Taking it all in
Thursday 16th
On arrival at the island of Baltra we grabbed our bags and shuffled onto the bus to the ferry to the bus to the town. On the ferry we were greeted by a sea-lion lazing on the channel bouys. Our first bit of wildlife, oo i hope we see more i thought, Ha ! Arriving in the town of Santa Cruz about 40 minutes later it all started to sink in. We got a taxi to our digs, dropped the bags, grabbed a map and rental bike and cruised back to the main street to hit up dive shops. Its the main street where you start to realise where you are. The birds flying overhead, Iguanas on every rock and sea-lions sleeping on the footpath. Theres plenty of tourist shops selling all the same stuff and just as many travel agencies but there is no hustle, which seems odd at first, no one pushing a bargain, no one undercutting on price, no one trying to sell you weed or coke. The rental bikes don't even come with locks, we asked for them and got a blank look and asked why we would need locks ? Some places you get to and they just have a vibe, this was one of those places.
We ate and hit every dive shop on the strip to find Juanita a scuba school. Lots of varying prices and fairly apparent levels of quality but they are all busy and can't start a course for a few days at least, bummer. We mulled it over for the night and decided on Maccaron dive school. Starting Sunday, Juanita was to be a scuba student.
That gave us a few days to explore before we get wet. We headed to the Charles Darwin research centre to see the Giant Galapagos Tortoises. The centre has free entry and about a 2km walking trail. Once there was 14 species of tortoise on the Galapagos, 4 are now extinct. Mostly due to human introduced predators, goats and pigs were the biggest culprit, eating the leaves and tortoise eggs. Each remaining species is endemic to certain islands. There was only 14 tortoises on the island of Santa cruz when the programme started. There is now ~7 thousand around the world. They are doing amazing work here. We were surprised and shocked to find out that they receive no funding from the Ecuadorian Government and are completely staffed by volunteers.
The trail led us from the hatcheries through the preschool and on to the juveniles before the larger adolescent pens. Each pen becomes more like wild conditions. The final pen they call the 'tough love pen' where they only receive food and water every 2 weeks and the conditions are the same as what the tortoises will find in the wild. At around 5 years of age they are released into the wild. While the tortoises aren't the cutest of creatures, they have their own beauty and we could sit and watch them for hours. The sheer size is impressive enough and you can actually feel the ground move when they drop their shells for a rest, usually in front of a pile of leaves to chew on for the next hour or so. Tough life for a giant tortoise. The centre also has breeding programmes for the native land iguanas and several species of endemic birds and plant, in particular the giant cactus, also very impressive. Didn't see too many hippies lining up to hug them though.
In the evening we booked a trip to Floreana island for the next day, had some dinner and a cocktail and watched the cheeky sea-lions at the fish market, again, we could just sit and watch them play for hours.
Saturday was an early start, we jumped into a water taxi to our boat to Floreana, er, no boat ? After circling the harbour for 20 mins, a bit of yelling, a few phone calls and a bit more yelling we were piled into a ferry and sent on our way. Ferry is a pretty loose term, it was a 20 seat floating greenhouse, with rough seas and no air flow, poor juanita didn't last long before the spew bags were out, and an hour and a half to go. About 10 mins from the island the boat pulled up and we were surrounded by a pod of about 70 dolphins, this was getting a bit surreal but they jumped and played around us for 5 minutes and then disappeared without a trace. Once on land and getting the sways under control we were greeted by a jetty full of sealions, iguanas and pelicans, turtles poking their heads up for a look, in the water below. We ventured by truck up the side of the volcano to learn about the history of the area. Floreana has a single fresh water spring, the only one of the islands to have a constant supply of fresh water, the spring is the reason the Galapagos is on the map. It has been used by everyone from explorers, whalers, pirates and the first settlers and is still in use today. The island has a population limit of 50, based on the flow of the spring. There are caves and rock formations with evidence of the pirate and early life, as well as the original farm of the first settlers still in operation. There's also a semi wild tortoise area, semi wild because they are fenced in but the area is huge and they get little human support. All the tortoises are repatriated from the breeding centre on Santa Cruz, seeing them living in the wild like that is such a privilege.
We had a local lunch then moved down to the beach for a swim, snorkels in hand we hit the galapagos water for the first time, Jorje in particular had been waiting for this moment, and within minutes was greeted in the water by a sea-lion. Yay ! We played around and snorkelled the bay. We had just got out when a giant sea turtle poked its head up about 5m from the shore, so back in we went and followed it for a while. I've seen plenty of turtles while diving over the years but never anything like these, they are huge yet still as graceful as ever. We walked over to the other side of the dock and got back in the water for a look, again sea-lions swam under us and Juanita spotted more giant turtles. Our guide pointed out how the animals on the Galapagos aren't scared of humans and thats the way they want it to stay. I couldn't agree more.
Juanita managed to survive the journey back to Santa Cruz without the spew bags despite being pretty green, maybe those sea legs are coming yet. Back on land we had a cocktail and grabbed an early night. Juanita buried in theory reading about scuba. Tomorrow the real underwater adventures begin.
