THE GALAPAGOS

Date:

Author: Linda Dunk

Apart from a one hour delay at Miami airport due to a truly cataclysmic tropical thunderstorm, the first two stages of the outbound journey of this trip of a lifetime were relatively uneventful. However, I do have to admit to being somewhat relieved after landing in the dark in Quito, 9000 feet up in the high plains of the Ecuadorian Andes, with lightening flashing in the mountain ranges on either side, after so many hours of travelling. Quito is huge; I don’t know quite what I was expecting, but I suppose it went along the lines of what the town probably looked like in 1910, not 1998, with a smattering of snow-capped peaks in the distance etc. Instead we found a cosmopolitan city of a million and a half people, ethnically very mixed, from European through to indigenous Indians and Negroes. I wouldn’t advise any future lucky clients to hire a car in Quito as the driving habits of the inhabitants are truly hair-raising, and the city appears fairly complicated in its layout.
The Sierra Madre was about 20 - 25 min drive from the airport, and is indeed very Spanish colonial in character, with little internal courtyards, tiles, white walls, shutters and balconies. There is no lift, which can be a problem with heavy baggage; fortunately we were on the first floor on both nights, and the staff were very helpful in getting the gear up to the rooms. The outward night we were in a room with a shower that remained cold after many minutes of running it, but the return night found us with a large shower room and oceans of lovely hot water. It could even have been down to me being brain-dead after travelling, and not realising that ‘C’ is for hot in Spanish, and ‘F’ stands for cold!!
The equator is some 20 km north of the city, and when we discovered, on arriving back at the airport to catch the flight to San Cristobal the next morning, that the schedule had been put back by four hours, we ended up visiting this evocative location. The Aggressor people at the airport were very efficient, giving us all labels to stick on ourselves like Paddington Bear, and dealing with all the ticketing. There was no problem with excess baggage, but then, just as the notes said, this could have been due to the fact that the plane was not full. How you found Andreas, who did all our transfers in Quito, I don’t know, but he was a real gem, a botany and horticultural student with perfect English and manners. It was on his suggestion that we filled in the delay by being driven by him up to see the Equator, as both H. and I had previously lamented that we had not realized on the flight down that we had made our first crossing of this phenomenon. The pilot had been one of those taciturn types. A brief comment would be fitting about warning clients to take very good care of their bags at Quito airport, as Andreas did warn us several times that possessions unattended would rapidly be stolen.
The connection with the Aggressor boat worked very smoothly at the airport on San Cristobal, another of these runways where one thinks that the diving is about to begin earlier than planned, and started with our meeting Victor, who was to be both our dive guide and National Park guide for the trip. Both H. and I have nothing but praise for this diminutive, but wiry Ecuadorian. Nothing was too much trouble, and he was one of those souls with a very ready smile and a good sense of humour. He even arranged for me to go ashore that first evening, as, contrary to their info, it was not possible phone home from the boat. In fact, the satellite communications system was I think out of order altogether.
As to the boat. She was certainly very seaworthy, both the RIBs performed seamlessly, and she didn’t look too bad overall. The saloon indeed, is a very attractive feature. However, the air-conditioning did not function adequately, and in 90 degrees of heat with 90% humidity, the saloon rapidly became very stuffy when all of us were in it. The windows, for windows they were, rather than port-holes, did not open, so we were rather stuck with discomfort in this central feature of the boat.
Victor and the crew introduced themselves to us on the first night all dressed in their nautical whites, and we drank a welcome pina colada, with the poor old crew only getting half rations I noticed. There was then a very extensive briefing (or as Victor called it briffing) on the working of the vessel and its routines, the schedule for the week, diving practices, do’s and don’ts, following dinner.
Silly things that clients need to know: the loos work by pressing a switch, so don’t spend ages searching for plungers. I would advise clients to bring their own films and batteries. There is a very good charging cupboard up on deck next to the camera tables, for those who need to charge their equipment.
A major problem on this trip turned out to be, of all things, lack of sleep. This was experienced by everyone, and arose principally from the fact that we covered maybe 500 - 600 nautical miles in the space of less than 1 week in a vessel that had a maximum speed of around 8 knots. This meant that motoring had to be done at night, and thus noisy engines (and they were noisy compared to other liveaboards that I have experienced) were running for 4 -5 nights. When the engines were not in use, the generator, also noisy, was in continuous action (air-conditioning and all that), and then on the nights that we did anchor, the anchor (plus miles of solid clanking chain) was usually weighed at 3 or 4 am, in order to get us on station for the morning’s diving.
