Galapagos Bound! 5/30/11
Woke up at 530 to get a taxi to the airport to go to the Galapagos! The ride was uneventful until the cabbie asked for $10. I was like no way, I’ll give you $5 or $6. He was trying to say since he was up so early he wanted $10. Not my problem you have this profession. We ended up giving him $7. They “scanned” our bags for our checkin to the Galapagos. I was surprised he didn’t care what was in our bags, after all we could have something very dangerous for the islands. We were at the airport 2 hours early because we were told it would take us a while to get through the lines, then we remembered we were in Ecuador. We ate some ham and cheese panninis, flew to Baltra (1015- hr back) with a short stop in Guayaquil. The airport consisted of a runway and a truck pulling our luggage up to an open-air building with a door. We met our guide Moncarlos and took the bus to the dock. We took the zodiac to the ship and another zodiac came over because they thought we had so much luggage that they needed help. It was just the two of us, our large backpacks and our day sacks. We are easy.
The boat, the Humboldt Explorer, is amazing. Everything is so nice, the bed is comfortable, the sundeck is nice and the floors are not old and decayed. Our room has a double bed (two twins pushed together) two large windows, and a decent sized bathroom with a window as well. Pumped!! As soon as we got on the boat we tried on our gear. The dude gave me an XL wetsuit to try on- seriously? I know I haven’t been working out but a fucking XL? Anyways I ended up not being an XL but they had to get a wetsuit from land and it ended up being blue and pink with the ends of the legs and arms cut off for us shorties. No one was going to lose me in the water. We ate lunch which consisted of pasta, and delicious creamy seafood sauce, and salad. The food was amazing, I was even more stoked! Endless free alcohol? Can I stay here forever?
We were briefed on our checkout dive and got suited up at 3. He told us vis wasn’t good but we would see some fish. We fell in from the zodiac and did our skills tests- mask flooding and regulator loss. All went well so we headed along Santa Cruz Island. The bottom of the sea floor was sand and volcano rock- no coral. Everyone saw a shark but by the time I got there, it either left or it was too murky for me to see it. We saw puffer and trigger fish, the puffers were buried in the sand- they are so cute they look like baby seals. At the end of the dive we saw a little shark. We dove for 45 min and headed back. Back on the boat all the Frigate birds were flying around, male and female, battling each other. They are not small birds and it was amazing how they were flying around the boat. We were done diving so we had some wine to relax and enjoy the scenery. We were still in the channel, in between the Santa Cruz and Baltra Islands. We toasted the crew with mango/banana margaritas. Dinner was asparagus soup, Yellowfin Tuna, and veggies. Andy and I went on the sundeck for a bit to enjoy the stars when we heard something in the water. The crew was washing dishes so fish were eating the food. Dolphins and a shark was there too. It was hard to see but someone shined a light in the water so we could make out what it was. A large pelican was hopping around too, making sure to stay away from the shark. We passed out exhausted from our first day.