Don't Touch the Animals! Travel with the Baysides: The Galapagos

Between our stays on Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal, we spent a week on the Samba yacht touring some of the other islands. It was incredibly hot each day and the sun was intense but I loved seeing some of these remote areas. We had the chance to snorkel and we took a few guided walks on the islands. We saw the famous blue-footed boobies, lots of sea lions, colorful fish, sea turtles, penguins sharks, dolphins, rays… And we had some private time on the boat when we could just enjoy a coffee, the beautiful view and the sounds of the ocean. Here are some pics:

Floreana Island

Popping up to check us out after playing in the surf

Marine iguanas everywhere! These big guys are such elegant swimmers, but we mostly saw them on land resting on the dark volcanic rocks that make up the islands. They often blended in perfectly on our rocky footpaths, but they rarely stirred even with all of the footfall and close calls of almost getting stepped on.

Morning coffee

We saw a pod of dolphins on our way to Santa Fe Island. There were hundreds of them! They chased around the boat and gave a show of coordinated acrobatics. It was breathtaking to watch them.

I also loved watching some of the big rays leap out of the water and splash down again. It was always a surprise, so it was impossible to get a picture. You’d just watch the horizon and once in a while you’d see this big magnificent ray propel itself five feet into the air.

Richard did get some pics of these two Galapagos sharks that swam around the boat for over an hour. I was enthralled watching them:

These girls were we’re probably 8ft

And we’d just been snorkeling off the dinghy about 300, maybe 500 meters away

No, I’m not throwing up, just still watching the sharks below us

I wish I had underwater snorkeling pics for you. We had an easy snorkel the first day. We saw parrot and puffer fish, penguins that zoomed passed us like bullets, starfish and graceful rays, schools of colorful fish, and I saw a sleek white tip shark that glided along the rocks about 20 ft from us. It disappeared quickly, though, so I didn’t get a chance to point it out to Richard or anyone else. Darn. It was a pretty good-sized one, too.

We also had sea lions swim around us sometimes. They were so playful and curious, and so agile. They suddenly would appear behind you or next to you, checking you out. They were so fast and beautiful in the water.

Snorkeling on a different day, we saw a big school of hundreds of thousands of small silver fish. We just floated above and watched them. A few of the better free divers in our group, swam down and tunneled through the mass.

Some of the snorkeling we did though was definitely not for novices. One snorkel I went on eventually put us in a current that whisked us with incredible speed toward the open sea. It was faster than I could ever run and it felt like being on a conveyor belt as you watched all the fish and rocks fly by underneath you. I got a little nervous after getting whisked over a big rock, then over the top of another white tip shark. He seemed as surprised as I was when I breezed by, but he just continued on his way, swimming effortlessly against the current. That’s when I signaled to the dinghy that I was ready to get out.

We also left the water early on the open ocean snorkel. It was deep, choppy water and each swell made everyone else in the group disappear, so you felt like it was just you in the middle of the ocean. So much for staying together. It was definitely not the snorkel for me. Richard agreed and we waved down the dinghy and clambered back on. We did end up missing some hammerheads further out, but I heard they were pretty far down in the water anyway. Small sacrifice for the comfort of being back in the dinghy and not in the open ocean.