I think that this adventure was the very best diving trip we have ever done, both topside and underwater. The feeling of exhilaration remains with me, resulting from the extraordinary location, with its flora and fauna, thanks for arranging my visiting this unique location. But I’m sure that you will want to know warts and all for the benefit of future clients, which is why I’m trying to give as much detail as I can remember while it is all still fresh in the mind.
Now to get onto the real business of the diving. You asked for a rough guide to the scheduling of the trip, so I will give you a diary of events as they happened. We arrived on the boat late on a Thursday afternoon (7th May), due to the flight delay from Quito. In order to maintain the tight schedule, we had to do our check-out dive as soon as we arrived; I think that we were in the water within half an hour, due to the rapidly falling light in the tropics. The check-out is done just around the corner from Puerto Moreno where one boards the boat, and it is not worth taking cameras as there is nothing but sand and a poor rocky reef, with bad visibility. I don’t think I have ever had such a rush to get into the water, but surprisingly, there were no disasters, and it did make everyone unpack their gear in double-quick time. Dive kit is stowed on deck in bins under the seats by the aqualung tanks. The compressor, unlike some of the other equipment on the boat, was relatively quiet. Tanks are changed as soon as a dive ends, and the air pumping side of things was very well organised.
Friday 8th May. We had motored overnight to North Seymour, where the proper diving began, and were all issued with scuba horns and flags for use as needed during pick-ups . I have to say that the RIB boatmen were amongst the most accomplished that I have come across, and we very rarely had to use either item. Somehow they followed our bubbles; no mean feat in what were sometimes less than calm seas. Their boat-handing skills were impressive, no matter what the circumstances, whether taking us diving or delivering us ashore without the benefit of a landing stage.
Diving usually comprised 2 morning dives, and 1 - 2 afternoon dives, usually after the meals. All dives on new sites were preceded by Victors briffings, with site plans and topography. Each evening, the dive sites and timings for the following day were run through, so we all had a fair idea of what lay ahead. On several days, dives were interspersed with land visits, and clients would do well to have two sets of cameras, one for underwater, and one for land, as there is insufficient time for much ‘camera fiddling’ between these fixtures. I think that if anything, the one week schedule was too tight. Obviously, people want to see as much as they can in such a location, but we hardly had time to catch breath, such was the pace.

At North Seymour we had breakfast a bit bleary-eyed after the night passage, and then dived, made a very hot land visit to the island to photograph sealions, frigate birds, marine iguanas (how big do you think these are? Everyone I’ve asked says 2 - 3 feet! Well, they are only about 1 foot long! We asked if they had been stunted by El Nino, but no, they are always like that), and dived again. Victor, being a National Park guide, filled us in during the land trips with many details about the specimens, and he also alerted us about what to look out for underwater.
Underwater is really weird. The Galapagos being volcanic in origin, the diving takes place mainly on boulder slopes. The rock is covered with a sort of furry algae, and what coral there is (massive hard corals) had bleached snow-white from its natural beige colour. The water temperature was 29 deg, down to 40 m! (instead of the more normal 20 - 22 deg), and people ended up diving in lycras or even bathers. The 5 mm suits spent most of the week in the diving bag. However, I would recommend that clients use full-length cover, in order to avoid scraping themselves underwater.
Imagine an underwater pot pourri of tropical reef fish (but all a bit different looking from where you saw them last), occasional sharks way out in the gloom, sealions travelling like torpedoes, huge shoals of muted pink, maroon, brownish or silvery fish. Surge is a major problem, or a source of tremendous fun, depending on how you look at it. It can be felt as far down as 15 - 20 m, and if you are trying to take pictures, proves something of a problem, with you sliding sideways backwards and forwards by about as much as 5 m at a time! Not so brilliant for the ears either! I spent most of the week using 24 - 50 zoom lenses, as we had been advised to do prior to departure, accompanied by 200 ASA film. On starting to surface, one has to swim out into the blue water and away from the rocks for obvious reasons, and any decompression or safety stops have to be done in open water. There was no provision of a deco bar or spare tanks, as the diving was all done from the RIBs

Add to the surge the fact that all the big stuff hangs out suspended in raging currents, and you can see why this is the only place in the world where I have dived that they actually issue you with gloves to hang onto the reef. Very necessary, as H. tore a finger doing just this. The rocks are covered with a sort of giant barnacle which can (a) break off in your hand), and (b) give you a nasty wound. Holding on is the only way to stay on station at some of the underwater viewing platforms, straining your eyes to spot whatever may be out there in the blue water.
After the land visit on the Friday, we dived again at North Seymour, had lunch, weighed anchor, and set off on the 19 - 20 hour run up to Wolf island. This meant that the afternoon and evening were essentially free, so that we could get our first rest (excepting the engine noise etc.) since leaving home. We were very lucky with the weather; the previous week, the boat had come out to Wolf and Darwin, the 2 most distant islands in the archipelago, where all the big pelagics lurk, but it had been so rough that they were unable to dive. We had relatively calm water, with only the big Pacific swell for company.
