GALAPAGOS!!

9th April 2010

And so began the Galapagos wallet robbing exercise, as at Guayaquil airport we had to pay for a $10 tourist card only for us to pay a further $100 tourist tax upon arrival at Baltra airport in the Galapagos. I must have spent about $2,000 in the 7 days I was there!

I was picked up at Baltra, along with 3 other, by my guide Pablo and we were bussed to the jetty and taken out to our boat for the next 4 nights, Galaven II, operated by GAP adventures (everyone else on board had booked through GAP). Luckily I was one of only 8 passengers on board the boat that would take 16 and I had the biggest cabin all to myself. Despite booking Tourist Superior class this was properly luxury with ensuite bathrooms with hot water, toilets that operated on a conventional flushing system (not one of these horrible pump ones) etc. G'dad could take some tips on comfortable boat living....

We went straight off for a snorkelling tour at North Seymour island, one of the small islands around Santa Cruz. The water was a pretty comfortable temperature which was a real luxury. The coral in the Galapagos isn't all that exciting, but there are some cool fish and stuff to keep you occupied. And on top of that you've got the really cool stuff - on this snorkel we were joined by sea lions swimming around us which was really scary at first but also really amazing. They're just like labradors - will swim right up to your face and then head off and play with something and then come back to say hi again.

From there we went for a walk on North Seymour Island which is the one famous for the frigate birds (see pics of birds with bright red bubbles on their chests). It was amazing to get so close to the animals, although this did mean about half of us got shat on!! We also saw the Blue Footed Boobies and their daft waddles and whistling, Galapagos Iguanas, little lava lizards and sea lions everywhere!

Our afternoon entertainment consisted of the crew on the boat dangling tuna heads in the water so we were quickly joined by 3 rather large (2m or so) Galapagos Sharks circling the boat and being persuaded to jump out of the water.

Day two started off with a wee trip out to Rabida Island which was hilly and scrubby and had lots of the "Mickey Mouse" cactus trees so named for the discs that look like Mickey Mouse ears. The beach was red sand and there was a wee salt water lagoon. We saw lots of hermit crabs (and unsuccessfully tried to race them), a Galapagos Hawk, a Galapagos Flycatcher (which I think is the best photo I took) and lots of the little Lava Lizards (which were everywhere) again.

We went snorkelling from the beach with sea lions swimming all around us again (so cool) and saw the usual fish etc but also a ray flying by in the water and a large shark which swam past a couple of times.

After lunch of rice and beans followed by candied figs with cheese (the food was usually MUCH better than this!) we went off for another snorkel - this time at Puerto Egas on San Salvador island. Saw the usual plus a turtle!!! and a tiger eel which is kind of like a moray eel but much smaller and less creepy! From there we walked over some volcanic rocks to see just hundreds of marine iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks. These iguanas have slightly different heads from the land ones, are black and eat seaweed so are in the sea a lot. There were so many of them, and they were so well camoflauged against the rocks that a few of us almost stood on some of them! There were some cool rock arches and some fur seals sunning themselves.

In the evening we sat up on the sun loungers on the top deck and watched the sun go down and the stars come out which was really nice.

The next day we were on the move again pretty early to get to Sombrero Chino, a tiny little island with a perfect cone shaped volcano sloping down to the sea, covered in scrubby plants but not much else. On the island we saw tons and tons of the bright orange crabs, another Galapagos Hawk, a Lava Heron, Oystercatchers and Wandering Tattlers and the ubiquitous Iguanas and Sea Lions. The white sand beaches are apparently nothing to do with erosion, but are the result of fish eating coral to get at the algae within, and pooing out white sand!! There were also lots of lava tubes on the island, some of which had collapsed. They are rock tunnels which are formed when the top surface of flowing lava solidifies, keeping the inner lava liquid which then flows out. When they get smashed you can see inside them, and apparently Galapagos penguins like to live in the ones that open into the sea. We were also given a bit of an explanation of the geology of the islands which is pretty cool. Although the islands are up to 6m years old (the youngest being <1m),>

The next stop was at Bartolome Island which is home to the famous (I'd never heard of it!) Pinnacle Rock. The island is a moonscape of lava and volcanic sand and spatter cones and is pretty cool, but wildlife is very much limited to about 5 individual cacti and some lava lizards! And it was bloody hot! But the view from the top of the hill (walking up boardwalks rather than sand thankfully) was pretty impressive - see photos! Snorkelling off this island as cool with loads of puffer fish, chocolate chip starfish, sea cucumbers/sea slugs, but also a shark kicking back on the bottom, some underwater lava tubes, and some penguins swimming alongside us again.

