San Cristóbal
ECUADOR
Lord of the Galapagos III: Return of the Shark
By AARON
Saturday, October 11, 2008
So after our boat ride from Isabela, Lyndi and I found ourselves back in Santa Cruz and wondering how best to spend our last week on the Galapagos. We opted to stay on Santa Cruz for the next day and do a day trip to Floreana – a small island 2 hours south of Sta. Cruz.
That night we purchased our tickets for a day trip from the owner of the boat, known as “La Cucaracha” for some reason. But we lucked out buying directly from the captain, as we were only charged $75, $10 less than everyone else on the boat the next day.
That morning, we boarded the boat and headed to Floreana. I sat next to a padre who was heading to the island to do some mission work for a couple of months and while my Spanish is far from perfect, I managed to hold conversation with him for all 2 hours! After patting myself on the back several times, we took a bus on Floreana up to the highlands to observe the giant tortoises. While this was some people’s first time to view these funny creatures, Lyndi and I had already seen hundreds of them – from the Darwin Research Center, to the tortoise reserve on Sta. Cruz, so while the visit was a bit anti-climatic, it will never get old watching them all on their “feeding platform” munching away on some fresh leaves. After taking some pictures of the turtles, we headed to some labyrinth lava formations that pirates used to use back in the days when they were escaping God only knows who. We then visited a cave that had been carved by the first inhabitants of the island and was used as a home for them for 6 years.
After touring the island, we headed back on the boat and headed towards Devil’s Crown to do some snorkeling. Due to the mixed range of ages on our tour, only a few of us jumped in to do the snorkeling because of the very strong current that day. But with currents come sharks, and we were lucky enough to encounter a white-tip reef shark that I dove down and swam right next to – taking 2 pictures with my crappy film underwater camera. Our next snorkeling excursion took us to Champions Rock, where the current was a bit better and Lyndi was finally able to fulfill her dream of swimming with sea lions as 2 playful ones came up to her and swam all around her. That night we headed to Bongo’s bar and enjoyed some drinks and burgers before heading off to San Cristóbal the next morning.
Next morning 2 good things happened:
1. We went again to see Lonesome George to see if he was out this time, and not only was he out and about, he was posing for our pictures as if he knew we were there to see him. (Lyndi’s crush on him was even stronger after that photo shoot.) In good spirits, we headed to the boat that would take us to San Cristóbal, when the second good thing happened- but I need to backtrack a bit first.
On Isabela, our room had a DVD player and about 6 BBC documentaries on the Galapagos. Not only extremely informative, we found our favorite episode that consisted of the Darwin Research Center trying to get Lonesome George to mate. After numerous unsuccessful attempts, they decided that maybe they could get a sperm sample from him and inseminate the females manually with the rock-star seed of Lonesome George. Only one problem: how do you obtain a sperm sample from an 80 year old, 350lb giant tortoise??? Simple, just hire a reasonably good looking woman (human) to develop a “relationship” with Lonesome George, thereby earning his trust, and through numerous conversations about shopping and pedicures, lure him into a false sense of security in which after a hearty home-cooked meal of semi-decent casserole (a recipe given to her from her mom who’s a WAAAAY better cook by the way), she “touches” him in that special place where all turtles like to be touched, and hopefully receives a prize. Well, all seemed to work except for George actually awarding her with his “prize”. I think it was the casserole.
So. Where was I? Oh yeah, we were on the boat dock, waiting for our boat to San Cristóbal, when who of all people should cross our paths, but her! The lady from the documentary who j*+&$d off Lonesome George! We felt like we were in the midst of a celebrity, a one of a kind, a woman who not only agreed to do this, but then agreed to tell her story in a documentary for all to see. After the entire plan failed.
