Diving in the Galapagos - San Cristobal, Ecuador
San Cristobal, Ecuador
It's a fairly lazy start for us this morning - we don't need to meet the reps from our liveaboard, Galapagos Sky, until 11.30 or so. We check-out and wander down the boardwalk and beach one last time before heading back to the harbour where we'll meet up. Most of the other people on the boat will be arriving by plane today - we're exceptions given we've been on the islands for a few days already. We soon meet up with Edwin, one of our guides, and we're ushered down to the bay to board our panga (what RIBs are known as locally) to head across to the dive boat – which looks pretty nice from the outside. We're greeted by members of staff from the boat at the other end and we head into the main saloon for our introduction and briefing. We've only done one proper liveaboard before - out in the Similan Islands in Thailand - and that was a proper budget boat: this one is much much nicer, a nice, high-end dive boat (mind you, for the money it's cost, it wants to be!) We also meet the other people who'll be on the liveaboard with us for the next week: there's a group of eight from a north American dive club; a couple from Singapore; a Swiss couple (Johan and Rita - they also have been on the Galapagos a few days beforehand and we noticed them on the speedboats over and around town last night - we end up sitting with them for most meals); another Swiss guy on his own (his wife and child have stayed in Ecuador); and the two of us. We've got two dive leaders on the boat: Edwin, who we've met already, and Glanda - who's late because of flight problems, but arrives in time for the check dive this afternoon in the local harbour.
Next up is a briefing on what the diving will be like in the Galapagos. It varies, as we'll be at 5 or 6 distinct and very different locations over the next week, but essentially it's going to be fairly tough and challenging: cold water, strong currents, mostly negative entries (entry with negative buoyancy, where we enter the water and instead of gathering at the surface we descend immediately to avoid strong surface currents and surge/swell). This sounds bad, but it's these conditions, at this time of year, that bring the really big pelagics to the north islands of Darwin and Wolf: dolphins, rays, hammerhead sharks, tiger sharks, silky sharks, reef sharks - and the big one everyone's here for, whale sharks. Given the remoteness and conditions, safety is clearly paramount: we're all given dive alerts, surface marker buoys, and as a last resort personal beacons: radios with GPS locaters that allow us to contact the ship and in the worst case, signal our location to every ship and plane (including the coastguard and navy) in the Galapagos. Vin assumes that this will reassure Linda - the opposite is true (Linda's face says: why do we need all this stuff?!)
The check dive is just in a few metres of water, mostly to check kit is OK (around two-thirds of the divers have their own kit, the rest are renting from the boat) and to get weights right. We're given 7mm semi-dry wetsuits, plus extra vests, hoods etc. in case we need them - cold water diving then! The kit is OK but not great, and some of it - particularly the wetsuits - are a bit trashed - we'll find out why in a few days. It takes Linda about half an hour just to get the bloody suit on - doing this 4 times a day will be a challenge in itself! The check dive is OK, but fairly meaningless as we just hang around in a small part of the harbour for 20-odd minutes down at 5 or 6 metres - the visibility isn't great, indeed it's only made fun by the presence of a few local sea lions, though they're not as playful as they might be! Then it's back onto the panga (all the diving in the Galapagos is from pangas) and off to the Sky, where beers, wine and dinner all await. We're greeted with a champagne reception, where we meet all the crew and the captain and introduce ourselves properly (there's a lot of jealousy when the others learn we're travelling for a year and are only into week nine!) We also chat and realise quickly that many of the other divers are very experienced - most have done 200+ dives (one guy has even got 11000+!!) Then it's off to bed, as the boat weighs anchor and we start the journey north.
