The morning dives were at Darwin Island and were more
excellent dives and we were continually
graced with breathtaking flocks of hammerheads.
During the second dive Daniel officially did it – he dove naked! (which means without wetsuit, but he was
actually wearing a swimsuit). During the
dive I felt like Daniel actually looked like he was skipping or frolicking
through the water as he enjoyed the amazing freedom that comes with not having
to wear a wetsuit. He said he also felt
so much more in control of his buoyancy because he could actually feel the
water moving against his skin when he went up or down. I hadn’t even thought of that – really the
only way to know you are moving up or down is to watch your dive watch/depth
gauge when wearing so many millimeters of neoprene.
Out of the blue we would suddenly be able to make out not one, but dozens of hammerheads - how many can you count? :)
This is Daniel and myself adventurously swimming into the bait ball and enjoying watching the fish all reroute around us. (Gary's camera)
This is from Daniel's camera that he was holding - up close view of how cool it is to swim into a bait ball.
During the second dive (and final dive) at Darwin we dropped
in amongst a pack of silky sharks and drifted down past them into waters that
were full of a wall of hammerheads all swaggling by – I watched with childlike
wonder, soaking in every second of it as I steadily drifted down surrounded by
hundreds of hammerheads, again absolutely amazed. Knowing it was my last dive at Darwin I tried
to soak it all in even more – only to look down at my dive watch and realized
woah I was already down to 90 feet and sinking.
Uhoh, I thought – none of my
other dives have been this deep and at a glance beneath me there was still
plenty of blue to continue sinking down into.
I kicked and put some air in my BC and looked to my left – oops, I
thought sheepishly – I had drifted down so slowly, enamored by the beautiful hammerhead
fishbowl that I hadn’t realized my group had left – probably to swim to the
rocky ledges which are more shallow (usually 60-80 feet). I had a split second where I thought aww, I
really don’t want to have to abort my last dive at Darwin because I have been
separated! I slowly looked in the
direction I had last seen my fellow divers and made out a faint trace of
bubbles and quickly beelined it to catch up with them and voila! I was back with the group. Ah. No
aborting the dive for me! But I was
lower on air through this dive then usual and had to try to keep it shallower
than usual because I had chugged through a portion of my air kicking around at
90 feet. (The lower you go the more
compressed your air is, so when you breathe at greater depths you use up a
higher percentage of your air than you would at say 30 feet than 90).
Daniel loved the dive and seemed so happy and free in his
“naked-ness” – we later found out he was the only person to dive in the
Galapagos with no wet suit in 2012! Go
Daniel!
When we surfaced they took us over to get some quick
pictures in front of Darwin’s arch, which is really a stunning chunk of
rock. There were cute sea lions hanging
out at its base and more red footed boobies swooping all around.
For some reason or another I did not feel too hot
today. I woke up a little queasy and
skipped lunch to stay out in the fresh air as I dealt with a round of sea
sickness. I didn’t physically get sick,
I just felt pretty bad and I sat on the back of the boat watching the horizon
as I watched Darwin Island and Darwin’s Arch slowly disappear out of view and
then fell into a nap. When I woke up I
felt awesome.
The third dive was back at Wolf Island at a site called
Landslide – in which the topography includes lots of rocks from a landslide on
the island in which rocks crumbled away from Wolf’s steep cliffs. On this dive, which was colder than Darwin,
we saw mating sea turtles, some packs of hammerheads sweeping through – I tried
to enjoy each one in case it was my last, a huge stone fish – the biggest one
any of us had ever seen – it was several feet long!, a white tip shark, a Galapagos
shark, a big beautiful eagle ray, and beautiful Dr. Zeuss style coral
gardens. It was a nice dive.
That evening we enjoyed watching the last sunset of 2012
with Daniel’s dad, Hannah, Bobby, Lorie, and Bob and actual saw (and captured
on camera) the fabled green flash that can be seen as the sun sets on a smooth
horizon at sea – it was so cool! (I had
never actually seen it happen before!)
What a way to end the year!
Dinner was an amazing New Year’s Eve feast with the best
turkey I have ever eaten in my life and a carved zucchini penguin! We enjoyed another cake, a gift from the crew
(that is a very pretty hammerhead statue/token) and enjoyed a champagne toast
to celebrate the new year. Don’t make
fun of us – diving is tiring! – but we declared 8 pm the celebratory midnight
and counted down with Paul’s watch which was synced to the atomic clock. We counted down, cheered, toasted, and went
to bed. :)
Click the image below for pictures!
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| December 31st - New Years Eve Diving at Darwin and Wolf |
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