Trip Report:
Galapagos October 2002
Our intrepid group of
excited divers flew in from around the
world and met up at the beautiful Unipark
Hotel in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The Unipark
is right in downtown Guayaquil and you can
walk to the waterfront. They have recently
renovated the waterfront area, called the
Malecon, with nice gardens and a few
restaurants. We had lunch down on the
waterfront and then walked over to the
artesian's market for some deals on
Ecuadorian sweaters and other clothing. I
bought a beautiful leather jacket for $42.
Talk about deals!
The next day we boarded
a TAME 727 (after some haggling over the
cost of our excess luggage) and flew to
the Galapagos. Ninety minutes after take
off, we landed on the dry desert island of
Baltra. The landscape contained mostly
cactus trees, scrubby bushes and sand. We
were met by the Aggressor Fleet staff. We
boarded a bus and they drove us to the
Galapagos Aggressor I, our home for the
week. The dock where we boarded the boat
was alive with sea lions playing in the
water and lounging on the beach. Welcome
to the Galapagos where the marine life is
friendly and has no fear of
humans.
The Aggressor staff
took care of getting our gear to the boat
while we went inside and had a drink and
some lunch. Then we did a quick checkout
dive nearby. For many people who had new
suits or rebreathers, the checkout dive
was helpful to get weights adjusted before
we would be diving in a current. The dive
itself was pretty boring except for a sea
lion that buzzed the group a few times.
The water was a chilly 68 F.
By 4:00 we were pulling
anchor to head north. It would take over
12 hours to get to Wolf Island. We spent
the evening unpacking and getting our
cameras ready for the excitement to come.
The next morning we awoke to the towering
cliffs of Wolf Island around the boat.
After a dive briefing, we piled into the
Zodiacs and headed out. We did three dives
at Wolf, seeing tons of morays, vast
schools of fish, sea turtles, Galapagos
sharks and schools of hammerheads. The
water was a much more comfortable 78 F.
Although they sometimes see whale sharks
at Wolf, Darwin is much better for them.
That night, we went to bed with
anticipation of diving world-famous Darwin
Island the next day. At 4:00 AM, the
captain fired up the engines and pulled
the anchor. By 7:00 AM we were ready to
dive at Darwin!
Except for me, nobody
on the trip had ever seen a whale shark,
so there was some pretty heavy pressure on
the crew! We rolled off the Zodiacs into
warm, clear blue water and headed down to
the wall. Before we even had much chance
to look around, we heard the excited
clanking sound of Paula the divemaster
signaling the approach of a whale shark.
We all rushed out into the blue from the
wall and met the gigantic fish head-on.
Only 20 minutes into the first dive we had
a huge whale shark that stayed with us for
about 10 minutes! Everyone showed
remarkable restraint and didn't touch the
shark, so it tolerated us for a while. I
have to tell you though, the urge to touch
the shark is pretty hard to suppress! On
the second dive we didn't see any whale
sharks, but we did see hammerheads and a
huge school of dolphins that buzzed the
group. Since there was very little
current, the hammerheads weren't coming in
close to the reef to be cleaned. They kept
their distance, frustrating the
photographers. Some of our group decided
to skip the third dive and take a nap. Big
mistake! We had 10 (yes, I'm serious!)
whale shark encounters with 2 or 3
different sharks on that one dive! There
wasn't a period of more than 5 minutes on
the dive without a whale shark. Talk about
awesome! (Here is a cool video
clip. It's 3.9
MB and requires a Quicktime viewer.)
Everyone came out of the water totally
psyched…but spoiled! We "only" had 5
encounters on the fourth dive, but all the
people who skipped the 3rd dive got to see
them! That night we watched each other's
video and looked at the digital camera
pictures. No doubt about it, those who
came to see whale sharks were not
disappointed. We still had 2 or 3 more
days at Darwin depending on what the group
wanted to do.
How do you top a day
like that? Well, you can't--but you can
certainly try! The next day we awoke to
find the other Aggressor boat present. No
longer having the island to ourselves, we
nonetheless geared up for another day of
diving the big animal capital. Again, with
very little current the hammerheads
weren't going up to the reef, but the fish
schools were busy feeding and spawning and
there were sea turtles everywhere,
providing ample entertainment while we
waited for Mr. Big. Unfortunately, we ran
out of time before he showed up. On the
second dive, the most memorable moment for
me was right at the end of the dive. We
were doing a 15 foot safety stop and I
signaled to Christine that we were all set
and we should surface. She signaled back
that she wanted one more minute to be
safe. Less than thirty seconds later, a
whale shark came out of the blue heading
straight for us!! We chased it for a
while, and I got some pictures of
Christine swimming beside it. We followed
it down to about 50 feet. Then we had to
start our safety stop all over again! Who
says safety stops are boring??
