San Cristobal

Sea lions are everywhere! We lie in bed at night drifting off to sleep and then get startled awake by a loud splash and the sound of an old man coughing his guts up, but no its just the sea lions having a lovely time by our boat. We're eating breakfast in the morning and we see the sea lions leaping about in the water or trying to get into people's dinghies. Having lunch in the afternoon sheltering from the midday sun down below, we hear bubbles breaking on our hull - sea lions!! Walking along the jetty in the evening we side step their snoozing bodies. Yes they are smelly, yes they are a nuisance to those boats that leave their dinghies in the water or who have a sugar scoop stern but man, they're entertaining. We have spent hours in the water playing with them, chasing them in circles and blowing bubbles in their face. As an aside, we were calling them seals until a nature guide corrected us. Apparently seals shuffle their bodies to move forward and have internal ears where as sea lions, waddle along on their fins and have external ears. So there you go! Fact of the day.

Wreck Bay is a cute bay, sheltered but with the occasional rocking and rolling as the pleasure boats zoom in and out of their anchor spot. Reminiscent of La Playita but a lot less frequent. We had about 12 other boats anchored around us at best, but being a good sized bay, it didn't feel crowded and when the wind got up, many of these vessels left to take advantage of it and head to Marquesas. Woop more room for us!

The town of San Cristobal is quite touristy. The promenade is lined with dive and gift shops but there aren't that many tourists here and apparently we are in high season. There are plenty of benches to sit on…but the resident sea lions occupy them. It's so funny to see the tourists sitting on the floor or leaning against a wall for some respite whilst the sea lions are having a lovely comfortable snooze on the bench in the shade. Even if the benches are empty you don't want to be sitting on them due to the brown smelly slime the sea lions leave behind. They own this place and they know it!

When we were in San Cristobal, the roads were all being dug up. Unlike the construction companies in the UK though, the roads were dug up, re cobbled and laid back within days! It was quite impressive to see and these guys seemed to work 24/7. When in the interpretation centre, we saw aerial photos of the town in the 1940s and again in 2007. The expansion of the town had increased ten fold and with all this current construction, who knows how big it will get in another 30 years. The comforting thought though is the approach the Galapagos National Park has towards tourism. Mass tourism is a big no no here and that is reflected in the prices. To maintain their sustainable eco tourism strategy they keep their prices high, and therefore the footfall down. There's no way if we were living in the UK that we could have afforded to come to the Galapagos for a holiday and it is only just affordable to do it on a boat. We justified it as a once in a lifetime opportunity and we're glad we did.

Suitably rested from our 13 day passage and with the lay of the land, we booked a trip to go to Kicker Rock - located off the NW coast. From what we had seen so far of the water visibility and the cold water temperature (18-20 degrees surface), we opted to snorkel rather than dive the rock. For $60 /pp we were to snorkel at Los Lobos and Kicker Rock, spend an hour at a lovely beach and lunch was included. At 8am we were picked up by their dinghy and taken to a charter cat with 8 pasty German tourists. An hour out of the port and we arrived at Los Lobos, the first of our snorkelling destinations. We had the pleasure of watching marine iguanas swimming and feeding on algae…yes underwater. These guys can easily hold their breath underwater for an hour at a time, strictly vegetarian they spend that time grazing on the rocks before coming up for air and swimming ashore again to warm up. The sea lions were playing and chasing the iguanas around, using them as aquatic toys. Marine iguanas were the unexpected highlight of our day.

Kicker Rock was next on the itinerary and it made for an interesting snorkel. We saw baby sharks (of the Galapagos variety) and a good school of eagle rays along with sea turtles and more sea lions. Unfortunately no sighting of hammerhead sharks and no large reef or pelagic fish around. We must keep looking!

Yet to receive our autografo and uncertain when we will, we plan to book a land tour after Easter weekend.