mahdnc

Two of the naturalists on board our sailing, Vicky and Jorge, are also married. A bit of a surprise to me, but my wife knew all along.

After all the officers and crew were introduced to the passengers during our final night, they took time out to recognize Sebastian and Anita (both are bartenders) because they got engaged during our sailing. What a lovely couple. Recognition of their engagement was also included in the video we received.

I was impressed with how closely knit the ship's crew was. Before we left Xpedition for the last time, the officers and crew had a surprise birthday celebration for the ship's Hotel Director, Andrés Salas, who turned 35. He is holding the microphone in the photo below.

Here is the flight information for our GPS to UIO charter: Note that the time is shown in local time for each airport. You have to make sure you change your watch and phone to local Galapagos time when you reach the Baltra airport since the ship's time is set to Quito time which is one hour ahead. If you don't, you could miss your flight.

There is a nice little movie that is shown consisting of photos that were taken during the trip. The movie is approximately 14 minutes long and it is well done. There are plenty of photos of wildlife and passengers. The movie (in a thumb drive) is distributed to everyone at the end. If you are interested in seeing the movie, here is the link.

Well I have recovered and I managed to get through the work this week. Although this thread is no longer live, I have several posts to make to dispense additional information. Here is some information regarding our last day on Xpedition. While we were waiting to leave Xpedition, there is a short documentary on Charles Darwin that is shown. Afterward. Cristina took one last time to review the various places that we visited and the wildlife we saw.

I don't remember when this started, but I have been having a problem inserting photos directly from my iPhone (15 Pro) to my posts on Cruise Critic. The photo will load with no error messages but it will be a blacked out image (1st photo below). I get the same result when using my iPad (Pro). However I can successfully post the same photo if I do it from my desktop or laptop (2nd photo below). This work around is inconvenient and may be related to the large file size. Any ideas on how to fix that that doesn't involve reducing the image size or having to transfer mobile photos to a desktop?

Very nice live review, I've only had the chance to read it now!

Sharon, what an awesome photo. It puts an exclamation mark on their remarkable and continuing story. I hope you and John are doing well and I wish for you guys an awesome Galapagos cruise next year. David

Hi, everyone. Sorry that I have not been posting lately. Both my wife and I came down with some kind of bug that I think was circulating through the ship. It hit us right when we got off the ship. Me first. I thought I was suffering from a little sea sickness during our final zodiac ride to the dock at Baltra. By the time we got to the JW Marriott, I crawled into bed knowing I was sick. We spent two nights at the hotel during which time I convalesced and didn't leave the room. We had a private tour set up for Sunday to visit the Otavalo Market which we cancelled. Fortunately I felt well enough to take our early Monday morning flight home. On the ride from MIA to ORD (home), that's when Marcia became stricken. It hit like lightning and one hour before we landed, she went though 2 bags. Now she is at home convalescing and it's my turn to tend to her. I will be posting more photos and thoughts about this wonderful cruise soon. Our last view of a bunch of sea turtles from the bus at the Baltra Island zodiac dock. Nov 25

It was for sun protection only. It was one of my packing mistakes as I didn’t bring a long sleeve anything. That mistake was corrected when I bought a long sleeve shirt from the Xpedition gift shop half way through the cruise.

What does it mean when the protection LED becomes lit when the power strip is turned off?

It’s possible that the surge feature has been disabled.

Be prepared to be shocked and appalled then. During our last cruise on Constellation (Oct 2022) I found a 3-prong, surge-protected power strip installed inside a cabinet underneath our stateroom television. It was put there because there was only one outlet available inside the cabinet while two outlets were needed--one for the TV and one for a component that worked with the TV. It had the words "AV Dept" hand written on it in black Sharpie. chengkp75 confirmed that it was surge protected.

We are aboard Xpedition right now and every stateroom is provided with an extension cord. Ours is surge protected. My guess is that they all are. Same thing with our FV (now UD) cabin on Constellation in Oct 2022--the cabin had a surge protected power strip which was supplied by the ship.

Here are our instructions for tomorrow:

This afternoon at Espanola Island, we went on our last excursion which was a zodiac ride along the coastline of the island. It was pretty cloudy during the trip. We saw albatross, a pair of blue footed boobies, sea turtles, marine iguana, and the ubiquitous sea lion. I was able to get some bird-in-flight photos. Again, here are some photos. Time to pack.

Today was our last day of excursions which is a good thing (I am tired) and a bad thing (I wanna see more). We decided not to sign up for kayaking to make the day a little less strenuous. This morning Xpedition anchored next to Espanola Island. This morning my wife and I did the beach walk and some snorkeling. Espanola Island is a very easy wet landing. Our zodiac put as at a beautiful white sand beach with turquoise water. It reminded me of Florida. Unlike the beach at Floreana Island (Post Office), the sand here was very firm which made it easy and a pleasure to walk on. We first looked at a skeleton of a humpback whale on the beach (relocated from the rocky area it was first discovered). Then we proceeded to walk along the beach. The sea lions flirted with some of us. During the walk you could see a shark swimming parallel to the beach and a sea turtle swimming in the opposite direction. After that we went snorkeling which was great once you swam to the rock cropping. There we saw fish, sea turtles and 2-3 small sharks swimming about.

It wasn’t ballroom dancing. We had dinner with a couple that participated in the dancing last night and was told that they music was more disco like.

Here is today's presentation about tomorrow's activities: There is a mistake in the last slide (above), Punta Suarez is listed as having a dry landing. There is no landing as it is a zodiac ride only.

Today (Thanksgiving Day) we had our full day at Santa Cruz. The zodiacs took us to Puerto Ayora which we were allowed time on our own to visit on two different occasions that day. There were some nice shops in town but the highlight was to see the wildlife at the open fish market located near the dock area. We rode buses to get to the famous Charles Darwin Research Center, to see the breeding center for the Galapagos Tortoises. We had lunch at El Rancho Manzanillo and an opportunity to watch a brief Ecuadorian cultural dance and then a walk to see the Galapagos Tortoises out in the wild. It was fun, but it was a very long day. Here are some photos from today.

Here is today's presentation for tomorrow's activities. One thing that Cristina mentioned that is not on the slides is that a private mini-bus will be available to drive guests with mobility problems to avoid the 1 mile hike to the breeding center described on the 5th slide below.

Our newsletter shows that there is an Expedition Dance Party scheduled for 9:15p. When we left the dining room after dinner this evening, the dance floor was being set up.

Here is a photograph of what is stocked in our XS cabin refrigerator right now.

The Captain (3rd from the left) and her staff having dinner at Darwin's Restaurant tonight.