Category: Galapagos

It was sad waking up knowing it was our last proper day in the Galapagos.  Although Deryn and I agreed we had seen virtually everything we had wanted to see.  We all boarded the zodiac for a leisurely couple of hours chilling on nearby Playa los Bachus.  It would have been magic except for the mossies that were out in force when we first landed (the bites itched for 4 days!).  Nice to be on a beach again.

On returning to the boat, we headed to the channel between North and South Seymour for some snorkeling.  We moored the boat and then jumped into the zodiac to head up current before all drifting to the North Seymour side of the channel.  It was amazing.  Firstly it was deeper than we had been before and we got to see some sharks, including a couple of Galapagos Sharks that looked a lot like little Great Whites. We also passed a dead seal floating in the water which everyone saw except me.  I’m actually glad I didn’t.  A couple of Spotted Rays glided underneath us which was also very cool.  It was sad to be fishing our snorkeling for the last time, knowing it’ll be a rare opportunity to be so close to many of these creatures again. 

Following this we dry landed on North Seymour to walk amongst the nesting and mating Frigate’s and Blue Footed Boobies.  It was amazing.  There we so many of them with chicks, quite a lot of Boobie twin chicks.  They had absolutely no fear, you could literally hold your iPhone 20cm from them and they wouldn’t budge.  The male Frigates look for a good spot for a nest, build it and then sit with their red gullet puffed out letting the females know that we was available and check out their attributes.  And with a house.  We also got to see some hawks and get very up close and personal with sea lions.  

It was the back to the boat and a short trip to the port next to the airport. All the staff got dressed into their uniforms so we could thank (and tip) them.  They really had been amazing.  Whenever we left the boats, they would go in and tidy our cabins.  Manuel would also offer Deryn a wine class at 5.30.  We also thanked our guide Franklin, who had been so impressive with his knowledge  and passion of wildlife and geography.  Smart, funny man. 

We all had to be off the boat by 8am to allow the crew to prepare for the next tour.  We all agreed that calling the tour 8 days was mid-leading.  7 days was more accurate as we then had to spend 3 hours at the airport waiting for our flight. I had a hotdog and chips at the airport – smart move having a fast food restaurant at the airport as most people would have a junk food craving after the fresh food frenzy that is the Galapagos experience.

Once again we stopped off in Guayaquil for 45 before arriving at Quito around 4.  Dits and I were a bit bummed that we had not planned it better and stayed at an airport – our flight was 9.30am.  We expected it to take over an hour to get to our hotel, but it was barely 30 minutes. The hotel we had booked was magic as well – the Kaia Hotel.  It had the best internet we had encountered in Sth America so we loaded up on all our current TV shows.  We had a nice Mexican which I followed up with some chicken and chips from a dodgy chicken shop on our way back to the hotel.  I reckon I was still in a junk food deficit. 

Day 5 – Tagus Cove and Punta Vicente Roca.

It was an early start for a 630am kayak around the bay – made even earlier by an out of zone iPad that woke us up at 520am.  It was pitch black so we knew something was wrong.  It was lovely paddling around the bay as the sun rose over the nearby volcanoes – crabs were the main attraction with the odd sea lion, turtle and dolphin. 

After breakfast we did a dry landing on a local beach and climbed the hill overlooking Lake Darwin – an inland tidal lake that at low tide is a good 6ft above the ocean.  Again we marvelled at the fearlessness of the local birds with a mockingbird literally jumping on us as we walked past. There was also a fair bit of graffiti from private boats that were allowed to visit the area up until 1992 – mostly just a carving or the painting of the name of the boat and the year it visited.  The earliest we could find was 1836.  Nowadays you have to use an official guide and hence private boats no longer visit. 

