Ok, from all the briefings, I have to say that this one scared me the most. We were to do 2 dives here, but i only opted for one... I wanted to do this dive, but all the stuff i was hearing was telling me not to. I had to tell Mark that if I went on this dive, that he had to stick close by because i didn´t want him to be wandering off and then I´d have to try to figure out where he went. So we were set. I was gonna do it...
Dive 1
Dive Site: Gordon Rocks
Max Depth: 110ft
Max Time: 60 minutes
Temp: 77.5
Details: The briefing on this dive was scary. we were told of strong currents, lots of turbulance and possible downflows and very unpredictable. That the downflows could be soo strong that we would be pushed to the bottom and probably be stuck there for 20+ minutes. If we made it past the decent, we would have 3 pinnicles to go thru. now remember the last pinnicle that just shot us out into the blue, this time our DM would look at the direction of the fish and see if we would head out of the crater and into the blue that would go down to over 200 ft. Now you can see what freaked me out, but in the end it wasn´t all that bad. This dive ended up being 45 minutes, max depth 100ft, visibility 50-60ft. Miguel said that this was the calmest he has seen this place. It turned out to be a very relaxful with much to see. One big surprise, was that Fid stayed with the group, no search party to find him this dive... what a concept. Inside the crater we saw several sharks, both white tip and black tip... Once we hit the pinnicles, Miguel checked the conditions and we headed out of the crater. This now seemed like a wall dive. Only problem was if you stayed too close to the wall, the surge pushed you into the rocks and that was not fun at all... During this part of the dive, we stayed around 50-60ft. The sharks seemed a bit nosier and came closer. At one point a white tip seemed to be coming straight for me, i did a quick kick and headed up a bit and he just kept on swimming, guess i was in his way. There was also a huge group of sealions playing at the surface, about 10-15 of them. Looks like they were trying to figure out what was going on, so they´d hang at the top, send a buddy down who would just swim past and then go up and report to his friends... Funny little guys...
What a way to end the dive trip...
With this being my last dive, we were back on the boat where the staff took all our gear and cleaned it up and set it to dry on the upper deck. so nice not to have to worry about stuff like that. I settled in with my beer and relaxed the rest of the day, feel asleep on the upper deck and got a little more sun, and then headed below to talk with those that opted out of the second dive...
After the second dive was completed, we were all called into the common area to view the video that was created by Edwin and Miguel during our dive and land trips. It´s about a 30 minute video and it captured highlights of our trip... way too kewl, and couldn´t resist it getting it. After the viewing, we were informed of the plans for the rest of the day. We will be heading off to Santa Cruz where the Darwin Station is located. There we will be taking a tour and then we will have time to go shopping and, if we wished, stay on land and have dinner. Although dinner will be served on the boat, they really seemed to be pushing for us to stay on land. So we all decided we would. And finally, they then asked to move into the dining area so that we could enjoy a traditional Ecuadorian meal... OMG, this was the best (sorry, sames are in spanish... LOL)... Hornado de Riobamba (pork), rice with fried plantains, llampingachos (a potatoe pancake type thing) with peanut sauce, ceviche with popcorn, choclomote (hard to explain but good), chicken, and soooo much more... i think i had thirds on that meal.
Land Trip -- Santa Cruz Island -- Darwin Station
After lunch I headed to my room to start my packing and change for the land trip. My gear was packed as good as it could be, but my wet suit was soaking on the top deck. Soon we were docking in Santa Cruz and headed off to land. It was so hot and humid today, we were really not ready for this. But we trekked thru the area and checked out everything. It´s a pretty impressive spot. There was a hackery for turtles so that they could repopulate the islands for those turtles that are becoming extinct due to human involvment. We also got to go into the area where the female turtles are kept and then into the male area. These were big and we were told they were only about 30+ years old. We finally stopped by to take a look at Lonely George. As I had stated in a previous blog, Lonesome George is the last of his kind. they have him with 2 females, but unfortnately he hasn´t had any interest in them and has yet to reproduce. There was a small exhibit for the marine iguana´s that we checked out before ending this tour.
At the end, we were told of the schedule for the zodiac´s to pick us up and were set free on the town. Mark, David and I headed out, shortly we were joined by Don and Kathy and we headed down the only main road in this place and went to town. We stopped in a few shops on the way, but some of the funny t-shirts really would not make sense to those that haven´t been to the galapagos or know anything about the animals, like the blue footed booby and Lonesome George. We were told of a place to eat, so we split off from Don and Kathy and tried to find this place. For a short time Stan joined us, but we soon lost him. We did find this place to eat, but honestly it looked pretty scary so we decided to hit the main road and look for a place with either a fan or ac... OMG, did i say it was humid today... We spotted Don and Kathy in a bar and stopped in to join them, then Kathy and I left the boys and hit a few of the stores near by. We were all getting pretty hungry so we found this little hotel and stopped in to get some food. The place was nice and the food was good. Too much, as in the true Ecuadorian standard. Soon we left and headed back to the pier to try to catch one of the zodiacs. On our walk, we ran into Andrew and Fid, who you could tell had one to many to drink and Andrew was shopping and started to buy me and Kathy gifts... We finally hit the peir and now all we had to do was wait for the zodiac. We managed to lose Andrew and Fid but picked up 2 of the brazileans and Stan. We all headed back, packed up what else we had and turned in early...
Next port of call... San Cristobal...
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