In the morning we arrived at South Plazas island, a teeny one off the east coast of Santa Cruz. It was by far the prettiest so far with lots of greenery and the strange cactus trees everywhere. There were sea lions all over the jetty and you had to negotiate them to get up onto the island. There was a really cute little bird called a Yellow Warbler on the jetty too and I got some great photos, except my lens had condensation on it as it had just come out of my air-conditioned cabin. So not so great photos! We walked round on white rocks (black volcanic rocks with large amounts of calcium rich dried sea lion poo polished into them) round to the other side of the island where we saw tons of Swallow Tailed Gulls, Shearwaters, Nazca Boobies and Tropic Birds which was pretty cool.

After an unventful cruise during which I searched for mantas flying out of the water (there were none!) we arrived at Santa Fe island where we moored in a submerged crater and went snorkelling where we saw the most amazing thing. We ended up snorkelling above and in a massive school of fish that were probably only about 10-15 cms long, but what was really cool is that there were some large Galapagos sharks there too, also swimming in and amongst the fish which was really cool to see.

Having only seen one turtle at this point I was completely thrilled when, motoring to the shore for a walk, we saw about 5 turtles in the water and surfacing for breathing, plus a really big Galapagos shark which was hanging about in water so shallow that it's fins were out of the water in a scary jaws-style! When we finally landed on the shore there were yet more sea lions, Galapagos Doves, Mockingbirds and some Santa Fe Iguanas which are a separate subspecies (though I couldn't see any difference!)

That night we were dropped ashore at Puerto Ayora, the main town on Santa Cruz and, gringos that we are, went out drinking! But we'd booked our dinghy back to the boat for the (for us) late hour of 930 so it wasn't too debauched!

In the morning we were off the boat by 7am and off to the Charles Darwin centre which I imagined to be an informative kind of place, but was just a tortoise breeding centre and sanctuary. We saw lots of the baby tortoises, the arse end of Lonesome George (he wasn't up for having his picture taken!) and a group of massive males that were clearly lonely for female company.

Then I had 3 days of diving with a company called Scuba Iguana who were the most expensive (at $160 a day) on the island, but also seemed the most professional with the best reviews. They were super organised. We were driven off to the other side of the island in trucks and hung around whilst the staff loaded the massive and well equipped speed boat. And for the diving all we had to do was haul on our (7mm - excessive!) wetsuits and they did everything else including putting our fins on and strapping us into our bcds. Easy peasy!! The only really challenging part of the exercise was wearing 12kg of weight (due to thick wetsuits and salty water). I should have been wearing more, but couldn't face trying to hand a belt that heavy up to the boat at the end! Strangely I was hardly using any air on the dives. Most people were coming up with about 300psi in their tanks and I ranged from 1,000-1,500psi surfacing, even after I'd had additional time underwater - v weird.

Over the 6 dives we went to Cousins Rocks, Bartolome, North Seymour (2 dives), Beagle Rocks and Daphne minor. And we saw all sorts of cool things including Pacific Seahorses, Stonefish that exactly matched the coral, schools of eagle rays including some massive ones, loads of turtles, a chinese lobster (which looks like an alien!), stingrays, loads of black tipped and white tipped reef sharks and galapagos sharks, sea lions, some weird garden eel things that looked like weeds growing out of the sand and of course, tons of fish, starfish, urchins, morays etc. Highlights were the seahorses, a cave full of 8 white tip reef sharks which swam to within 1 foot of our faces (v cool!) and 2 HAMMERHEADS!!

Arriving back in Guayaquil the next day, I met two lovely Sydney girls called Sarah and Megan and we went to the football! It was a match between Barcelona (the most popular team in Ecuador) and Cuenca and it was completely nuts. We bought ourselves some yellow Barcelona football shirts in a futile attempt to blend in (no chance esp with Megan's blonde hair) and dutifully queued past the mayhem and huge police horses to get into the stadium. The stadium was probably 99% Barcelona fans with only about 40 Cuenca fans (the poor souls). The Barcelona fans were nuts with fireworks going off, loads of drumming, chanting, banners etc. I've no idea what the score was as we arrived late, left early and there was no scoreboard, but whilst we were there Barcelona scored 2 goals to Cuenca's 1 (I think!).

And from there on to the beach at Montanita......