Santa Cruz (Galapagos) – 
Puerto Ayora
Today we want to laze a little – just sun & beach, that has to be once in a while.
We decide to visit “Playa de los Alemanes” and “Las Grietas” – and skip “El Chato” and the lava tunnels as we don’t feel like hiking today.
Since you can’t get to the beach by land, we signal a water taxi at the harbour of Puerto Ayora to get off at the pier of the “Angermeyer Waterfront Inn”. That is some quite luxurious shed, I have to admit .
Playa de los Alemanes
The distance to Playa de los Alemanes is not really far, but the sun is burning quite relentlessly from the sky. Cooling down here and now or later? We decide for later, because Playa de los Alemanes resembles pretty much the North Sea at the moment: It is currently low tide and the beach stretches quite far up to the sea – maybe this is why the beach got that name ?
We continue on a wooden walkway towards Las Grietas. Surely the water must be high enough there – after all, the lava tunnel should be quite deep. On the way we see some saltpans in which pink water some little crabs are rushing around.
Las Grietas
After a good 20 minutes walk we have finally made it and are standing at the lava tunnels – After a quick entry in the “guestbook” (you probably have to enter your name in the booklet for statistical purposes) we go straight into the water.
The crystal clear water immediately cools us down! There aren’t many visitors here – about 20 people, who are spread all over the lava tunnel. Thus it seems that even fish that have strayed from the sea to this place feel quite comfortable and don’t get scared by us humans.
I can’t say exactly how far the tunnel goes and if you can swim to the sea – at a certain point you have to climb some rocks or dive through a hole to follow the tunnel… until you come to a wall that is too high to climb over… at least at low tide .
We let ourselves drift in the water for quite a while before we decide to walk back towards Playa de los Alemanes – unfortunately we can’t really lie down comfortably here.
Playa de los Alemanes
Arriving at the beach, the tide seems to slowly start, but you can’t really go swimming yet. Okay with us, as we just wanted to stretch out and doze anyway. We lie down in the shade of some mangroves, which almost remind us of the jungle landscape of Dagobah and close our eyes .
But at some point it gets too warm for us and we decide to retreat back to our hotel room… After a small break with cocktail at Angermeyer .
Puerto Ayora
Back in Morning Glory, our hotel, Ena gets immediately into the shower while I decide to surf the net to get some information about the murals and graffiti of Quito – I need to do a little planning if I want to do my own photo tour there early in the morning using the city buses…
Rest in pieces
A scream coming out of the bathroom – I jump up… and see how Ena bends over her scuba diving equipment in the bathroom… Fortunately the glass of diving masks is made of safety glass, otherwise a visit to the doctor would have been necessary: Verena rinsed her diving gear from the salt water and stepped on her mask… Rest in pieces .
A bit of comfort is provided by delicious food and numerous cocktails in one of the kioskos though.
As this is our last evening on Galapagos, we decide to do some lightpainting on the “Galapagos” lettering at the harbour. It takes a few attempts and we decide to combine several shots to frame the lettering. Funnily enough, our plan seems to have caused some attention, because soon the police arrives… Once it becomes clear what our plan actually is, we not only have the help of the policeman, but also of a family who considers our fidgeting around the “Galapagos” sign funny …
