Traveling is important for the heart and soul in my opinion. While those of us who live in the USA are accustomed to what our country is like, it is hard to appreciate people from other cultures, their foods and their lifestyles without visiting their countries. I have traveled from the time I had graduated from Chiropractic College when my parents as a graduation present gave me a plane ticket to England with a Eurail pass as a graduation present. I backpacked around Europe, staying with friends, people I met along the way and got a great appreciation for how other people live. Many of them have great lifestyles, different values, and in those days, it was possible to do Europe in many countries for under $10 a day including a hostel or a pension which included a bed for the night. Our trip to Galapagos was our gift to each other now that we both are 65 years old. I suppose having Medicare with its much reduced insurance premiums was also a gift too. :). Our trip began with an Avianca Flight at 1:20 am on June 26th and we arrived around 7am where we met our tour guide in Quito for the first part of our trip visiting Ecuador. The guide took us to some of their national parks including Cotopaxi National Park, home of the Cotopaxi Volcano. The beauty of this place cannot be fully imagined and even photos don’t do it justice. We then stayed at an old Hacienda from the 1800’s that now is operated as a hotel. The next morning we visited one of the many Rose plantations in the area. Ecuador is the worlds largest exporter and grower of roses in the World. If you ordered Roses for valentines Day, they likely came from here. Dr. C at a Rose Plantation. That afternoon, we visited Quilotoa Crater Lake, which is a huge volcanic lake with a village next door to it. The beauty of this place is unimaginable and is about 4000 meters (over 13000 feet) above sea level. The following day we visited Bano’s known for its beauty and waterfalls as well as a sense of adventure. They booked us in a fantastic hotel overlooking the city as shown in this photo. There is a viewing platform that we were on and we got talked into taking a swing ride that is suspended by 100 foot cables that took us over the city. Boy, that was scary but cool. The next day we went into the town of Bano’s and visited one of the waterfalls. Then it was two flights and an overnight stay in Guayakill and a final flight into the Galapagos airport where we were met by the staff of our boat. The boat had 13 passengers, a full staff, a chef, and a Naturalist who showed us around the islands, had us experiencing the best snorkleing I had ever experienced. Over the next several days, we visited many of the islands which became famous due to Charles Darwin who was the father of evolutionary biology. Basically, genetically similar animals developed different adaptations and skills depending on the island. This included finches that developed certain skills for hunting with their beaks different than others on different islands and even some islands had swimming iguanas. The animals were not afraid of us and we walked right up to most of them. I swam with sea turtles while snorkleing. Check out some of my photos. Our Naturalist guide Fabian I hope you enjoyed my photos of Galapagos, its animals and our naturalist tour guide Fabian who was shown in the photos. This was the trip of a lifetime. Do you have a sense of adventure? Ecuador is a nice country to visit, good culture, good people and the Galapagos Islands is a must visit place.