Monday, May 21, San Cristobal Island
Today (Monday) was amazing. We spent it at various locations on San Cristobal, the largest and one of the oldest of the volcanic islands of this archipelago. Tonight I might not get this posted but its after dinner and I’m sitting on the top deck of the ship in the dark with the lights of town and the other ships anchored here all around me. Another one of my happy places that I’ll come back to in the middle of next winter, at least in my mind. The only noises are the distant sounds of the sea lions on shore.
Last night we moved from the harbour in Peurto Baquerizo Moreno and travelled to the north coast of San Cristobal. What fun to open up the curtain after my alarm went off to see what I could see. And it was a gorgeous view.
We started off the day with a panga trip around one of the nearby small volcanic islands that had been eroded in the last 1000 years. We popped into a cutout called the “cathedral” because of it’s impressive high walls around a cave and it was as inspiring as some real cathedrals I’ve been in. We took a narrow channel in the dark rock through to the other side of the island that was pretty hair raising because of the large swells. The walls seemed close enough to touch except they kept going up and down. Our 2nd mate, Richardo, did a great job of navigating it for us.
Our landing spot at Cerritos Bruno was picture post card beautiful and amazing. Soft white sand along a crescent shaped beach with no one to share it with but the sea lions ad iguanas! As we all wandered past the sea lions, being led by our guide, they rarely even looked up or took any notice of us. That is one of the overwhelming sensations about all the wildlife here. They aren’t afraid of people and so you can get really close without annoying them or scaring them off. The rule is 2 meters and when swimming with the sea lions yesterday I asked who policed them because while we were staying our distance they kept coming inside of the 2 meter zone.
We took our time, stopping at whatever was of interest to us and walked all along the beach and back for over an hour. It was amazing to watch the boobies and pelicans fishing by diving at top speed directly at the water. I think we each spent some time chasing the Sally Lightfoot crabs to get a better picture and watching them cling to the rocks and being hit by waves that you’d think would have knocked them flying. And we even got to checking out a marine iguana.
Then we had time to either snorkel off the beach or swim or just sit and enjoy the most magnificent views. I opted to swim because it wasn’t a particularly great snorkel spot, and I had a great time body surfing. The water was nice and warm and the waves were just the right kind. I did at one point thinK I was going to do a face plant on the beach but managed to get control before getting to that point. It was interesting that as soon as anyone started to go into the water the panga came out from the ship and hoovered nearby in case anyone needed assistance. They are incredibly safety conscious.
Once we’d had our fill of swimming/snorkeling/picture-taking we headed back to the ship. It was 11ish and besides lunch at noon, we didn’t have anything scheduled til 2:30. It was kind of weird. We all looked at each other not sure what to do with free time. Most of us headed for the top deck of the boat to read or nap or work on their blogs. I think it’s the first quality down time I’ve had on the trip and the location couldn’t have been better.
Another fabulous lunch was served and off we went in the pangas to the harbour to board a bus to take us to the Giant turtle breeding centre up in the “highlands” (definitely not the Ecuador mainland highlands), called Jacinto Gordillo Breeding Centre. As with many other species throughout the world, the giant land turtles here are in need of some tender loving care to keep them from becoming endangered. The turtles bred here have a 65% chance of surviving vs only 3-5% in the wild. The centre has a huge acreage where the turtles are corralled after a month in the darkened hatching centre. The corrals for the young ones are double fenced, one to keep humans out and one to keep rats out! Who knew. After 2 years in the small corrals when their shells are hard and the chance of them being someone’s lunch are less, the turtles are moved into a larger corral and stay there until 4-5 years of age when they are released into the wild. They can live for up to 100 years and are mature to breed at the age of 35 or so. There are some that we saw that are close to 50, and they are huge.
Surprisingly these huge turtles can move up to 4000-6000 meters a day and one that was 5 years of age or so did cover a lot of ground while we watched. Their sex is determined by the temperature that their eggs are incubated at rather than their DNA so the centre is able to breed more females to be able to produce more hatchlings.
On the property we learned about some of the indigenous plants. There is one tree that produces fruit, that looks and smells somewhat like crab apples but is poisonous to human. The turtles however can feed off the fruit. There are 16 species of sunflowers in Galapagos, none of which look like the ones we grow in Canada.
On our way back to the ship we had a chance to wander in town and I took the chance to wander the main street along the harbour (named Darwin Street naturally). A huge sea lion had parked itself on a small bridge on the boardwalk and was not allowing anyone to pass without being barked at. A shop keeper finally came out and shooed it away.
Back on the ship, dinner couldn’t come soon enough as we were ravenous. As I suspected the meals have been fabulous. Varied and fresh and well prepared. Our server and bartender Eduardo has taken great care of us as has Chef Boliver who we rarely see because he’s slaving away in the kitchen.
After dinner I wrote this blog and then headed for bed by 9:30 pm or so. I would never sleep so much at home but all the activity during the day spent outside and the gentle (or not so gentle!) rocking of the ship makes sleep easy. After I had turned out my light I heard the engines start up and the boat start to move on our way to Bahia Gardiner on Espanola Island.
Lois' Adventures 