The night is rough. Oddly, given we're with the Humboldt current heading north, the ride is very rocky indeed - we pitch a huge amount pretty much all night – and at one point we hear a load of glasses or bottles go flying and smash! We've actually got a lie-in today, as we'll be travelling until early afternoon - so we get to get up at 06.30 instead of the soon-to-be-standard 06.00! Breakfast is nice, but after that we all chill out on the sun deck, watching the huge frigate birds that are all chasing the boat - and trying to catch up on the bad night's sleep! We're soon at our first dive site and there's a lot of excitement - even though we're only doing a couple of dives and we're still nowhere near the north islands! But first we've got a land visit, so we all hop on board the pangas and head over to Bartolome, a small island just off Santiago - but that's quite famous as it's used in many photos you might see of the Galapagos due to the thin stretch of beach between the two main parts of the island. We climb to the top and take photos, but learn relatively little given we've been exposed to a lot of the Galapagos' flora and fauna over the past few days. As we head down we see a large ray in the bay - it would be nice to get in with it, but all our kit is on the boat! Then back on the pangas and back to the boat before a late afternoon dive briefing and we kit up for the first two proper dives - wall dives at Cousin's Rock. Both dives were OK - not too cold at 20 degrees C, currents were OK, though the dives were reasonably deep at 20-25m, but given the location we weren't expecting to see anything major. There were a lot of fish (without going into too much detail, the usual tropical fish were evident in pretty much all the dives we did in the Galapagos: parrotfish, angel fish, butterfly fish, trumpet fish, puffer fish, box fish, barracuda, jack fish, creole fish, and tuna amongst many others), plus sea turtles, lots of moray eels, nudibranch, and the highlight of the day - a trio of sea lions, and quite playful ones too – this makes Linda very happy! A decent introduction, though the visibility was fairly poor - we're expecting better as we get further north!
It's worth pointing out how hard working the boat crew are at this point – there is only about 16 of them and every single crew member works as part of the team and muck in on every job - for example, Gonzalo, who's in charge of the bar and front of house for the dining area, also helps out during diving: coming out on the pangas to help us back on after a dive, or being back on the dive deck before/after dives. He also helps drive the boat too, something which becomes apparent later in the week when he leaves a note on the bar telling us to help ourselves! It's also worth noting some of the smaller things that make a big difference: after every dive we're greeted with warm towels, hot drinks, and trays of snacks - this is not a boat where anyone goes hungry! Indeed, the meals were uniformly excellent: huge buffets for breakfast, all fresh with stuff cooked to order; three-course lunches; and three course dinners too - plus a free bar with all meals, with excellent Chilean wines! (There was also drinking outside of mealtimes too for those who had decided to stop diving!) Our veggie options were almost all excellent and, given the size of the galley and the fact that fresh food is only brought on at the start of the week, the whole thing was genuinely better than expected. As an example if all the others were give soup (which was generally meaty or fishy) then we would have a bowl of delicious vegetarian soup made just for us. The service was excellent throughout, but it was nice as we had a decent relationship with the crew, given we were interacting with them all (particularly Gonzalo!) for 14 hours a day.