On Saturday 9th May we arrived at Wolf, with its 300 foot cliffs, around breakfast time, surrounded by hundreds of dolphins, some of whom were constantly riding the bow wave, some of whom were in leaping mode. It was fantastic to see standing room only in the aquatic sense. While diving at Wolf, we often heard the dolphins (noisier than PM’s questions in the House), but they generally kept far out in the blue water. The best dive site at Wolf does not offer anywhere to tie off, so the boat has to stand off all day while the diving takes place. I was enchanted with Wolf diving, with dives at 10.30, 2.30 and 4.30 on this particular day. On the first dive, one pair saw a 45 foot whale shark in about 20 m of water. As luck would have it, H. and I, directed by the remarkably sharp-eyed Victor, also had this great privilege, although in 30 m at the end of our second dive. This had to be one of the supreme moments of my diving life. Pity the pictures do not do it justice, but again, too deep for comfort.
That evening, clients voted to move on next day to Darwin island, with the famous rock arch, and so up came the anchor at 4 am on Sunday 10th May. We had spent the night in the company of the other Aggressor boat, on charter for Chris Neubert and a group of his photography students, and they had returned from visiting Darwin, full of complaints about not having seen anything half decent on the pelagic front! The run to Darwin took 3 hours, but was well worth it, as the underwater landscape was the most scenic yet, and was populated by huge shoals of fish. I’ll explain a little more about our fellow guests later, but suffice it to say that we had two Germans who had not smiled since we left port, on account of not having seen any sharks. Darwin diving rendered them beaming, even though the sharks had merely been shadows in the distance.
Now here’s something to make the average wild-life photographer grind their molars to dust. Would you believe it, but while we were diving at Darwin, one of the American couples on the boat, decided to miss a dive and stay on the boat, as she was feeling a little exhausted by all the action. They were asleep in their cabin when they were awoken by the crew because there was a whale shark circling the boat!! On the surface - would you credit it. Suffice it to say, they had about 10 minutes of snorkeling with the thing, and he endeavoured to take pictures. Sadly, his results, which should have been stunning with all that light, were not much better than ours at 30 m, as he did not appear to understand the camera’s metering system.
Both H. and I felt that the developing, which was done by Victor in any ‘spare’ time he had after the evening briffings, was OK, with films being returned to us the following day. However, he could only really deal with 5 films daily, and it is conceivable that clients might have to wait or even defer altogether if everyone was keen to have their films processed on a particular trip.
Four dives were offered at the Darwin location, with H. and I missing the last one due to a feeling that a series of deep dives and not altogether best practice profiles (mostly to within 1 - 2 min of decompression) might require an extended period of off-gassing! The thought that the nearest recompression chamber is about 1000 miles away is a fairly sobering one. In terms of what you see at Wolf and Darwin, there is a great deal of luck, as you have to decide where you are going to spend the majority of the dive really at the beginning. To see the big stuff, it is necessary to hang out in blue water, well away from the rocks, and the chances are that you may see nothing at all for the whole of the dive. This is a risk that people have to be prepared to take, because, if you do see something, as with the whale shark, it can be truly spectacular.
We then motored back to Wolf to spend what was a beautiful moonlit night on the anchorage around the back of the island, again in the company of the other Aggressor. On Monday 11th May, 3 dives were offered at Wolf, including one at 6.30 am, at the request of clients. Although the schedule on the boat was fairly tight, it was refreshing to find that if people really wanted to change it, then the captain and crew would do their best to accommodate their wishes. On our last dive, at about 11.30 am, we saw massive shoals of hammerheads way down there in the deep. At soon as this last dive was ended, we were on our way for the 20 hour trip back to the main archipelago and Santiago island .
Tuesday 12th May found us arriving at Cousin Rock, near Santiago island, around breakfast time. The evening briffing had really shown us what a treat of a day lay ahead! There were 2 morning dives as Cousin Rock, which boasted Galapagos sealions and fur seals, seahorses in the green and black soft corals coating its layered rocky underwater slopes, long-nosed hawkfish, heaps of cushion stars, and much more besides, all with the benefit of reduced currents. The sealions were absolutely whizzo, hurtling downwards from the surface towards us, playing with our bubbles, and charging around twirling and pirouetting like highspeed aquatic ballerinas. Lunch was followed by ‘snorkelin con pinguinos’, which was a hoot! Undertaken at Bartolome island, one feels that the relatively small colony of Galapagos penguins at this location really do a terrific PR job on behalf of their more multitudinous brothers and sisters on the southern islands. They are about a foot long, probably colonized the islands from the Antarctic via the Humbolt current, and leave something to be desired regarding their manners in company, hence my suspicions that a subsequent ear infection might involve some exotic pathogen normally resident in penguin digestive tract! Trying to follow them around to get pictures was enormous fun - you’d just think the shot was in the bag and they’d hop out onto a rock, ending up staring down at you, in an ironic role-reversal!
