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| Our home for 8 days.... |
We were picked up at 10:30am and headed straight to the canal were the boat was leaving from. The boat was pretty big, nice big dining and living room, 8 generous cabins, a large dive equipment area and the roof with jacuzzi and huge sun deck . We got escorted by panga/zodiac/rubber ducky to the boat from the dock. As the boat was so big we would be diving from the pangas – with two pangas in groups of 8. Not much was on for the first afternoon, just a quick test dive to make sure we are correctly weighted and get a little used to the conditions of the Galapagos. The site was not far from the boat and visibility wasn’t very good. It was clear that the underwater life in Galapagos was going to be much more abundant than any place we had dived before.
For much of the first night we watched out the back of the boat as a bunch of Galapagos sharks and seals went fishing. A big school of tiny fish were boiling on the surface with pelicans, sea lions and sharks doing as they pleased. It was funny watching the pelicans being very wary of the sharks as they came close – they would quickly fly a couple of meters to safer water as the sharks cruised by. The next day we headed to Bartolome island for 2 dives. Lots of fish and white tipped reef sharks. Steph didn’t get take her camera on these dives as she was acclimatizing to the conditions.
We left for Wolf island at about 6pm, it would be around 18 hours to the island. Darwin and Wolf Island are two tiny uninhibited islands that lie north around 18-20 hours by boat from the main group of islands. These islands are famous in the diving world for being the places where the big guys play – big schools of hammerhead sharks, whale sharks, turtles, eagle rays and enormous schools of fish. The plan was 2 days of diving at Wolf Island then 2 days of diving at Darwin Arch. Three dives a day, with one of the days four dives.
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| Darwins Arch |
All the big guys congregate at these sites due to the 3 different currents that run through and meet at these northern islands. The currents can bring some very cold water from the depths, so the temperature can vary greatly from day to day, and because so much water is being moved so quickly the visibility is not always great – around the 10 meter mark. Makes everything quite eerie, as you see a lot of sharks darting in and out of vision…. A lot of the diving involves holding onto rocks trying to avoid being swept away in the current and just watching above as all the large pelagics cruise past – just like being at an aquarium. The diving was amazing. We were lucky enough to see a whale shark about 10 minutes into the first dive at Darwin Arch. He was juvenile, somewhere around 5 meters long. When they are younger they are still very curious as to what we are doing, so he came past 3 times. It was awesome!!
The amount of fish is just astounding, we would be watching as schools of thousands of small fish would continuously be swimming by, while schools of big fish like Trevally, Snapper, with the occasional Yellow Fin Tuna, Turtle, Moray eel - and not to forget every minute or two a Hammerhead, Galapagos or White tipped reef shark would glide by. On quite a few occasions we had sharks not more than a meter or two away from us. One of the sites had a sand patch that came away from the rocks at around 18 meters that slowly descended to the depths. Here is where the hammerheads would follow the current up from the depths… we saw a few schools of 20-30 thick sharks!! And they were just the immediate ones we could see!!!! It was cool having a massive group of sharks circling about 10 meters beneath us, while we were in the middle of a school of thousands of small fish! Let alone the numerous turtles, moray eels, and quite a few schools of very big fish….hard to know where to look….
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| One of the hundreds of hammerheads.... |
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| A nice reefy.... |
One of the dives we were lucky enough to see a couple of dolphins. We were searching for them for at least 10 minutes, as we could hear their calls all around us. Turns out the other group had been swimming with them for about 5 minutes!! At least we caught a glimpse! We also had opportunities to swim with sea lions and a massive pod of dolphins on the way back to our boat after a couple of our dives.
The bird life on the two islands is also abundant. The whole time that we were moored 20-30 meters off the shore of either Darwin or Wolf Islands, there were birds everywhere…Mainly Frigates, and Boobies – red footed, blue footed, masked. As well as Pelicans, and some gulls. Some of the birds would even perch on the boat, I got nice and close to one of the Frigates.
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| A Frigate perched on the side of the boat |
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| Barracuda, Travally, Trumpet fish, Gringos and Trigger fish.... |
The trip back from Darwin Island was very rough. Steph had been pretty good up to this point, but started to feel a little worse on the ride back.
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| Farkin windy..... |
We headed back to Bartolome Island to a dive site called Cousins Rocks. Here we can find more Sharks, Rays, and hopefully the elusive Manta Ray…Because we are heading back against the current, we only had time for the one dive here before heading back to Santa Cruz to visit the Giant Tortoises.
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| My hair is turning blonde.... |
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We visited Turtuga Bay, a nice little beach 3km's outside of Santa Cruz...
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| More marine iguanas |
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| Endemic Cactus tree...weird |
What Next??
The second cruise we are doing is an island tour. We will visit most of the islands of the Galapagos, and will be visiting sites with Marine Iguanas, Flightless Cormorants, Albatross, Flamingos, Penguins, Sea Lions, Seals, Boobies, Frigates, the Galapagos Hawk, and many others. We are very excited about the possibility of snorkeling with sea lions, penguins, seals, and the endemic marine iguanas….Fairly recently the Ecuadorian Government has changed the rules surrounding the tour permits to the national park. Dive operations are not allowed to have island landings (apart from the Charles Darwin visit) and land tours are not allowed to do any diving. They have also restricted the dive operators to 3 dives a day and are no longer allowed to do night dives.
Today we are heading to Isabela island for a couple of days before our other cruise. We will be out of contact for at least a week after that, and will hopefully return with a whole bunch of awesome photos to share….
