I usually don't get to see much of a country when I fly in to fish it. I usually just jump from the airport to the hotel to the boats and back again. But when traveling someplace for the first time, or visiting an extra-special destination, I like to spend a little time exploring.

Since we had to spend a night in Guayaquil, Ecuador, while traveling to the Galapagos Islands for this past Marlin U session, I got a chance to join a half-day tour of some San Cristobal sights.

A visit to the cool highlands for a delicious outdoor lunch exposed my tender skin to a horde of biting beetles that I couldn't keep off until someone produced a can of Deep Woods Off. Still, I must have got bit at least 30 times on my legs and face before scurrying back to the bus in a cloud of biting insects.

As a multitude of welts rose on my legs later that night, it just so happened that I came across an informative show on the Discovery Channel about insect-borne parasites and the nasty symptoms they induce as they eat you alive from the inside out. Now, every gnat, caterpillar or fly I saw transformed into a carrier of some evil liver fluke that would turn my guts to mush in three days time. The last night one particularly hungry individual tried to sketch out a map of the Galapagos on my right cheek, pecking nine holes in a two-inch square.

It's now been more than a week, and the bites are still itching - I'm just waiting for the hatchlings to emerge so I can get on with my life itch-free!

From now on I'm staying on the water. And in the Galapagos that will wear you out. On my boat we caught 16 striped marlin out of at least 50 bites; we just couldn't keep a hook in them. (The three-boat fleet released 43 in four days.)

Unfortunately, we didn't have the best gear. Our reels all needed work, and we lost several fish to frozen drags and busted lines. If we return, and the fishing certainly justifies it, we'll make sure to bring along our own gear. I didn't get to take many photos while fishing either; I wired all the fish and had to keep the cockpit straight and our baits rigged.

We got quite a few bites on our lures but just couldn't seem to keep them hooked. However, we seemed to do a little better once I switched out to smaller lures with 7/0 and 8/0 hooks versus the 12/0 we started with.

Our bait situation wasn't ideal either; we had great-big ballyhoo, some of the biggest I've ever seen, but they were frozen in clumps and didn't last very long in the spread.

However, our students proved to be real troopers, and most saw more marlin on this trip than they ever had before, so our fishing trip to the Galapagos paid off for all us in the long run! I can't wait to go back next year.