We arrived on San Cristóbal around 5pm, and checked into The Albatross. That night we ran into Beany, who left a day before us from Santa Cruz, and we all went out and enjoyed some drinks. Next morning, we promptly checked out of The Albatross hostel and checked into a much nicer place called Hostal Nathaly. Realizing that there was not a whole lot to do on San Cristóbal, we went and changed our plane tickets for the 4th time to leave from Santa Cruz for our last day.
Wanting to dive Leon Dormido the next day, we settled on Chalo Tours, which gave us a 2 tank dive to Kicker Rock (Leon Dormido) for only $100US. He also owns a sweet party/pontoon boat which makes the trip much more enjoyable. Later that day we ate ceviche at a small comedor that is owned by a Lebanese man who is a professional ping-pong player, so what did we do after ceviche? Go play ping-pong at his academy a couple of minutes away. I had the privilege of playing him 3 games to 11, in which all my previous thoughts of being a pretty good ping-pong player were dashed to a thousand pieces. I picked up the pieces of my shattered ego by handily defeating Beany for the next 2 hours, and celebrating with a beer on the beach. After ping-pong, all 3 of us decided to grab a couple of beers and go sit with the sea lions on the beach that borders the main harbor of San Cristóbal. The sea lion colony that lives there numbers at least 75, and has a famous “male bull” that is extremely territorial of his group. For the next hour, we took pictures of baby sea lions, and watched and laughed as the “bull” chased off numerous other male sea lions trying to take over his pride.
All was going well, until about sunset, when for some reason the sea lions closed up the beach to all humans sitting amongst them. I take back everything I said about sea lions being slow and clumsy on land, as one of the smaller males took off in a dead sprint/waddle straight towards Lyndi and I! I’ve never jumped up so fast and ran in my life, as we were chased off the beach (me twice, just to see them “run” again) and forced back on the boardwalk to hang out with the other humanoids. After a good laugh with that, all of us called it an early night because we had to leave early next morning to dive Kicker Rock.
Kicker Rock is located about an hour from the harbor, and is the best dive site by far on San Cristóbal. It consists of a huge piece of volcanic rock jutting ominously out of the ocean, with another small sliver of rock about 50 yards next to it, creating a canal between them where hundreds of Galapagos Sharks, white-tip, black-tip, and hammerheads like to swim. Unfortunately both dives were sub-par, with strong currents and low visibility, but we did however see a school of about 10 Galapagos sharks on our first dive swim right by us as we navigated the canal. In reality, the snorkelers on the tour had better luck-spotting some huge Black-tip reef sharks swimming right below them. That night Beany, Lyndi and I went to Polo’s Bar, where we played pool and drank with tourists and locals alike, until about 1am.
The next day would be our last full day on San Cristóbal, so Lyndi and I rented some snorkel equipment and headed to Las Tijeratas, where you can see frigate birds nesting, and snorkel in the cove below. Although there were some sea lions, the water was absolutely freezing, and we were only able to stand it for about 1/2 hour, jumping out and after a hot shower at Nathaly’s a nap was in order. Waking up refreshed, I headed to a local bar to watch the international match between Ecuador and Chile for the World Cup Qualifiers. After a rousing 1-0 victory and many aguardiente shots later, Lyndi and I headed to a park to try and use my star map that I bought in Quito, but competing light and clouds made for a disappointing outcome.
We left San Cristóbal the next morning and headed back to Santa Cruz, where our last full day was a bit anti-climatic. This would be our third time on Santa Cruz, so we went back to see Lonesome George for one last time (we can’t get enough of that guy!), and he graced us with a nice photo shot of his butt. The rest of the day was spent in nostalgia, just taking in the past 15 days and reflecting on the immense fun and diversity that we had seen and experienced over the past 2 weeks. Of course we ate one more time at Los Mellizos – our favorite comedor, and finished the night with some drinks and pool at Bongo’s. Next morning, we boarded our plane that would take us away from this isolated part of the world, and back to the mainland – no sea lions, no blue-footed boobies, no hammerheads, and most importantly – no Lonesome George. I miss him already.
