We are in the Galapagos Islands this week! It's an amazing place full of unusual birds, fish, sharks, marine life and land animals we've never seen before. The girls are getting up close and personal and learning all about the things they saw on the BBC specials we watched and books we read about the Galapagos before we came.

SO many pictures to blog and I'm only letting myself open my laptop to document this so we don't forget each day full of new experiences...

DAY ONE

We flew through the night Saturday and got to the boat Sunday morning - after unpacking, checking out the scenery around us, breakfast and a power nap we went back on land to see the famous land tortoises at a ranch on the Island of Santa Cruz

Girls in the tender

Maisie styling in her shades

The girls with their "boat school" teacher Alicia who has set up awesome lessons everyday to learn about what we see here!

boarding the bus

Maisie didn't take her eyes off the scenery the whole ride

Janie was more interested in picking Dad's nose

we had to take turns keeping the "rascal" as Maisie calls her content for the 30 minute ride - JJ is CRAZY these days :)

Maisie dresses herself when she wakes up every morning now - as you can tell :) she loves the striped H&M dress Jannie!

Arriving at Rancho Primicias (a farm on the island where the tortoises come to roam)

Ready for the hike

first stop to learn about the tortoise shells/anatomy etc

We found one!

It was lush and green on the ranch inland but most of the islands are dry lava rocks and dessert like plants.

Maisie is a little Ansel this week with the Boat School camera taking pictures of everything in sight (most have at least 1-2 fingers in the shot) - Francie was showing her the inside of a papaya out guide Franklin skinned for us to try