Afterwards we set sail to Punta Vicente Roca on the north west coast of Isla Isabella.  Again it was magic sitting out front of the boat seeing what aquatic life we could see.  We were incredibly lucky this time as a couple of blue whales cruised alongside us for 5 minutes. We also saw a sunfish 20 minutes before arriving at our destination – they only come to the surface to warm up, spending most of their time in the depths (up to 2km down) eating jellyfish.

We moored below some impressive cliffs (part of a collapsing volcano) and went for a snorkel.  While the visibility wasn’t great, the number of turtles were incredible. It was actually a bit scary having 6 or 7 of them in really close proximity floating around you.  There was quite an impressive array of fish in the area as well.  After lunch and our usual siesta everyone bar me went out for another snorkel. I stayed behind and read in the sun.  After getting a bit hot I decided to go fro a swim and asked if I could dive off the bridge of the boat.  I was given the OK and as I was about to dive in, 2 hammerhead sharks cruised by.  The skipper told me they were friendly so I did my usual belly flop near them. While I felt confident they would not be interested in me, I didn’t waste time getting out of the water.  The rest of the team came back excited about their snorkel with 3 sea lions. 

Around 4.30 we got on our way for our long sail to Buccaneer’s Cove in Isla Santiago.  We crossed the equator on the way and had a celebratory glass of champagne to mark the occasion.  The sunset was amazing, as was the incredible view of so many of the volcanoes that make up Galapagos.  It really is a very special place.  Deryn was a bit nervous of the expected rough seas as we rounded the top of Isla Isabela so was in bed with sleeping tablets by 7.30pm.  Sleep being the best way to avoid sea sickness.

Day 6 – Santiago Island – Bucaneer’s Cove and James Bay

We arrived at Bucanner’s Cove around 2am – while it was a reasonably bumpy journey it was more up and down rather than side to side so wasn’t too bad.  It was the usual 7am breakfast followed by a kayak around the cove at 8am.  The landscape was amazing with the layering of rock and larva giving testament to the many eruptions over the millennia, combined with sheer cliffs and rocks perilously balanced on top of each other. There were a few caves we could explore before the wind forced us back to the boat.  

We then went for a snorkel, sooner than we normally would because another boat had arrived carrying 40 guests and we did not want to share the water with them.  The water was much warmer which meant a lot more fish but very few turtles and marine iguanas.  We returned to the cave that we had explored earlier in kayaks to be delighted with some sea lions frolicking amongst the multitude of fish. One of them eating a sea slug with teeth you wouldn’t  want  to be too close to and also a sting ray at the bottom of the cave.  We spent a good hour in the water which was testament to its warmth.

It was then back to the boat for our 90 minute journey to James Bay, still on Santiago Island. Lunch consisted of a whole baked bass which was a bit too real for me.  We had a quick turn around after lunch for our walk as again it was a matter of avoiding the other tourists. James Bay briefly had a salt mine until it became a national park so there was evidence of its previous inhabitants – one of the first time we have seen evidence of man on our trip.  It was a lovely walk around the island in which we got to see some recently introduced Iguanas, Galapagos fur sea lions, a hawk, heron and some American oyster catchers.  It was the hottest weather we had encounter since we had been in the Galapagos so we jumped at the chance to swim along the beach and then the 400m back to the boat.  We had our snorkels but no flippers so it was a fair bit of exercise although the swim along the beach was easy because of all the sea life, not so heading out to the boat as it was deep water. Franklin boated alongside us, as he said, to scare away the sharks.  I reckon he was messing with us. 

We then headed off on our 7 hour sail to our next destination so it was back to our favourite spot out the back of the boat to lay in the sun and read and/or kip.  This really is the life. 

And finally an image shared by our mate Rob Prugue, which sums up Twowisenomads.

It was nice to wake up in the bay of Punta Moreno, surrounded by towering volcanoes. It was a dry landing on black volcanic larva – Franklin was quite stern in his instructions about paying attention to where you walk as it does not take much to fall into a crevice or step on sometime.  It was like walking on the surface of the moon.  There was a couple of lagoons in which we saw some flamingoes, pelicans and a Galapagos shark.  We returned to the boat for lunch and set sail to Bahia Elizabeth.