Anyway, we eat then sleep, as the ship weighs anchor again and we head north on the long journey to Wolf. It's a better night, and the anticipation is much higher as we get up at 06.00 the next morning - this is where the real diving starts (four dives a day for the next three days, all in the challenging conditions around Wolf and Darwin!) Rather than drill into the detail of each of the next three days at Wolf and Darwin it's probably worth just thinking about the dives as a single homogenous mass, with some exceptions outside the norm. For a start, both islands are just rocks - they're here for birds and divers alone, as no-one else can get anywhere near them. Darwin does have the beautiful, iconic Darwin's Arch rock formation though, which is where all the diving on the island takes place. Wolf is actually colder as a dive site than Darwin, though not by much and both were much warmer than expected - Wolf around 22 degrees C, and Darwin as high as 25 degrees at one point! (A 3mm wetsuit would have been more appropriate!) And the dive profiles for both sites were also fairly similar - descend down to anywhere from 13-20m, find a platform that's big enough, then hunker down against the currents on the platform and literally stay there and stare out into the blue, watching all the sea life come to you! The only time we moved was if something came in view that we needed to get close to (chase!), if there was nothing much around (move somewhere else), or in the last third of the dive we'd move out into the blue to see if there was anything out there to spot. So while some aspects of the diving were challenging, other parts of it were quite simple - there's no buoyancy control required when you're resting on a rock, though a decent pair of gloves to combat the barnacles was essential! And see stuff we did: many, many moray eels, lots of which were out in the water which is unusual anywhere else; huge numbers of hammerheads; lots of silky sharks, Galapagos reef sharks, and white and black tip reef sharks; lots of sea turtles; quite a few eagle rays (some as big as 1.5m); a few sea lions; the occasional dolphin; a single tiger shark; and the motherlode - whale sharks. As a group, we probably saw five or six whale sharks on different dives - the pair of us saw three different animals. While all were amazing, the first encounter with a whale shark is truly amazing - the initial reaction from the dive leader, the frantic finning into the blue seeing nothing but shoals of fish, then the huge shape looming out of the water, some five or six metres long. Hard to keep up with (they swim into the current) but astounding. After the first encounter everyone is really stoked - it's pretty much what we've come here to see, and there's a genuine feeling that everything we see after this is a bonus. But there's also other stuff we do or see: a really deep night dive (30m) to find the utterly weird red-lipped batfish (they don't swim, they crawl across the bottom); some nice small stuff such as sea horses, nudibranch and cleaner shrimps; generally a HUGE amount of tropical fish; and also, some great tunnels, chutes and caves on our final dive at Wolf. The diving at Darwin and Wolf is well worthy of its reputation - pretty much everyone on the boat at some point during the week had their 'best ever dive' - which given the wealth of experience present says it all! And the only incident we have is when Rita - the only one who's diving on air rather than nitrox - neglects to check her computer and exceeds her no-decompression limit (meaning she's turned the dive into one that requires a decompression stop) and ends up causing us to wait 20 minutes on the panga while she completes her decompression stop a few metres below us!
After the final two dives at Wolf, we once again set sail south for the night, and despite the fact we're against the current it’s actually a relatively OK journey. It’s not too far either – we’re heading to the north of Isabela to dive a site where we hope to see manta rays (there’s a feeding station here). Compared to Darwin and Wolf the diving here is going to be much easier – no currents or surge/swell (so we can do positive entries into the water from the panga), though the water is also expected to be quite a bit colder too. We kit up and head in, and while we welcome the easier diving, the first things we notice is that the visibility is much worse than any other diving we’ve done so far in the Galapagos – maybe 10 metres or so, mostly due to the large amount of plankton in the water (we’re diving fairly shallow to see the mantas). It is also noticeably colder but still OK – 20 degrees C. We follow the reef for a while before we see our first manta – it’s a pretty big one too, maybe three metres, but sadly we can’t make out lots of details as the visibility in the water is really poor. Still, we’re both pretty happy – the first manta we’ve ever dived with! We see a few more too on the rest of the dive (and Linda has a close encounter with a marble ray that swims very close to her as she’s watching it!) so pretty good overall. We also swim into and around a massive shoal of salemas, endemic Galapagos fish, and when we say massive we mean many thousands of fish, once you’re in the middle it’s all you can see, the sight you usually see on dive videos but rarely encounter yourselves. Following this, the boat weighs anchor once again, and we continue our journey west round the