Okay you know when you wash your car it
rains, we have a new twist. You just
wash the boat and Pelican comes over and sits on the pulpit and ok he looks so
cute with those little eyes and the way he turns his head right around to look
at you. Then he lifts his tail and
leaves a lovey present, and then the next day he leaves you a fish as a thank
you for cleaning his toilet. Well Galapagos
has been a real wild life experience, a sea lion on board and now a pelican,
who knows what while be next, an iguana perhaps.
So after leaving San Cristabol we ventured
over to Santa Cruz a more tourist island. Our welcoming was a champagne cocktail on
Sommerset with Carol and Jim. Then the
next day they had arranged a dive to North Seymour and a tour around town to
get the lay of the land the following day.
Hey this is great. What a way to
get to know the island. The north seymour
dive started very very early with a water taxi ride to shore then a land taxi
to the other end of the island then a dive boat to the site, and in the water
by 8:30 am did we mention we started early.
Karen and I had to do a check out dive first, we both passed but
Cheryl’s BCD sprung a major leak so she
sunk like a rock. With a borrowed BCD off
we went for our first dive: we saw
hammerhead sharks, mantas, green turtles. Sea lions, and a Galapagos Sea Robin way cool.
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| Galapagos Sea Robin |
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| Scorpionfish |
2 dives done and we were only
frozen for a little while as Jim offered to share his body heat so hugs all
around for the 3 of us. We did 6 dives in Santa Cruz and the second time
was to Floreana a little island 2 hours away by boat. It was our best dive yet in the Galapagos. Our surface interval was spent snorkeling
with baby sea lions, got to love it!
Then on our second dive we dove with the sea lions, if you did circles
they would imitate you (or maybe we were imitating them!) As you looked at shelves on the dive you say
the white tipped sharks napping and if you looked closely you saw dozens of
scorpionfish.
Gordon rock was the 3rd dive with lots of hammerheads
way off in the distances the visibility was not great so we think they were
hammerheads. Spotted eagle rays flew by
and a Manta. Here the surface interval
was spent cruising around the rock, looking at the nesting sites for blue
footed and Nasca boobies and sea lions sunning themselves.
Sommerset introduced us to a few bars and
the Waterfront restaurant, were we all had lovely tuna dinners. Carol took out a leg of lamb and Karen
stuffed it with blue cheese, roasted peppers and such and according to Jim, it
was the best lamb he ever had.
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| White tip shark |
So Santa
Cruz for us on this visit was about great friends, diving and food!
We went to the Sat morning local market it
was great lots of great veggies and fruit.
We will be back in Santa Cruz to pick up Jennifer who will be joining us
to go across the pacific so we will explore the land later.
Off to Isabella
Islabella is a little more rustic then the
other 2 islands with its dirt streets and laid back atmosphere. We arrived and
set our hook and 2 boats dingied over to tell us the lay of the land. One told us that he will be leaving later and
we will want to move to his parking spot as it is less rolly so we waited and
moved as soon as he left and boy was he right.
(Thank you Spruce!) We wondered
the streets of the town one day and then next day a hike to the wall of tears,
we took a taxi up to the wall, it was built by the prisoners who were in incarcerated
here yup it was a wall. The walk back
was the highlight we race the tortoises meandering on the road. We gave them a head start. There were side trails that we took on the
way back; were we went in to lava tunnels, an iguana nesting area on a beach
and a lookout tower with 200 stairs to climb, yup Cheryl counted.
Another day we walked to the tortoise
breeding centre and saw the tortoise porn!
The walk is nice, 1.2 km over a board walk passing two brachish
ponds. Best of all, the walk started at
the Iguana Crossing sign, and yes, the Iguana were crossing there!
We took a trip to Sierra Negro and the
Chico Volcano. We almost missed the trip
as we had just a time getting a water taxi, in fact JC (our agent in Isabella)
rode his bike to the pier and came out in a water taxi as he had been
monitoring the channel and new we were having trouble. This was a huge disappointment, not to
mention the fact that Cheryl sprained her ankle rather badly and had to walk
out, two and a half hours walk on very rough ground!
We organized a tour of the West Coast of
Isabella. This was an awesome day, the
trip there was broken by some tuna fishing, and, yes, tuna catching! Two tuna were caught in some 5 minutes! The captain and his helper, Whisky, made some
great ceviche for lunch. We snorkeled in
an inlet with the Galapogas penguins, we should mention that penguins like cold
water; it was so cold the top of my head hurt.
We also stopped our trip west to take pictures of the pod of Orcas,
Cheryl had the camera, Karen kept shouting to get the white bits! After lunch we stopped on the way back to
snorkel with the sea turtles, believe it or not, the water was even colder, but
the sea turtles were amazing and happy to let us swim with them. Probably the most amazing site was the
tunnels. This is an area were the lava
flowed into the sea, the outside cooled as it touched the water, leaving
tunnels. We got in by going behind an
amazing surf, as all were cruisers on board, we were cringing! The water was so clear you could see the sea
turtles swimming by along with other fish.
The blue footed boobies were dancing, trying to attract a mate. The scenery was just spectacular and peacefull. 
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| Sun Tanning |
Our last afternoon in Isabella was spent at
Hausers farm. He is an Austrian married
to an Ecuadorian who moved there some 10 years ago and has a restaurant. We had arranged this for the anchorage and
had 18 people sitting down to lupper.
The food was amazing, the view was lovely and I got Callalou (called
otoi here) to make soup!
We did an overnight passage back to Santa
Cruz, overnight as it was just the wrong distance to do in a day and get in
before dark.
We picked up Jennifer our 3rd
crew on Monday and we are starting to watch the weather for our date to make
the BIG LEAP……
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