LIBBY GREENHALGH

‘Please keep the door shut’ not really an unusual  sign  until you realise why as you stumble out onto the balcony into a field of marine iguanas. These creatures just climb straight up the walls and hang out in the sunshine! This however is just one of the many beauties of the hostel I am in. While it lacks air conditioning which would have been greatly appreciated as the Galapagos islands seem to have got warmer by about 5 degrees, it is right on the beach, has its own pretty cool bar, free breakfast and water and the lady who runs it is a star. Emilie helped me out of a complete bind. Landing on Isabella with only $100 of which $60 dollars is required to get home makes eating for 4 days pretty hard! However, she allowed me to transfer her some money and gave me some cash so I didn’t fade away. Not that there is any real risk of that! Anyhooooooo, my final day on Isabela was spent mainly in the water firstly in the sea snorkelling and then in a massive thunderst...

It is pretty much my last day today here is Galapagos- mind you tomorrow I will go to another island take a couple of boat trips and hopefully a plane and I will end up back in Quito maybe even in the Hilton! However I currently have no flight or accommodation information…..so we shall see!!! I forget where I have blogged up to let alone what actual day it is! It actually already tomorrow and I have bone my boat rides and not my flight and still not told you about 2 days ago! Confused- yes? So am I!!!  But yesterday(now two days ago) I saw some amazing ‘Vulkunology’ (do you like what I have done there- if you haven’t read the last blog or are not a trekky that will be lost on you). But I did a 16km hike to the World’s largest active volcano crater at 10 KM in diameter, and the second largest crater in the world – beaten by Kilamanjaro It last erupted in 2005 and gave the locals quite the fright! Our guide actually got to come up and see and the photos he has are ver...

Having snorkelled Kicker rock we all landed at San Cristobel some were continuing on with the boat tour, some were heading back to the mainland and Spock(Garth) and I were staying put for one night. I was then venturing on to Isabella where I am now and Spock hadn’t fully made his mind up yet but was due to leave the next day. Either way I am sure they could just beam him up!   First challenge- find somewhere to stay, fortunately Spock had a lonely planet and we found a hostel – after a brief explanation of we are not married and required separate beds we were sharing a room. While I have shared rooms with people I have never even met I have yet to share a room with a Spock look-a-like who I have known for 4 days so far. for clarity I mean the older version of Spock and as he is now relatively old! But, he has plenty of chat even if I didn’t. So we went in search of some blue footed boobies as so far we had only seen one or two from a far.  After a couple of taxi ride...

This blog will probably read incorrectly in terms of past present and future tense as I will have done my entire (or most) of my Galapagos trip by the time you get to hear about it rather than read it bit by bit. Prepare to struggle through a several day epic….or simply click LIKE or return a short email saying sounds fun with no particular reference I am sure you have all been struggling to get through your days without a little bit of Libby in your life, I know I would find it hard if I couldn’t spend time with me let alone not getting to hear about the weird and wonderful things go on in my head! It has only been day one and already I know the simple solution will be to show you all my pictures- I have 2300 photos and still a month to go, so mum dad thank your lucky stars they are not all on your smart telly and everyone else start preparing your excuses for being unable to attend the slideshow for ‘The Great Adventures of Libby Nemo hop-a-long Nails Greenfingers Greenhalgh...

Quite the change in the two days. I have taken my 15 th flight  and I am in the  7 th country of my travels so far.  I have upgraded my accommodation from an 8 bed mixed dorm to a room at the Hilton where my bed is wider than it is long! But the hardest change has been the departure of my friends and having no one to talk to, despite having  done a lot of travelling by myself already it is lonely.  But I shall try to remain upbeat and hopefully there will be some nice people on Galapagos tour. Welcome to Ecuador, they have just had their Presidential Elections turns out the guy was speaking at my hotel  but more weirdly they do not allow alcohol to be drunk (or maybe just sold) either side of the election so a lot of places were very quiet yesterday  or closed. However, I still managed to mooch about a market  trying to find my fluffy lama toy to take home and then I wandered off to find dinner and stumbled upon a place called  La...

We have been to the JUNGLE and got bugged out, drenched and fairly sweaty! Food on the boat The main port After the wonderful guest blog of Sarah Gawthorpe it would be the role of Miss Lindsey Bell to complete her guest blog…..but due to too much fun being had on their last day thanks to our very well informed tour guide (Sarah with a lonely planet) and quite frankly the choice of ice cream or blogging the lovely ladies have departed back to the UK to provide you all with first hand stories and I am afraid you have the early return of the very witty and interesting me!!!!   Yet again it sees in this part of our travelling we have done so much in such a short space of time that it is hard to tell you about all of it…..that and I may have slept through some of it! Our group diminished from 6 to 5 (bye bye Andrew- though I may cross paths with him in Galapagos) as we left Cusco for the ‘jungle’  but we collected two more at Puerto Maldonado which is not far...

I’ve been informed by Libby that a guest blog is required – thanks for putting up with me - I’m Sarah. Very relieved at 4200M- day one So, as Team Medic, I read about altitude sickness the night before our trek and it said we should sleep at elevations no more than 500m apart.  So when our guide Rosa told us that we would be ascending from our current elevation of 2700m to 4100m the first night and 4200m the next, while going up to 4600m during the day, I felt a little concerned.  So we all popped some altitude sickness tablets for good measure.  As I went to bed that night, I had a some tummy rumbles (technical term) so also popped a few Imodium.   Imagine my delight when I was up the majority of the night with travellers diarrhoea, the timing was spot on the night before a 2 day camping expedition with no toilets.  By 4am I had popped another 2 imodium and 2 antibiotics.      So us intrepid explorers set out in the rain head...