The Galapagos Islands!

 

64 Year Old "Peppy" a land tortoise on San Cristobal

Well, here we are! Even a couple of years ago, I never dreamed I would be sitting in the Galapagos Islands with sea lions, sea turtles, marine iguanas, sharks, and multiple species of fish and birds! Let alone on my own yacht! Sometimes this whole adventure seems surreal.



Sea lions will sleep anywhere they can
get out of the water for a while! They are
noisy and stinky, but fun to watch.

But here we are. You don’t take your dinghy ashore – unless you want the sea lions to take it over and probably leave you a smelling gift. They are everywhere along with their smell. We have large fenders on our swim step to keep them from sleeping there.

As I look around the anchorage, there are a number of boats with visitors on their swim platforms. One even climbed up on the settee on the aft deck of a catamaran and was sleeping with its head on a pillow! When the skipper saw it, he went out on deck and the sea lion hissed at him, so the skipper retreated. Then he decided that it was his boat and went back out and growled at the sea lion, who promptly slid into the water and went to look for another home! You need to be the Alpha male here!

All of these officials came on the boat at one time!
It was rather crowded and very confusing with all of
the Spanish conversations.

There is a renewed conservation mode in place here. We had to have a health inspection of our boat in addition to all of the other visitor fees. There is a $100 National Park fee even for those you just fly in to join a boat and don't see anything!

A crew of eight officials came out to the boat and boarded at the same time. We had to complete a pile of paperwork. They asked many questions about what we had on board and inspected parts of the boat. They took many photos of things and on some boats, removed a number of items. Nothing was taken from us. One question they asked was did we have biodegradable detergent. Dennis said, "Yes, Joy" and I quickly grabbed the bottle of method so they could take a photo of it! Not sure what the people in the office would have done with a picture of JOY!

Come to think of it, would you let
these two into your country!?!

They sent divers out to inspect the bottom of the boats and 18 of the fleet boats had to go 60 miles offshore to have the bottoms cleaned. This has been expensive and frustrating as most of the boats had been hauled and cleaned or cleaned and painted just before leaving the Caribbean! Fortunately, we were not one of those. It looks like we are all going to contribute to the cost for those boats as it is $300-500 per boat.

The bigger issue is that many of these sailors have family and friends waiting at another Galapagos island to join them for activities and cruising! Now they have lost out on booked tours and time to do what they had planned. Apparently a new naturalist has come to the islands since the WARC negotiated our fees and clearances and this was recently put into place. We also have to sort our garbage into three separate groups: recyclables (paper, plastic, glass and metal), organic and general trash. We cannot take them ashore here, but have to keep them on board until we get to Santa Cruz which is two weeks away.



Welcome to the Galapagos!

The Water Taxis are our means of transportation.
$.60 pp during the day and $1 pp at night.

I am not opposed to the sorting and recycling, but keeping the organic materials is a stinky deal - literally! As sailors, we respect the ocean and all of nature and we abide by the philosophy of leaving a Clean Wake! We do not contaminate the ocean with anything that is harmful to it. We keep all non-biodegradable items until they can be properly disposed of on land. Our concern is what happens to it all on Santa Cruz? There are no incinerators. We assume they will compost the organic stuff, but we don’t see how this solves the problem of introducing non-native items into the ecosystem here.

I am not opposed to the sorting and recycling, but keeping the organic materials is a stinky deal - literally! As sailors, we respect the ocean and all of nature and we abide by the philosophy of leaving a Clean Wake! We do not contaminate the ocean with anything that is harmful to it. We keep all non-biodegradable items until they can be properly disposed of on land. Our concern is what happens to it all on Santa Cruz? There are no incinerators. We assume they will compost the organic stuff, but we don’t see how this solves the problem of introducing non-native items into the ecosystem here.





As for San Cristobal, there has been much work done on the waterfront to create a tourist area. When you get off the water taxi, it feels a little like “Welcome to Disney World.” There is a “board walk” of cement along the entire waterfront with a fence to keep the sea lions in the water and rock area and not in the streets. Occasionally, a few do manage to get up to the street level and lay around causing traffic issues. The opposite side of the street is filled with shops, restaurants and several small hotels. In many establishments, you can access Internet after a purchase. The Internet service is typical of most islands and not reliable nor is it secure.

We have had some great seafood meals in interesting little places. We even found a place that makes terrific milkshakes on the way back from the beach! Location. Location. Location. A smart business woman runs a 6 table open air restaurant/snack bar just at the top of the hill you have to climb on your way back from the bigger beach where we snorkeled with sea lions and turtles. The Blue Footed Boobies nest nearby.