point to the northwest of Isabela – Vicente Roca. It’s a bit of a journey, some 3-4 hours, but we’re there by mid-afternoon. We’ve come to this site to see a specific fish – a sunfish, or mola mola. These are pretty weird, special, and very shy fish, that are damn big – more than two metres – but also very thin (they look almost two-dimensional when turned sideways). Water conditions are expected to be similar though probably a bit colder, and they definitely are – the coldest diving yet with temperatures bottoming out at 16 degrees C – a few of us actually start to get cold on these dives. We’re in two groups, one heading away from the point and the other towards it, and while our group doesn’t see any mola mola the other one does – sort of, at a distance! We encounter a few sea lions towards the end though! The visibility is also not great, though noticeably better than the dive this morning at Cabo Marshall. With conditions being less than ideal a few people pull out of the last dive of the day, so there’s just a single group out for the dive, but those that go are rewarded for their effort – we see a group of three mola mola and get extremely close to them – within a few metres. It’s truly magnificent to see such weird but wonderful creatures up so close. Indeed, even those on the boat get to see one from the surface, as one comes up near the boat! The area around Vicente Roca is really beautiful both above and below water (which is unsurprising given its part of Isabela!). The final part of the day sees us jump onto the pangas for a panga ride along the edge of the bay to see the wildlife in the area. Courtesy of Gonzalo, we’re also loaded down with bottles of beer for the trip! It’s a really nice boat ride – there are loads of sea turtles in the bay, a couple of very cute baby sea lions, quite a few rays, plus lots of birds and the occasional penguin and marine iguana too. We finish with a view of the best sunset of the week, before we head back to the boat and enjoy a little too much beer and wine with dinner!
Overnight we journey further south to Pinzon where we’ll do our final dives of the trip. The journey is a bit ****** (as we’re against the current) but we’re so used to it now it makes little difference. The day starts off very grey which is a bit off-putting, but we’re not diving too early so things have a little time clear. The groups are starting to deplete by now – the diving here isn’t expected to be anything special, so there are quite a few casualties particularly for the second (and final dive) after the cold water of the first one! Indeed, the dives are not anything special – not for the Galapagos anyway. They’re both wall dives, and have pretty good visibility – and after the "drop and hang onto the reef" approach of Darwin and Wolf it’s actually nice to get back and do some proper diving finally, but the water really is pretty cold and no-one’s particularly sad to see them finish. Then we head south towards Santa Cruz and the Puerto Ayora. We get down to the port and board the pangas for a trip onto land – we’re visiting the Darwin research centre and also have a little time to walk down into Puerto Ayora one last time before heading back to the boat. The Darwin centre is OK, but we were expecting to get a lot more information from the place – we see a fair few giant tortoises (it’s a breeding centre for giant tortoises to help repopulate the islands) but not much more, so we head off on the walk down into the port. Linda buys some more jewellery (indeed, quite a few of the folks from the boat do!) and then we regroup and head back to the boat for our final dinner. It’s a pretty good night – most of us drink too much and we exchange email addresses, photos and videos before heading to bed and packing ready to leave in the morning. Overnight we travel back to San Cristobal, and Glanda saves us some airport effort by taking our checked bags and heading to the airport with them to check us in, meaning we can spend a little time in town before heading to the airport. Linda does a little more shopping, and we wander the boardwalk and beach again to see the sea lions one last time, then we head back, get the bus and get to the airport. As we stand waiting for our plane, we all notice that after a week on a fairly rocky boat, we’re all a bit wobbly on dry land! Then we fly back to Guayaquil and say our goodbyes before we all head our separate ways.
The Galapagos has exceeded our expectations in pretty much every way – the land-based stuff was amazing, but the diving was something else. There are only a handful of dive boats in the Galapagos, and each of those can only hold a maximum of 16 people. Couple this with the fact that peak-season only last 2-3 months and we’ve experienced something only 1000 or so people can do each year, something which makes us feel very privileged. There are so many great memories, and quite a few aren’t even to do with the diving – amazing people on the boat, the crew were excellent, and the wildlife that surrounded us at all times was special – from the birds to the dolphins, silky sharks, turtles and other creatures that followed our pangas and boat a lot of the time. The Galapagos is an expensive place to visit, but it’s worth it. We’d both highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest at all in wildlife – and if you’re an experienced diver and have the time, money and inclination – well, you know what to expect now!