We were collected at 6am for our flight to San Cristobal via another coastal city (name unknown). There was almost no traffic on the road or at the airport so had an hour to wait. We’d been given a packed breakfast to eat on the way: ham and cheese sandwich (do they eat anything else in South America?), some juice and a banana.

The flights were uneventful, in 737s or equivalent, which was a surprise. I had envisioned some twin engined Cessna but that would be somewhat impractical given there were over 200,000 visitors to the Galapagos last year.

Our guide here is Jacinto, who is a native of the islands and both earnest and funny. We were delivered to the wharf where we boarded a zodiac for our boat, the Daphne. Immediately we were surrounded by sea lions and bird life. All the wildlife seems to be very unafraid.

The rest of our contingent were already on board. With us and Laura there are 13 passengers and 9 crew including Jacinto. Mainly Aussies with a couple of British women and another kiwi couple from Paraparaumu.

The weather forecast is completely wrong. It was warm and sunny and many of our tour are suffering significant sunburn from the past couple of days. We have a great cabin. Actually we have by far the best cabin. It has a queen bed (the rest are bunks apart from one twin room (that has honeymooners in it) and it has loads of cupboards and drawers and a reasonable en-suite. The rest of our group all trooped through for a look this afternoon and marvelled at the generous space. Mostly the others have bunks.

We had lunch almost immediately on boarding: seafood casserole with rice and veggies and fresh fruit. Yum. Then we had fun watching a sea lion that made itself at home in the zodiac, and was none too keen to move later on, eventually being hosed out by a crew member only to go straight to the second zodiac and hop in there.

There is a 90 minute siesta every day after lunch then it was back to shore for a short walk to the culture and history centre and then a taxi ride up to a giant tortoise sanctuary.

The tortoises were not very close except for the young ones that have been bred there. We got a couple of good photos but evidently they are all over the place on one of the other islands that the others have already visited.

We saw some iguanas, including a marine one that was hunting crabs on the rocks. Also some pelicans and other small birds including a mockingbird.

After the visit we checked out the shops, had a drink at a local bar and then back to the boat for introductions to the crew, then dinner: spaghetti bolognaise, salad and garlic bread, followed by apple crumble. Laura, Mike and I then had to have our safety briefing where we tried on lifejackets and got instructions. Early to bed for Mike and I. It gets dark almost immediately just after 6pm and is light again at 6 in the morning. We didn’t have that much sleep tonight and are hopeful we won’t suffer too much with sea sickness. There is a 7 hour voyage tonight and evidently everyone was sick on their first night as it was quite rough.