“Oh, you’re on the Galapagos Legend as well; so are we.” The woman in the seat in front of me had twisted around and spied the round sticker on our shirts.

“Actually, I think everyone on the plane is in the same boat.”

They were. Ninety of us were sporting blue circles with white tortugas above the name of our ship. I had noticed that when we boarded in Quito and again when we had picked up more passengers in Ecuador’s capital, Quayaquil.

Now we were all busy filling in a government questionnaire. “What’s a panga?”

As the plane banked to the left, a palpable exhilaration arose from the passengers. Everyone on the left side of the plane pointed excitedly. It wasn’t Baltra airport they were indicating, although those modest buildings on North Seymour Island could easily be seen; it was the sleek 300 ft. ship at anchor, our home for the next week.

The Legend is not the largest of the ships that cruise these islands, made famous by Charles Darwin’s historic visits and his subsequent detonation, ‘Origin of the Species’, but it’s up there. Although visitors can choose smaller sailboats and cruisers taking only six passengers, we chose this mini-liner because in the windy season – November - the seas can be daunting for those of us unfortunate enough to suffer from motion sickness. It proved to be a good choice.

There were other advantages too, although those preferring the smaller boats will point out that their huge advantages are the cheaper costs and the quieter trips ashore. Ten people on an island is quite different from ninety, no matter how spaced out the groups are. The Legend, for example, could cruise further and reach islands the smaller boats couldn’t get to. It also had a full complement of up-to-date equipment, knowledgeable staff and six naturalist guides.

We were met by several of those khaki clad naturalists who sped us through the formalities and unto the buses. Five minutes later we were shrugging into life jackets and jostling to be next in the sturdy dinghies that bobbed on the sizable wake, awaiting their turn at the dock.

“Move up on the panga please. Close in,” a guide called, looking puzzled when we all turned and smiled at each other. Now we knew.

Minutes later we had boarded the mother ship, after being taught how to climb out of a panga, timing our disembarkation with the wave action. Our adventure was beginning.

Six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador, tumbling across the equator, this archipelago of volcanoes, historically called “the Enchanted” consists of 12 main islands, 6 smaller ones and 40 islets. Our itinerary would take us to ten of them, from tiny and remote Genovesa to the large, volcano studded Isabela and Santa Cruz, where the fishing town of Puerto Ayora was located along with the Charles Darwin Research Station. Dragon Hill, with its enormous giant tortoise populations, was a bus ride away as well. The Galapagos Islands were named after these ancient creatures, coming from the old Spanish word for saddle, Galapago.(Many of the tortoises have a similarly shaped carapace.)

We had a busy schedule and the captain didn’t waste any time. As soon as we heard the announcement, ‘all passengers aboard and accounted for’, the next sound was the anchors rattling up as we steamed off to visit Genovesa Island.

How to describe the next week? A dream come true? A collage of adventures? A romantic cruise? A sensory feast? All of those. We were constantly ricocheting between the wonders under the sea and wildlife above it. Slithering over the side of a panga with snorkeling gear to discover a Galapagos green turtle feeding just below me, swimming off the white coral beach of Gardner Bay on Espanola Island to watch parrot fish before swimming with a white tipped reef shark - the experiences never stopped. The Magnificent Frigate birds, the Red and Blue Footed Boobies, the colorful Sally Lightfoot crabs, were all new discoveries. The fun of churning through the dark blue seas in the panga, of discovering flamingos on a saline pond behind the beach, of photographing huge piles of marine iguanas, sea lions and nesting birds with no fear of humans, it was a never-ending rush.

Described as the world’s largest outdoor zoo, the wildlife of the Galapagos seem as happy to study the humans as the other way around. Waved Albatross, rhythmically crossing bills in a staccato mating ritual are undisturbed by the gawking crowd, while sea lions tumble in the surf at the feet of astonished bathers.

We enjoyed twice daily excursions, fourteen to a panga, each with our own naturalist guide. Due to the isolation of the islands, he told us, the creatures of the Galapagos were predominantly reptiles, unlike the rest of the world where mammals were dominant.

The first morning and every morning for the week, new world music gently wove through our sleep, nudging us awake. A soothing voice apologized for disturbing our dreams, and another morning would begin, breakfast followed by our first excursion. Later, before lunch, there might be time for a snorkel excursion. After lunch is for napping in the heat of the day, while the Legend motored off to the next destination. In the middle of the afternoon the next guided excursion would commence, followed by possible beach time. Landings are qualified as either “wet” or “dry”, so that we could plan our footwear accordingly. Evenings included presentations in both English and German on what we could expect to see the next day, followed by dinner, and then the anticipated aftermath, taking our coffees to the back of the ship to stand or sit in awe of the evening and the place and the magic. No lights pricked the black density of this sky, where land and sea merged into one, as the Legend lolls at anchor, the only ship rocking in these ebony waters?

We came to the Galapagos to see rare birds, to get close to sea lion colonies, to stub our toe on huge iguanas, to take photos of giant Galapagos tortoises, and to see a rare, endangered part of our world, but we left with so much more than that.