Galapagos Trip Deep Blue Yacht 17-24 Sep 07

[Guyburger]

We arrived in Guayaquil, Ecuador on Saturday 15 September 07 and waited at the baggage pickup carrousel until it stopped. Yes the unthinkable had happened, we had only three of our four checked bags. The good news, we had both of our scuba equipment bags, the bad news, my wife’s clothes bag was missing in action. We later found out it had taken a tour of the Caribbean and ended up in Trinidad and Tobago. Since we had traveled a full day earlier than absolutely necessary we still had a chance for it to catch up with us but it did not. So my wife spent the day in Guayaquil and several hours at the airport trying to find enough clothes to last a week on a liveaboard. She found two “skanky” (her words) string bikinis in Guayaquil and enough T-shirts of various designs to get through the week. We are now firm believers in putting enough clothes in with the gear that you can get by if necessary.

We stayed at the Grand Hotel in Guayaquil from 15-17 Sept and left there at 10:00 am on Monday morning (17 Sep) for the trip to the airport and on to Baltra in the Galapagos Islands. Galapagos Adventures did a great job of arranging all transportation in Ecuador from the time we arrived at the airport on the 15th until we departed at the airport on the 25th. William their representative helped all of us with any needs we had and was particularly helpful for us with our baggage issues.

The 1.5 hour flight from Guayaquil to Baltra was uneventful but was one of the coldest flights I have ever been on. Carry you jacket, sweater or windbreaker just in case. We were met at the Baltra Airport by the crew of Deep Blue and they helped us claim our luggage and then transported it and us to the boat about ten minutes away. After our first “panga” rides out to the Deep Blue we had an initial dive briefing and got ready for our check-out dive just around on the south side of Baltra. The highlight of this dive was getting our weights set for all of the unfamiliar neoprene that we warm-water divers were forced to wear in the 62 degree waters in the southern parts of the Galapagos Islands. We also had a brief glimpse of a sea lion and saw a Red-lipped Batfish on the dive.

Early the next morning we were at Cabo (Cape) Marshall off Isabela Island. This was a drift dive in 64-66 degree waters that starts along a wall and ends up over a 40-50 foot bottom as you drift north. Here we say many spotted Eagle Rays and most dramatically about ten giant Mantas over the course of the two dives we did at this sight. Turtles and moray eels were also prevalent on these dives. After the first two dives we repositioned to Roca Redonda a small islet located to the north of Isabela Island. We were told that the highlight of this dive would likely be some volcanic bubbling coming from the sand along the drift dives path. The reality was that once we hit the water the current was ripping and we could only hold on to the rocky bottom and watch as we got our first glimpses of hammerheads (a couple) and an extremely acrobatic sea lion who entertained us for several minutes. At this point the small group I was with had an equipment problem (a diver broke a fin strap and we decided to not fight the heavy current and instead call the dive at about 30 minutes into it. This turned out to be a bit of luck for our small group as we got clear of the islet and out in the open where we only had to deal with the current and the equipment problem. The other divers in the group all tended to get sucked in behind the islet where the currents converged and this put them through what they described as the heavy duty cycle on a washing machine. After all of the excitement we all got back on the pangas with a new set of stories to tell.

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The night was spent motoring north and east to Wolf Island and our first encounters with sizeable populations of pelagics. On this day we made three dives at the Landslide dive site. You might think that you would get tired of doing the same dive three times in a row but this was not the case. Up until this time these were the three best dives I had ever done. We saw tens of Hammerheads and Galapagos sharks and a few silkies, along with tens of Spotted Eagle Rays, on each dive. The diving at Wolf and Darwin is very different from diving anywhere else I have ever been. Once the group entered the water there was a dash to a shallow bottom 20-30 feet to grab onto the volcanic rocks (not coral) and work your way down to 60-70 feet were you held on to the rocks and watched the show while being pulled and pushed by the current and surge. The other thing of interest was the number of morays you were sharing those rock perches with. It was hard to even acknowledge them given the show out in the deep. I should also mention that the water temp at Wolf and Darwin was around 75 degees and I was able to get rid of my hood and did all of my dives at these two sites in a 3mm full wetsuit.

