Late on Saturday evening we dropped our anchor on the edge of the anchorage here in San Cristobal, it was dark and we didn't want to search for a better spot, just have a quiet night. We would have been earlier but we had a spot of bother pulling up the anchor at Floreana, this time it was Simon who had the early morning dip and discovered our anchor chain rapped neatly round a up stand of volcanic rock, after working out which way we were wound he was able to con the boat round in circles to untangle us. Anyway that delay and a 2 knot current going the wrong way meant it was dark when we arrived.
We woke yesterday and with the benefits of a good night's sleep and daylight moved Shimshal to a better location and then Sally cooked pancakes for breakfast.
We went ashore later for the usual first day wander round to find out what was available.
San Cristobal is known for one of the best day dive sites in Galapagos, Kicker Rock. Heather and I were determined to visit as you are almost guaranteed to see hammerhead sharks 🦈. We quickly found the dive centre with the best reputation and booked on to the next available trip. That however is not until Wednesday.
We also found out there is another tour called San Cristobal 360, a boat trip right round the island stopping at several places, one being Kicker Rock. Well we splurged and booked that as well, we will only be here once, and that is what we did today.
At 6.15 in a torrential downpour we put on our snorkelling cloths at the boat before getting the water taxi ashore. We wouldn't get any wetter later than we did then. We swapped shimshals silent sails or plodding diesel engine for a tour boat GT with 400hp bolted to the transom and shot off towards Kicker Rock at great speed. At the risk of repeating my self, we had the best day, we arrived and quickly got into the water, within a moment we were staring down into a huge shoal of fish and then 3 enormous hammerheads just cruised on by about 10m below us. They turned around and came back, not bothered at all by us, mind you, why should they bother, we splash around near to the surface, they are 3 or 4 m long, perfectly adapted to move fast in water and have a mouth full of very sharp teeth, they are so at home they haven't needed to adapt in millions of years, they got it right the first time!
We spent an hour snorkelling round the rock, every few minutes something new arrived, we had several more visits from as many as 6 hammerheads, turtles, huge shoals of fish, black tipped sharks, Galapagos sharks, tuna, blue footed boobies it was like being an extra in a BBC documentary.
We moved on past amazing lava tunnels and Rock formations, pausing for lunch on a picture post card white beach for lunch to the next snorkeling site. This was a shallow, sheltered bay with a small sea lion colony close by. Here we had the usual turtle sightings but the stars were undoubtedly the sea lions, we spent an hour moving slowly round the bay whilst being visited by a whole variety of sea lions. From the big bulls checking us out to make sure we were no risk to playful juveniles enjoying themselves in the surf. We watched amazed as 3 youngsters argued over a stick, carrying it round and then throwing it away so they could fight over it all over again. One of our group, a young boy was swimming with the aid of one of the boats life rings, one sea lion grabbed the rope trailing from the ring and started towing the ring and boy around, much to the delight of everyone 😀 😉. We are not meant to approach closer than 2m to any animal here, no one has told the sea lions, they like to get close up and personal.
We completed our circumnavigation of the island just in time for the rain to start again, we had been lucky all day after the initial deluge and had a dry day.
A bit shell shocked after all we had seen we sat and had a drink before returning to the boat. We return to Kicker Rock in 2 days time, this time on a dive boat, hopefully it will be even better but it has a hard act to follow.
I will leave the underwater pictures for Heather in her next video but will post a few stills.
Tim