I quite like my feet – well rear flippers really BUT they are becoming a bit worn.  I blame the toe bow I wore for 3 or 4 years in my teen years.  It was sort of tinselly and made of a metallic ribbon so Ithink it wore the top bit of my right rear flipper rather thin. Now I need both back flippers darned quite often. Anyhow I was worrying about the day I might have to have transplants…and what colour opportunities that might offer

I then I remembered the Galapagos.  It was there I discovered birds with feet I envied. Theirs are BLUE – the blue-footed boobies! They are literally blue-footed - sky blue. They are entrancingly silly and their behaviour makes them look sillier still. We were lucky enough to be there during the mating season so we got to witness the male blue-footed boobies trying to entice likely looking females with the offer of a piece of dirt on a footpath and a twig. Once coupled, the pair do adance which Disney really should patent. Together walking in very small circles lifting first their right and then their left blue foot, they dust a little dirt outwards so that their circle of dust is defined. Then they lay theireggs, cover them with their blue feet (which have extra veins to increase theblood flow) and hatch amazingly ugly white chicks. We watched one practisingthe basics of flying. It was standing on a small white rock, oblivious of tourists with its ungainly wings outstretched into the wind and flapping so enthusiastically that we thought it would tumble off.

The Galapagos Islands isgenerally very very are fantastic. High spots I enjoyed most included massiveland and marine iguanas, ridiculously red crabs, pink flamingos, frigate birds with the massive red sacs inflated under their bills and loads of sea-lions.The sea-lions were really amazing. On one of the beaches, we were right besidea two-hour-old pup that rather blearily turned away from its mum and decided onus as a surrogate. It floundered one step towards our group and then mum letout a sharp bark. In the water, the sea-lion pups were great fun. They dive-bombed us while we were snorkelling, swimming straight at us, so that wewere convinced that they were going to hit our facemasks, and then veering offat the very last moment so that the image you were left with was of being noseto nose with a playful young sea-lion followed by a massive burst ofbubbles.   There were also sharks deep below us in a deep water around a lava formation called the Devil's Crown (our guide kept telling us Galapagos sharks were very friendly but noneof us wanted to meet a hammer-head to see if he was right). Among the submerged lava there was literally a myriad of multicoloured fish and still more playful sea-lion pups. 

My final great success was seeingtwo Galapagos penguins. We'd really wanted to catch a glimpse of these equatorial penguins and were delighted to see them, lying on the lava, sunning themselves exactly as if penguins are supposed to live in tropical climates. Later the same day we also saw them fishing. Probably the most impressive thing of all about the Galapagos are these sun-bathing penguins and the fact that Charles Darwin had only three weeks in these incredible islands in which hegathered enough data (mostly about the different finches which we also saw inabundance) to allow him to create the theory of evolution a mere 25 years later.