch with you all. Please drop a line if you get the time and let us know how life is in your corner of the world.

But PLEASE do not send messages by that friggin´ bebo/face book/fun wall thing. Fun it most certainly is not. I’ll be buggered if I can open up anything on any of ’em....drives me nuts and will very probably be something else that would hurt my rib. So just ordinary email please. Humour me. I’m old and don’t understand funwall type things. Ok, enough rambling. Lots of love to you all.

And little Eve - what’s the news on those bleedin’ udders?

Me and the little fella. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Have you opened those photos yet? Come on, hurry up…..