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Firefly - Galapagos adventure - swimming with sharks!



In terms of wildlife, the first three days on the islands have lived up to our expectations; we have seen some spectacular sights and enjoyed spotting a wide range of marine and bird life. The level of Galapagos National Park 'red tape' has been as expected and we are quite limited in terms of our movements. We had a visit by 10 officials the morning after arrival, with the inspection and controls logical but not always administered sensibly. Out of the blue, half of the World ARC fleet have been deemed to be too fouled (weed on the hull) and are currently under going significant activities to resolve the issues. Luckily Firefly has been deemed clean (we anticipate that on other blogs on this site more details will be provided).

We arrived at San Cristobal Island at sunset after a cruise along the North Coast. No sooner had we anchored a few sea lions came to check us out. They have remained interested during our stay. The stern of Firefly has a lower section just above the water line (they call it a sugar scoop) is the ideal height for our new friends to clamber onboard. So most evenings and mornings we have had to encourage them to leave (we have found a bucket of water does the trick and also gets rid of the packages they leave for us). One even managed to get up higher on to the stern deck until we put up a barrier. There are photos of this on Peter's Facebook page.

Ashore we have enjoyed some delicious local fish suppers and tours across the island and everything is actually good value. We share the white sand beaches with sealions and turtles. A taxi tour with other World ARC participants took us to a huge tree house (complete with loo) and to Laguna El Junco a flooded volcano crater at the heart of the island where fresh water supplies for the island are taken. Unfortunately on the day of our visit we were up in the clouds and rain damping our enthusiasm and obscuring the spectacular views. Back near the coast and in the sunshine we toured a giant tortoise breeding centre, each tortoise is endemic of a particular island so without this intervention these huge specimens would be extinct; we can thank our seafaring ancestors who enjoyed tortoise for lunch (and dinner) for decimating the 100,000 population. The centre took us through from the incubation of eggs, the rearing of babies (very cute) along a boardwalk through 12 hectares of bush to visit groups in their habitat, many tortoises were over 40 years old and one late local celebrity named 'Lonesome George' reached over 100yrs. Down at the coast we swam in turquoise water and saw a blue footed booby, pelicans and rays swimming along the shore.

A highlight of our trip to San Cristobal was a boat trip out to Kicker Rock (Leon Dormido) - it looks like a Lion in Spanish and a pair of kicker shoes in English! There is a gap in the middle of the rock which you can swim through. For over an hour we were snorkeling along the rock faces amongst brightly coloured tropical fish, Eagle rays and Galapagos, White Tip and Black Tip Sharks! the sharks were deep and difficult to spot early on but towards the end of the session they came closer to us on the surface; heart rates began to increase and our guide decided we were getting them too excited and that it was time move on!

After this excitement we are now sailing to our next island, Santa Cruz, which is 45 miles to the West. Here we meet up with Barney and Juanita, and Peter leaves the boat for a week. He is booked on the appropriately name yacht the Beagle for a tour of the most remote islands.

Paul, Susie and Peter

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