The day was rounded off by a night dive at Cousin Rock, which was extremely interesting. Unlike on a coral reef where there are heaps of crevices for the fish to wedge themselves in during their hours of repose, here they simply sort of fell asleep on top of the rock ledges, littered around willy-nilly. It almost looked like a rather untidy supermarket fish section. Orange tubastrea cup corals were spectacular and Victor found a tiny frogfish down at around 22 m. Photography was hampered somewhat by rather large shrimp or worm-like creatures that were attracted to torches and aiming lights and then whizzed around in front of the lens. The only hope was to take shots as soon as something was lit up, before this oversized living back-scatter turned up on the scene!
The weather was now deteriorating a pace, and after dinner we then made a very lumpy overnight passage to Santa Cruz island, where, with great relief, we anchored between North and South Plaza. I would advise clients to take anti-seasickness tablets with them, and furthermore, to take them at the first opportunity when the going starts to look rough, as believe me, it can get very stomach-churning out there in the Pacific, with all that expanse of ocean on every side. The only remedy, and nearly all the clients were reduced to it, was to scramble below decks and retreat to one’s bunk, trying to let oneself relax into the huge downwards and sideways lurches as they happened. I think clients also need to know that diving at locations such as Wolf and Darwin cannot be guaranteed, even if the captain agrees to take the boat all that way. As I’ve mentioned, the previous week, clients had pushed hard to go to these 2 islands, and had then found that diving was out of the question due to the swell when they got there. In effect, they wasted a 40 hour period of motoring plus waiting around time, out of a total diving period of 5 and one half days. This is oceanic diving, and a degree of luck with the weather is certainly needed.
Wednesday 13th May found us with 2 dives at Gordon Rock, a submerged volcanic crater that presents one with a boiling cauldron of a sea in the crater, and quieter waters around the leeward side. The idea is to get dropped in the cauldron, to descend ASAP, and then to swim to the rocky crater side as soon as one is well below the surge. It was really exciting stuff, as the crater is spilt by several gullies, through which the current rips at 3 - 4 knots, and the dive ends with “flying” through these, arms outstretched, into the quiet zone. Terrific, exhilarating diving, but not for the faint-hearted!
The dives were interspersed by a land visit to South Plaza, where prickly pears grow as large as trees, and the land iguanas pose very obligingly! The ubiquitous sealions drape themselves all over the place, and one large and irate male tried repeated to charge the RIB as we were attempting to hop ashore on rather slippery rocks. I have to say that sealions underwater are wonderful, while sealions on dry land are one of the most smelly things imaginable, but then I suppose we all would be if we lived on a diet solely composed of fish!
Lunch was had while underway to Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz, somewhat uncertainly by those with a queasy disposition, and I suppose a word or two about the food might be in order here. This was plentiful, and I think was designed for intrepid souls returning from the relatively cold water diving that is more usual in this area. Hot soup preceded lunch and dinner, and I think that overall some clients got rather fed up with the menu in general. It is difficult to say why; perhaps it all tasted rather samey. I also think that the combination of increasing fatigue and rough seas tempered people’s appetites to some extent. Certainly the food was not up to the standard of the Belize Aggressor, but then I expect that the boat is harder to provision in this remote location, and I for one do not envy the job of those in the galley, preparing 3 meals a day for 18 - 20 people.
Wednesday afternoon was spent staggering around the Charles Darwin Research Station in Puerto Ayora. I say staggering, as whether it was exhaustion, the heat and humidity, or as H. swears, ‘landsickness’, this fascinating visit was something of an endurance test.
That evening there was a farewell cocktail party, followed by dinner ashore at a very good and remarkably cheap (about £5 - £6 per head) restaurant in Puerto Ayora, and then another rough night crossing, just to help those who might have over-imbibed a little, to San Cristobal, ready for disembarkation on Thursday morning.
§Thank you for your assistance with the trip; you must certainly encourage others to go, and naturally, yourselves when you get the opportunity. It really has to be the most marvellous and uplifting experience, the more so for those with a biological background. However, if you get the chance to go for a longer period, I think that this would be doubly rewarding. Neither H. or I shall ever forget the trip, and in fact we’ve made a pact to repeat the process before we get very much further into our dotage! Current Holidays to THE GALAPAGOS:   2005

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