LAND YEAH

San Cristobal Galapagos

We had the anchor down by 11am.  Then we had to wait until our agent Bolivar came out with the Port Captain, sanitation, the navy and another official.  They put our plants into quarantine, which is good, as the other option was to have them confiscated.  There was a good deal of discussion as to what Shadow Benny, or razor cilantro is called in Spanish.

After the inspection of the boat we had the rest of the night off!  Time for a good night’s sleep.  Bolivar is supposed to be by the boat at 10am.  Ooops, we forgot about the time change.  Regardless he did not arrive until the early afternoon.  Then we could go ashore.  So we did.  We walked a good bit of the town and then over to the visitor centre.  It was informative.  Town itself is cute.  They have benches everywhere, which are most often occupied by sea lions!  The rules of the park (all of Galapagos is park) is to not go closer than 6 feet to an animal, hard to avoid with the sea lions sleeping on the ramp from the water taxi!

We took water taxi’s in, as if you take your dinghy, you are just providing a new home for a sea lion!

A sea lion made it up onto the boat, this would have been a jump of 5 or so feet!  Cheryl chased him off before he could smell up the foredeck!

We walked to a beach called La Lobriera.  Past the beach you came to a cliff which we walked along quite a ways.  You see the track of the marine Iguana as they go by day to the rocks, spending the nights in the vegetation near the shore.  At the cliff we saw nesting Blue footed Boobies (unique to the Galapagos), Tropicbirds and a night gull, not to mention the views of the shoreline.  Awesome!

 

We did a 2 tank dive at Kicking rock.  It was much more than a two tank dive.  We had to be checked out, so we did that, then went for a snorkel.  Karen got pictures of a marine iguanas in the water!  Then the dive!  Hammerheads, a great variety of new fish, or old shaped fish with new colours.  And finally a frog fish, something we have been searching for for 4 years!   Visibility wasn’t great and but the surge was!  Look out here comes the wall, again!

We took a local taxi and had a marvelous island tour.  We started visiting the oldest residence, the Tortoises.  We hiked to the volcano, which holds a fresh water lake, circumnavigated it.  And finished with the Cieba tree treehouse!  An awesome day with wrinkled residence and spectacular views!

The usual, went shopping, wandering, had dinner with 5 other boats in town, waited a day for our Zarpe and then moved onto Santa Cruz.