San Cristobal

We arrived in San Cristobal, the first island in the Galapagos, late in the afternoon two days ago and anchored in a small anchorage by a humble little town. The Galapagos has such a fragile and unique ecosystem that measures need to be taken to protect it. When we came into the harbor a crew of men came onto our boat to check if we were carrying anything dangerous to the islands.  One guy actually dived to see if the bottom was clean!  

After that episode, during wich we had to clean the boat again, because of all the dirty footprints, we explored the town. Exploring a town, in my parents world, apparently meant, finding a place with wifi.  So we went around asking if anybody new where there was an internet cafe or ciber place.  Eventually we found a couple and settled down for school and work.

When we got here we didn't have very high expectations for San Cristobal, but turns out there are tons of things to do!  Of course we haven't done any of them ourselves but we have friends who have been here a long time already and they tell us about the different tours and excursions they have done, it all sounds pretty cool and I hope to do at least some of the activities before we move onto the next island.

San Cristobal is sea-lion paradise.  As soon as we pulled in we saw an abandond boat simply covered in sea-lions, there were sea-lions sunbathing on the deck, sea-lions sitting proudly on the transom and sea-lions lying in clumps in the cockpit.  We pile our fenders and jerry cans in our sugar-scoops so that the sea-lions don’t climb up and get our boat all smelly.  We don’t use our dingy because we don’t want the sea lions climbing in and piping it.  We have to step over them when we get onto land because they’re just laying all over the stairs.