We’d been hoping to return to Australia for the last few months of this year, but with the borders still closed, that wasn’t an option. Instead, we looked around for a place we’d like to visit that was ready to start rebuilding their tourism industry. We were delighted to find that Galapagos was waiting for us.
Sandra did some research and found an excellent blog post that gave us all the information we needed to plan our trip. We settled on visiting the three main islands (Santa Cruz, Isabela and San Cristobal) and five boat tours. One of those tours wasn’t possible, but four should be enough. All that remained then was to buy some snorkelling gear and an underwater camera. Oh, and to learn how to use it.
We started on Santa Cruz, staying in a house in a hidden, quiet garden, though we weren’t there much. We took two tours from Santa Cruz, in which we both found ourselves challenged. Sandra faced her fears of the sea on the first day, but pushed through them to swim with me from the beach around the rocks to a lazy turtle. That was the first of many sightings, and was very special for me. When I was 14 my family spent a week on a brigantine in the Whitsundays and I was on turtle lookout the whole week, but ended up being the only person on the ship who didn’t see one. I ended up seeing about 50 in the Galapagos Islands.
The second day, we went swimming with sea lions. They were on the shore when we jumped into the water, but soon came out to play around us. One kept trying to grab the rope attached to a life buoy and to swim away with it. It cracked me up for about 5 minutes. Our next dive spot on the same day was in a bay with sandy bottom and crystal clear water. We could stay next to the boat with the sea lions or swim 200m to where the turtles were. I, of course, chose to go to the turtles. I guess I tried to swim too far too fast and I ended up hyperventilating. Then the depth, the lack of anywhere to rest, the wet-suit around my throat, my gag reflex at the snorkel all overwhelmed me and I was extremely glad when Sandra saw my state and called for the guide to bring the life buoy when I was still 40m from the boat. By this stage, Sandra had asked to wear a life jacket in the water, which gave her the confidence to relax.
The 2-hour trip to Isabela wasn’t fun as the boat bounced over the top of all the waves, but we made it and I loved the rustic nature of the town with streets of sand and nature was much closer. By this time we’d realised that the Galapageños are the nicest people in the world. Despite the hardship they’d endured through the pandemic with, essentially, the loss of their entire income, they were always friendly and never pushy with tourists.
With an afternoon to spare, we rented some bikes and headed out to see the Wall of Tears. On the way, we found a couple of giant tortoises and a beach full of iguanas. The wall itself was an impressive story of misery. 7m high, 100m long and a few metres thick, it served no purpose other than to give convicts something meaningless to do.
Our only Isabela tour was to the impressive lava tunnels. When a volcano erupts and lava flows, the outer surface cools more quickly and hardens, while the hot lava continues to flow inside and eventually drains. The resulting tunnels mostly collapse, leaving interesting formations with occasional bridges. Here we saw a blue-footed booby up close, before getting in the water for a shallow, warm swim around the submerged tunnels. We got a close up view of a seahorse, more turtle time and even an obscure view of a manta ray and a shark. The manta rays were more impressive from the boat in the open water, though, jumping (apparently to shake off parasites). We approached one that was gliding in the open water and on one occasion both wingtips breached the surface about 3m apart. It was huge!
Two horrible boat rides later we were on San Cristobal, which was a nice balance between the mild commercialism of Santa Cruz and the rustic feel of Isabela. We had three days here and only one tour. We were looking forward to the rest, but our tour turned out to be the highlight of the trip. It took us all around the island, starting with more lava tunnels and boobies, but here we swam with about 50 sharks. Apparently the local sharks have no interest in eating humans, but it was a nerve-wracking experience to suddenly find a shark leave its sleeping spot on the sand to swim a couple of feet beneath us. We also got our best close-up experiences swimming with turtles.
Our last dive was in open water, through the crack of Sleeping Lion rock. At its shallowest the bottom was 20m down. The water was murky and full of sharks. Sandra was the first to brave the water, but we were both among the first back onto the boat, where we clutched hot drinks and a sugar hit. The Galapagos might be right on the equator, but it doesn’t feel like it. The air temperature didn’t get much above or below 20C, and the water demanded wet suits. Apparently this changes between December and May, but for 6 months it’s water some penguins feel comfortable in.
We spent a day barely leaving the hotel pool and games area before borrowing bikes again on our last day and heading for a beach dominated by sea lions. The guide there told us not to touch them because they’d be rejected by the rest of the herd, even by their mothers. We had to retreat a couple of times because babies became curious. Sandra got an awesome video of one mother herding its baby away from us.
We celebrated the trip with cocktails on the last evening, and went into a coma for the trip home. I was very nervous since I was coming back to Colombia as a tourist after letting my volunteer visa expire. The idea was that I couldn’t change my visa type so coming back as a tourist reset my status, but I wasn’t sure they’d allow it after being in the country for most of the year already. When the immigration officer withheld my passport and sent Sandra on my heart rate rocketed, but it seems she just needed her superior to process it properly. After making me wait for 15 mins, they let me through without any questions. And then we were home for a weeks rest.
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip. Even though it challenged us both, the people and animals made it worthwhile.