Day One - I make a decision

I am going to Galapagos for my summer holiday. It's taken me 2 years to get round to this trip of a lifetime and I've given myself only 4 months to plan it. It's going to take one-third of my life savings (my retirement fund) to pay for it but you can't take it with you and I could be dead tomorrow.

This decision hasn't been made because I've been diagnosed with some terminal or debilitating disease, at least I bloody hope I've not got something nasty; I know only too well how short life is, and as I've been dreaming of this trip since I was twelve I thought it was about time I went.

I blame my granny. She told me I should travel while I was young and I have certainly travelled a lot in my life but Galapagos was always off my radar - too expensive, too far, too hard to get to and most recently, too many tourists.

In recent decades, I have turned into a self-proclaimed green goddess, outraged at the pillage and destruction of the world's rain forests, the loss of habitat for indigenous life and scouring of natural landscape by greedy mining corporations, loggers et al.

I wished I couldn't say, "I told you so" when the world's biggest economies finally agreed global warming had to be halted.

Once the BBC spread the wonder of these enigmatic jewels in the Pacific to the world with their unrivaled documentaries, more and more tourists flocked by the plane and boat-load to marvel at Lonesome George, to swim up close and personal with sealions and step over salt-spitting sea iguanas. The fine line between tourism propping up a relatively poor economy and destroying it with curiosity was enough to make me want to postpone my decision to hop on the next plane to Ecuador.

I watched another documentary with horror as island locals jumped on the bandwagon and plucked sea cucumbers from the sea bed almost to extinction to dry and sell this precious resource to the East Asian markets.

The shark population is also under threat as their fins, as always, attract huge financial gain for the fishermen in order to supply insatiable Japanese appetites.

Our ancestors also unknowingly helped to start the destruction of the bio-diversity of the islands of Galapagos by introducing unwelcome invaders: rats, fungi, viruses, goats and blackberry plants were just a few. Even dear old Charles Darwin, who apart from removing hundreds of flora and fauna from the islands to end up pressed, stuffed or preserved as exhibits in the Natural History Museum, also destroyed many tortoises by taking them as a source of fresh meat to nourish him and the crew on the voyage home.

I reflected maybe it was just as well I'd missed the boat to Galapagos. I wanted no part of its further destruction.

Then I read between the lines: tourism is actually helping the local economy. Money from tourists is helping to fund the Charles Darwin Research Institute which in turn is working on a program to rectify past mistakes.

And I am a writer. Maybe I could help stop the rot in some small way.

I wanted to spend a month on the archipelago but the longest trip I could find was a ten-day cruise which would take over half my life-savings. I'd be popping onto an island or two for a day then off to the next one overnight. A case of if it's Tuesday, it must be Isabella?

This wasn't my idea of travelling. I wanted to get down and dirty. I didn't want to spend my time trailing round with a bunch of tourists snapping and video-ing anything that moved (or didn't).

Too old to be a backpacker? Definately!

I will do my homework and spend many hours on the internet to finally find the solution: the clue is in the title.

What follows is my journal of the days of preparation for this trip concluding with regular posts of my experiences direct from Galapagos.