Showing posts with label Galapagos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Galapagos. Show all posts

13 March 2014

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.


Our Longest Passage Yet

After we crossed the Panama Canal, we set out on our longest passage yet, to the Galapagos Islands.  It was going to be around 10 days long even though we did 100 miles a day and the islands were 600 miles away.  The reason it was going to be that long was because we were sailing through the Duldrums, an area around the equator where the winds from each side meet, it is dead calm in the Duldrums.

We spent our days doing school work, playing games, sleeping, and watching the horizon for the familiar cloud shrouded gray lump that meant land.  With all the time in the world we explored new games and watched dolphins perform for us, doing flips and jumping sometimes 5 feet in the air!  We also noticed that the dolphins were somewhat smaller than the ones we observed in the atlantic.


One night my dad woke me for the equator crossing on his watch, I went up on deck and my dad showed me a light he had seen and told me to click into it on the AIS screen. I did and saw, to my surprise the name of the boat we had spotted was Field Trip! My dad smiled and told me that just a few seconds ago he had talked to Mark, the dad onboard Field Trip, they were going 1 knot, waiting until morning for Sarah, the mom, to wake up so they could go across the equator.  

We dismissed the idea of dumping salt water or going for a swim to celebrate equator crossing because we had just taken showers, instead we celebrated with ginger-ale and chocolate, Yum!