After sleeping a full night as we traveled to Santa Cruz and
Baltra Islands we woke up to eat a tasty breakfast of fresh fruits, granola,
and made to order eggs/omlettes/French toast.
From there we sat down on the
middle deck for our dive briefing which didn’t just describe the dive we would
be taking at Punta Carrion, but also received the full gamut of all of the dive
rules and procedures for the boat. The
dive was an okay one – much chillier than the one yesterday and the
thermoclines were distinctive both physically and visably (in the water when
you hit a major difference in temperature you can actually see almost an oily
pattern in the water). Highlights of the
dive included a red lipped batfish, a sea lion chasing a school of fish, several mobula
rays, nudibranchs, a stone fish, a tiger snake eel, and more! By the end of the dive I was pretty close to
shivering, and I am sure as the day progresses if it is equally as cold I will
definitely be shivering. We went down
about 73 feet, made the dive last about 50 minutes. We
were greeted with hot chocolate and pastries and are now spending the hour in
between enjoying the views and doing our own thing. Just a few minutes ago I saw a baby
hammerhead cruising around along the surface!
Just before lunch a flock of frigate birds came up and cruised all
around the sun deck as we took dozens of pictures – so cool! Lunch was delicious and ended with a pod of
dolphins breaching outside our window – when I got outside the dolphins were
gone but Daniel had seen a manta ray and I saw a Mola mola just cruising
by! Again – the wildlife abounds and is
so exciting!
Four of the passengers had a major mishap in their attempts
to fly to Ecuador and then the Galapagos which all stemmed from their flight out of
Houston being cancelled. So, while some
of us dove Punta Carrion some of the crew went to port and picked them up. The boat crew made the executive decision to
skip the second dive at Punta Carrion (the visability really was terrible) and
to instead focus our efforts on diving Cousins Rock – which is a rock jutting
up out of the water just past Bartholome Island (a place we will be hiking
next week during our land days). This
dive was surprisingly cold – a chilly 63* - but the dive was much more pleasant
and we saw turtles, stone fish, schools of sturgeon fish and black striped
salemas and a sea lion! But this wasn’t
just any sea lion encounter – this sea lion really liked to play! It was probably a female, decently sized, but
not huge, and when she came up to me I did a summersault to try to mimic her
playful turns – evidently this was a bit hit, because I then spent the next ten
minutes doing barrel roles, summersaults, and swimming in tight circles while
she did the same! Daniel watched from a
distance and two other guys (Bob and Bobby) were there to watch as well and even
tried batting a rock playfully with the sea lion. We swam around for quite a while, and I felt
bad because our guide was physically shivering – but even on this dive I
managed to make it out without a shiver!
Playing with the sea lion the last ten minutes probably helped – it really
was awesome! I was so excited I was
happily laughing into my regulator as I swam in circles with the sea lion that
kept swimming up for air and coming back for more. SO awesome!
It was a Galapagos = magic moment for sure!
We warmed up in the jacuzzi when we got back and then
proceeded to clean up for the evening – each showering, shampooing, etc. I even dried my hair and put on real
clothes! To end our day, now that all
the passengers were on board, the crew gave us full welcome and introduced the
crew. Dinner was a yummy shrimp skewer
with some other sides.
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