The Juliens: Galapagos: Day 3

On Wednesday, we had been given two choices for snorkeling: a place called Kicker Rock or a second place called Isla Lobos. One promised the potential for shark sightings. Tomasz chose that one for us without consulting me.

We started the morning with a relatively short but beautiful boat trip to Kicker Rock (also called Leon Dormido, since it looks kind of like a sleeping lion). We were a small group: just 12 of us. We were invited to sit on top of the boat for the ride, which afforded great views of San Cristobal Island, the ocean, and Kicker Rock, as we approached. Kicker Rock is an very small island of volcanic rock It looked impossible to land at the island, but it is home to lots of birds: frigate birds, the masked booby, and some others whose names I didn’t catch. We did two complete circuits around the island, scoping out the birds, the rocks, and the current. Then we donned our snorkel gear (which, thankfully, included wet suits), and fell off the boat into the water.

Even though I had a super leaky mask, the snorkeling was fantastic. I don’t have any photos because I didn’t have a water proof camera. The visibility was kind of low, so the photos might not have been all that great, anyway. Apparently there had been a recent plankton swell. I am no snorkeling expert, but I guess this is a bad thing at the same time that it’s a good thing. It reduces the visibility because the water is clouded with the plankton. However, the fish love the plankton, so there were a lot more fish out. So we saw some really large schools of pretty fish. We also saw some playful sea lions who would swim right up underneath us. We started by swimming most of the way into the smaller split between the rocks that you see in the photos below. We couldn’t swim all the way through, though, because there were rough rocks on the far side. We swam back out and then all the way through the wider split in the rocks. In here, we saw many fish again, but also lots and lots of sea turtles. We snorkeled for about 45 minutes. I’m told that one of our group actually did see a shark after diving down about 5 meters, but I did not.

When we were done snorkeling, we hopped back in the boat and shivered for a ride over to the beach at Puerto Grande, back on San Cristobal Island. We had to wade into the beach from the boat (in fact, Tomasz had to tow the boat closer to the beach before the rest of us hopped out). We spent about an hour just strolling on the beach. There were hundreds of crabs on the beach that scattered when we landed. There were some sea lions on this beach, too. We also came across a couple of hermit crabs (apparently, if you exhale on the hermit crabs, you can encourage them to come out of their shells).
We had lunch back in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (the city on San Cristobal). After lunch, we boarded buses for an afternoon trip around the island. Our bus had a mishap about three blocks into the trip (the mishap involved hitting a pole and bursting a tire). After we recovered (by getting on a new bus), we drove into the center of the island for a short hike up to the caldera of the (dormant) volcano. It was REALLY foggy, so we could barely see the lake in the caldera. On the other hand there were all kinds of various plants and flowers along the path on the hike up. Back on the bus, we headed to San Cristobal’s version of the tortoise breeding center. The mature tortoises were allowed to roam free in this center, which was kind of neat. They also had smaller baby turtles here. When we were finished at the breeding center, we went up the road just a little bit to beach at Puerto Chino. The beach was really pretty, and it was connected to a second beach by a rocky path. The only unfortunate thing was that a sea lion had died on the rocks just off the path. It had perished some time ago, which made for a somewhat less than pleasant odor. I took a lot of pictures of finches on the beach.

In the evening, we headed back to the city and then had dinner at this crazy delicious restaurant where you basically just ordered the type of protein that you wanted (I had shrimp), and they just grilled it up and served it sides. It was super good. We think the place was called Bambu Pizza. They did not serve pizza.

Kicker rock (in the distance, on the left)

San Cristobal Island, from the boat

Oooo... a selfie!

From the boat

Still San Cristobal Island, still on the boat

Kicker rock is getting closer...

There it is. We snorkeled through the slit on the right, but also through the smaller slit about in the middle of the big rock.

There's both slits.

Kicker rock (and barnacles on Kicker rock)

The other side of the little slit. The white in the water should give you a hint as to why we didn't swim all the way through...

The other side of the big slit. We did swim over here.

The beach at Puerto Grande

Puerto Grande on San Cristobal Island

Mangrove on Puerto Grande

Lava rocks on the beach

A very shy crab. They were all very shy. There were hundreds of them, though.

A sea lion. They kept hollering at me to get closer, but the sea lion kept snorting his disapproval. So this is was more than close enough.

Oops.

Flowers on the hike to the caldera on San Cristobal Island

Miconia blooms

More Miconia

The caldera on San Cristobal (and the lake in the Caldera). This is a freshwater source for San Cristobal, one of the only islands in the Galapagos to have such a source. The frigate birds apparently fly up here to drink fresh water (which is apparently an anomaly for coastal birds) and to wash their wings. They don't eat the fish here, though; they prefer the fish from the sea... specifically fish they are able to steal from other birds (the frigates are apparently terrible fisherman).