Photo Gallery: The Spectacular Plants, Animals and Landscapes of the Galapagos Islands

Hey there gang! Sure hope y’all enjoyed our latest adventure around the spectacular Galapagos Islands. What a time!
So y’all might remember we first visited the Galapagos a few years ago, and our adventure there was featured in the season finale back in Two for the Road season one. Well, our great friends at Latin Trails and Adventure Life brought us back to the Galapagos once again to film another episode for season three, and to experience these incredible islands in a whole new way. We spent this most recent trip filming around the southern and eastern islands of the archipelago, which as is turns out are so very different from the western islands, which we explored last time. But no matter where you travel throughout the Galapagos, every island, every landscape and every encounter is just absolutely spectacular!

Here are a handful of photos from our most recent trip, and a little bit about each in the captions. Check ’em out! And holler if you have any questions or comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Cheers everybody. Thanks for joining us on this big adventure!

Howdy! From the beautiful waters off the Galapagos island of North Seymour..

…where the sea lions are ready to welcome you!

Snorkeling with sea lions is truly one of life’s greatest thrills. And they are everywhere in the Galapagos! So cool!

But there’s so much more to be found in the waters of the Galapagos, including…

…SO MANY beautiful turtles…

…SO MANY types of beautiful, beautiful fish…

…and, yes, SHARKS! It’s always such a rush to swim alongside these guys. These white tipped reef sharks are pretty common in these waters.

Our ride around the islands! The beautiful Sea Star Journey. Thanks again to Latin Trails for spoiling us this week!

Wading among hundreds of stingrays (which are kinda hard to see) on a beach on the island of Floreana. Wait ’til you see the video!

It’s that time of year again! We saw so many adorable baby sea lions, some of them literally only one or two days old. Possibly the cutest little guys on the planet!

And of course we encountered hundreds (if not thousands) of iguanas along the way, including these unique and amazing marine iguanas. The only “swimming” iguanas on earth, and only found here in the Galapagos! (Bonus: a curious little mockingbird, a type also only found here.)

Life is good in the Galapagos.

Such a blessing and a thrill to be back here filming again (and to see so many old friends LOL)!

Galapagos sea lion. And like most all animals here they’re completely unafraid of humans. So you can walk among them and they absolutely just don’t care. (But by law you have to stay at least two meters – or about six feet -away from them.)

This little guy was only maybe a day old. Awwwww!

Peace.

And love. <3

One of the brilliant, blinding white, beautiful beaches on the island of Espanola.

Our awesome guide Hanzel. Hanging out with the locals on Espanola.

The locals – including these endemic Espanola mockingbirds – are again completely unafraid of humans, which is one of the many things about the Galapagos that makes it like no other place on earth.

And these mockingbirds are found only on this island. No other place on earth. There are other mockingbirds on the other islands, and they are also endemic and unique to those specific islands. They are actually what got Charles Darwin thinking about evolution during his time here.

The otherworldly volcanic landscape of Floreana Island. Notice how all the trees look dead? They’re actually just dormant because the rainy season hasn’t begun yet.

Hiking among the rocks and cacti on South Plaza Island.

Those aren’t trees! These giant cacti can be found on a few of the islands, including here on the island of Santa Fe.

And they are HUGE!

Love this shot! The lizards sometimes partner with the iguanas, helping keep flies and other annoying insects off of them.

A Santa Fe land iguana. A type found – again – only on the island of Santa Fe and nowhere else on earth.

The beautiful landscape of Floreana Island as sunset approaches.

Wow! Amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. A cast of hawks (which is what you call a group of hawks) feed on the carcass of a newborn baby sea lion on the island of Santa Fe. These are Galapagos Hawks – found nowhere else on earth – and they are gorgeous. And fierce! (Poor little baby!) #natureismetal

Getting up close (but staying a safe and legal distance) from a majestic Galapagos Hawk.

Aren’t they beautiful?

A frigate bird flies high above the Sea Star Journey as the sun rises on a new day.

Frigate birds are a common sight in the Galapagos…

…and they LOVE to follow the boats. They’re huge by the way. Great big, majestic birds!

Saw lots and lots of super cool looking Nazca Boobies on the island of Espanola.

Aren’t they the craziest looking birds?

And yep! Saw a bunch of blue-footed boobies like this one, although we weren’t able to get very close to them on this trip unfortunately. In case you were wondering, the term “booby” is derived from an old Spanish word. When the Spaniards first arrived to the Galapagos in the 1500s, they wondered why the birds were unafraid of them. They actually figured the birds were just too dumb to be afraid and they called the birds “bobos”, which translates as “stupid” or “foolish.” Over the years the term evolved into “booby” which is what we use today. (And of course the birds aren’t stupid. They’re pretty amazing really.)

At the oldest post office in South America! On the island of Floreana. Such a cool story here. More about this later…

…but suffice it to say we’ve got some deliveries to look forward to

Remember the frigates flying above our boat? Here’s a male frigate, wooing the females on the island of North Seymour. So cool!

Awwww! Baby frigate! Ain’t he cute?!

And of course we saw giant tortoises! Like this guy on the island of San Cristobal.

A beautiful Galapagos scene. A rock formation off the island of Floreana called the Devil’s Crown. We actually snorkelled around these rocks! Saw lots of beautiful fish!

Did you know there are flamingos in the Galapagos? Now you do! They’re not everywhere and they aren’t in big numbers, but you can spot a few every now and then. How cool is that?

Frigates follow along as we cruise into our final Galapagos sunset.

Galapagos at sunset. No filter.