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On the second of the three dives we did at Wolf on this day I finally decided to take my new Reefmaster Mini with me for the first time. I had purchased the simple underwater camera specifically for this trip and prior to this I had never taken a picture under water. Of course I lost the camera when I forgot it was clipped to my BC as I tried to crawl back into the panga at the end of the second dive. Oh well. Imagine my surprise when I approached the panga at the end of my third dive and one of the divers already onboard held up my camera and asked if I recognized it? Since it was the only one onboard with the optional wide-angle lens I knew immediately it was not a joke. A truly miraculous find given it was found between two rocks in forty feet of water in a ripping current during the finders safety stop. (Thanks again, Clark.) My pictures still sucked for the rest of the trip but it was fun to have another opportunity to take really bad pictures.

Over night we made the short 30 mile trip from Wolf to Darwin Island and the next morning we began what is at this point the best day of diving I have ever had. The procedure is much the same as described at Wolf. You take a short panga ride out to a point next to Darwin’s Arch, back-roll in as a group, head for the bottom, latch on and crawl to the edge of the wall at about 60 feet and hang on and watch the show, And what a show it was, at Darwin we saw hundreds of Hammerheads on every dive. We also had something like twenty whaleshark “opportunities” during the day. I say whaleshark “opportunities” because after the first time you left the rocks and went out in the deep to pursue one of the city bus sized silhouettes moving through the blue you realized that you were trading dive time for the exhilaration and work it required to catch up with the monsters. So not everyone went after every whaleshark but we all had 5-10 close-up whale shark encounters. At the end of the dive at Darwin you just swam out into the blue for your safety stop. On two of these safety stops whalesharks passed very near us and we had a close-up opportunities for free (no chasing). I can only say that at the end of this day my only concern was that diving would never again be the same for me. I joked about selling my dive gear and buying a parachute to pursue my next set of adrenalin
rushes. I’m still concerned that any subsequent Caribbean dives where I see a moray and maybe a Nurse Shark will never be the same and that I will become the boring old diver on the boat who is constantly saying “Oh, did I tell you about my dives in the Galapagos?”

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We spent the first half of the next day back at Wolf were we did a morning dive at the Anchorage dive site and saw tens of the “rare” Red-lipped Batfish. They were everywhere after the dive briefing had told us we’d be lucky if anyone found one. We followed that up with our last dive at Wolf once again doing the Landslide dive site and again seeing many sharks and Spotted Eagle Rays.

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After a night of sailing south back to the central islands we did two dives at Cousin’s Rock where the water temp was back down to 62 degrees and I was back in a 7mm wetsuit and hood. Here we saw sea lions, an octopus, turtles and a Scorpionfish. The next two days passed quickly as we did a couple of land excursions (not really our cup of tea) and flew back to Guayaquil to spend the night at the Grand Hotel before returning home on the morning of the 25th.

The Deep Blue is only our second liveaboard but the rooms on it were half again larger than our previous experience. At the end of the week the DMs show you their DVD of your trip that is for purchase by any of the divers for $50. We love both of the DVDs we bought from each of the DMs. The food was also plentiful and overall very good. There is an honor bar system and everyone who wished to could bring along their beverage of choice with them. There is no night diving allowed in the Galapagos at this point and the itineraries of the boats are dictated by the PNG and closely monitored for compliance. I hope the diving continues in the Galapagos after January 2008 and that I have another chance to go there. I would ask all of the divers who go there in the future to please respect the environment and most of all the animals you are privileged to see. We had a number of touching incidents on our boat (whalesharks, rays, and tortoises) and it made my wife and I sad to think that maybe the GNP was right to consider excluding all divers from the Galapagos if this is the norm.

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