Galapagos Islands, Day 5

So, this being our last day on the Galapagos we decided to make the most of it. After leisurely waking in the lovely hotel that cost us a fortune here on Santa Cruz, we decided to hire snorkel gear and walk round to a bay close to Puerto Ayora called "Tortuga bay". You have to walk to the other side of town and then through a dry forest for approx 6km to reach the bay, although it doesn’t stop there, as that water has strong currents, you then have to walk a further 4km round to the sheltered bay. We were both dripping with sweat by the time we arrived; it was a humid hot one. The bay is beautiful, white sands and amazing blue clear water with big white waves, ghost crabs peeking out of their little holes at us and marine iguanas enjoying the sun. As you round the tip of the bay youre greeted with mangroves and a cactus forest which opens onto a small secluded beach. It was really green and luscious, the sea changing from bright blue to an emerald green color. Although, due to its secluded nature and the mangroves, the water was not clear, in fact, if you stood in the sea to your knees you couldn’t see your toes anymore, so the possibility of snorkeling was quickly put to an end.

Ollie was sulking at this point, "it’s the last day on the Galapagos and we’re just going to sit on a beach and look at marine iguanas...". So, I being nice, stopped enjoying my wonderful white idealistic beach and sun tan session and agreed to walk ALL the way back to town with him, to try and catch a boat trip for the afternoon. This would have been fine but it gave us one hour to walk all the way back, in the midday sun, high humidity and 35 degrees. Not fun. I ended up sulking at the end "I don’t even like snorkeling, what’s wrong with sunbathing, my feet hurt..." with Ollie grinning cos he’d made it in time.

So at 2pm we set off on a small rowing boat, 7 of us onboard to head out snorkeling for the afternoon. At first we had a guy who was telling us about what we were going to see and he spoke English. As we left the harbor he jumped off the boat, said " have fun" and left us with the driver of the boat, he spoke no English, sounded like he didn’t really speak Spanish that well either and he was nicknamed "Colombia" for obvious reasons. The sea was quite rough and as we reached the first little island just outside Puerto Ayora, one of the other guys felt really sea sick, he’d still got about 4 hours to go, I don’t think he was having fun.

The island we had arrived at had a small sea lion colony and we had anchored here to jump in and swim with them. We jumped in, and waited, I shivered, and waited, and the sea lions just sat looking at us thinking "just eaten mate, come back in an hour". Colombia reassured us in whatever language he was speaking that we were going to see lots more and set off driving straight into waves, rocking the boat and making the other guy sicker. We anchored at the edge of a rocky cliff and Colombia told us to swim down the channel inland. So we all set off just as I heard him go "its called the shark channel", so I wonder what were going to see in here then....

The channel was 2m wide at the entrance and just got narrower but went inland for a good 20m or so, with high rocky walls on either side. The water was clear and only a couple of meters deep so as I swam further and saw the huge shark shape laying on the floor under me it was quite daunting. There’s no real room for it to swim around you and the channel is a dead end. These were the common white tipped sharks we have seen before but larger than the ones we saw prior. As we swam down the channel sharks would be swimming towards you to get back to the ocean and you felt like they were coming right at you. Amazing. I counted around 8 in total, 3 really big ones, around 1.5m and rest smaller but no less menacing. It made up for the poor sea lion turnout. I went and got back on the boat at this point as I had turned into an icecube and Ollie carried on snorkeling into the ocean. He suddenly starts shouting at me “Dee, Dee, come and look at this”. I was on the boat already, wrapped in a towel, satisfied with my days sightings, and didn’t really want to see anything else (or get wet again). Then he starts, like, going mental,”you´ve got to come, now, hurry”. So I grudgingly jumped into the coldness again thinking “this better be a talking dolphin or something equally good”. As I swam towards him I made out a dark shape hovering in the vast blueness out in front of me, as I got closer it was a huge sea turtle caught in a sunbeam around 2m underwater. Looked breathtaking. He’d been right, it was worth it.

We hoped back onto the boat and Colombia took us in-between the rocks towards a cactus forest, the canal of love, he called it. More like the canal of discomfort and pain with the size of the horse flies eating me alive. A short walk through the cactus forest allowed us to see the marine iguana nests (good) and feed the mosquitoes (bad) before we headed back into Puerto Ayora at sunset. We caught a few cheeky pirate sea lions trying to steal someone’s boat and thanked Colombia for a great afternoon. He’d been right, it was better than sunbathing.

It truly is a uniquely special place.