We arrived at Bahia Elizabeth around 2.  We boarded the zodiac and spent a couple of hours snaking around the mangrove filled lagoons.  There were quite a few flightless cormorants, pufferfish, penguins and turtles. We stopped in a little enclave and sat there in silence for 10 minutes watching the many sea turtles glide in.  Thankfully there were few mozzies – a benefit of the very little rain that the Galapagos gets.  Our peace was disturbed by another group of tourists and their very descriptive guide.

We spent the night anchored in Bahia Elizabeth before heading to Urbina Bay at 5am (still on Isabela Island).  We arrived at Urbina Bay just before breakfast.  We were all in the zodiac at 7.45am for a wet landing on the nearby beach.  We had a short walk around the bay that was notable for being underwater until 1954 when the whole bay lifted by 8ft.  We saw plenty of finches, cuckoos, some tortoises and for the first time, land Iguanas.  We got to snorkel (minus flippers) off the beach before being back on board by 10am for our journey through the narrow straights between Isla Fernandina and Isabela to the beach of Punta Espinosa.

The journey was magic.  Sitting up front of the boat in the sun reading while watching Manta Rays, Bottlenose Dolphins, Brother Whales, turtles and the odd clicking Frigate.  We timed our arrival for low tide so we could snorkel at a nearby beach where the Marine Iguanas would be in water feeding off the algae.  It was incredibly special swimming amongst literally hundreds of Iguanas – often using their long claws to cling to algae covered rocks at the bottom of the sea while feeding. The abundance of fish and turtles feeding at the same time were almost, although not quite, ignored. 

In the afternoon we crossed back to Punta Espinosa for a walk around the headland.  The number of Marine Iguanas warming themselves in the sun was amazing.  At times they formed trains of Iguanas, nose to tail all on top of each other. The quiet was punctuated every now and then as an Iguana ‘sneezed’ out a projectile of salt water. We were also fortunate to see a couple of Galapagos hawks feeding on a sea lion placenta and also a couple of flightless cormorants building a nest out of seaweed.  

We sailed to Tagus Cove for the night – a well known mooring for the many pirate ships that were prevalent in the area in the 1600’s. I was walking along the deck after dinner when I noticed a 6ft Galapagos shark gliding past the boat.  Quite spooky. It was also the first night we stood outside having a look at the stars – being so close to the equator it was possible to see 80% of both the southern and northern hemisphere stars

Breakfast was at 7am – and as good a meal was we had the previous night for dinner – before we all got into the zodiac and wet landed on the local beach.  We encountered some Blue Footed boobies (meaning idiot), a couple of sleeping sea lions, crabs, lizards, locusts and near the end of the beach walk, feeding flamingoes.  We then returned to the boat before heading out for a 45 minute snorkel.  We had all hired half wetsuits the previous day which made for a mostly comfortable time in the water.  We saw loads of fish but also a black and yellow eel and a fast moving sea lion. Deryn also saw a white tipped reef shark.  It was then back into the boat for a short drive to the post office. It’s a barrel used by pirates and whalers to pass messages to each other, but today used as a bit of a gimmick in which we dropped off a couple of post cards and picked up two in areas that we were likely to visit in the next 6 months – in our case Sydney and San Francisco.  The rule is that you have to hand deliver the postcards. We’ll see!

We were then meant to visit the high point of Isla Floreana where the pirates used to ge their water supply but instead decided to do the journey to Isla Isabela in the hope of seeing some Blue Whales – they had been spotted in previous weeks.  It was a tough 11 hours of cruisng at nearly 8 knots to get to Punta Moreno.  There were a few casualties with Deryn, Linda, Conrad and to a lesser extent Tim and Deb, being hit with sea sickness.  We did see a couple of whales but not well enough to justify the day trip. We arrived at our destination at 11.15pm.