On the third day at
Darwin, the current came back. We all
spent the dives holding on to the rocks
and flapping in the current like flags,
but nobody complained because we kept
seeing whale shark after whale shark. In
total, we had 25 encounters with whale
sharks in three days at Darwin. We only
had two dives without them. We also got
some nice big groups of hammerheads once
the current came back, although they still
didn't come as close as last year. (Last
year, everyone on the trip had
rebreathers.) We had some short but close
encounters with common dolphins and
Galapagos sharks too.
We had the option of
spending another day at Darwin, or going
south to try some other dive sites and do
some land hikes. Since we had been so
successful with the whale sharks, we
decided to go south. That night, we
cruised for 15 hours back down to the
southern part of the archipelago. We woke
up the next morning at Cousin's Rock,
right near Bartolome Island. We did two
dives on Cousin's rock. Man, they were
COLD dives! The water was only 62-65
degrees depending on depth. But we saw
several seahorses, a mobula ray, a huge
school of barracuda, a couple turtles,
Eagle rays and a group of playful sea
lions that entertained us until we
couldn't stand the cold anymore! Later
that afternoon we did a land hike to reach
a scenic lookout where we got a beautiful
view of the islands. After that, we
snorkeled with penguins and sea lions for
an hour at dusk. Penguins might not be
able to fly, but they sure can swim. What
a day! The water was cool, but we got to
have so much fun with the animals that
nobody noticed. Okay, well they
noticed...but they didn't mind.
The next morning after
breakfast we did a land hike on South
Plaza Island where we saw all kinds of sea
lion activity, including bulls guarding
their harems and females nursing their
pups. We also got up close and personal
with marine iguanas and land iguanas
sunning themselves on the rocks. Finally,
we did our last dive of the trip (number
18) at Gordon Rocks. While Gordon Rocks is
quite stunning above water, I found the
dive a bit boring. Some other people in
the group saw a squad of eagle rays, but I
saw mostly just sea stars and pencil
urchins.
That afternoon we spent
a few hours at the Charles Darwin Research
station on Santa Cruz where we got to
photograph giant land tortoises up close
and we saw "Lonesome George." Then we went
out to a local restaurant for dinner. The
next morning we headed off to the airport
for the trip back to Guayaquil.
We all agreed that the
week was pretty hard to beat. We had an
absolutely fantastic group--not only
excellent divers but wonderful people.
Many friendships were forged that I hope
will continue. We had tons of awesome
whale shark encounters. Since everyone
came especially to see whale sharks,
nobody was disappointed! As a bonus, we
also saw Scalloped Hammerheads, sea
turtles, sea lions, penguins, eagle rays,
Galapagos sharks, and dolphins. And that's
just the big stuff! I wonder if we can top
it in 2003?
Sounds like a challenge I'm ready to
undertake!
More trips
with Jonathan...
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Our 2002 Galapagos Group: Victor, Carol,
Wayne, Brenda, Brandy, Bill, Al, Julia,
Jonathan, Christine, Becky, Chuck, Carl
and Chase. This page will hopefully have a
bunch of pictures not just by Jonathan but
from the entire group. Keep checking back!
Jonathan demonstrating the superior
performance of Force Fins.
Chase contemplates the biggest fish on
Earth!
The group hanging with Mr. Big. Check out
a video
clip. The clip is 2 minutes long, 3.9
MB file size and requires a Quicktime
viewer.
Al captured this magnificent shot with his
Olympus digital camera. Check out more of
Al's
pictures from the trip.
A Green Turtle resting in the soft coral
at Cousin's Rock.
A playful Galapagos Sea Lion that played
with us at Cousin's Rock. Talk about a fun
time!!
Yes, we probably have too many whale shark
pics on this trip report, but hey, we had
so many of them that we have a lot of
shots!! This is Christine following Senor
Grande.
The group going ashore in Galapagos
fashionwear. (L->R Wayne, Julia,
Victor, Chase, Bill, Brenda, Carl, Al,
Chuck, Becky, Christine, Carol, Brandy).
Sorry Brandy and Wayne for the wide angle
lens distortion on your heads!
One of my favorite shots from Darwin
Island.
MORE
PICTURES from the trip.
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