Ecuador: Diving the Galapagos Islands with the biggest fish on the planet (4-7 June 07)

(photos are here - http://picasaweb.google.com/nickchasingthesunrise/GalapagosDiving)

I headed back to Quito sad to be leaving Banos but excited about the reason for my coming to Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands. After a bit of pfaffing about in Quito I jumped on an Aerogal plane for Baltra, the island hosting the main airport for the Galapagos. The airport, currently being renovated, was awash with colour and cries as tourists slapped their boat name stickers on their person and ever-patient guides try to link up their groups. My boat cruise didn't start for 3 days so I headed for the island of Santa Cruz and the main town of Puerto Ayora. The first impression was of the barrenness of the islands but the phenomenal throngs of wildlife, starting with sealions lolling on the Baltra jetty and many typeas of large birds crowding the skies.

I dumped my stuff at the El Peregrino B&B and headed straight for the Scuba Iguana shop to see which dives I could do in the next 2 days. Luckily there was one spot left the following day for a spot I had researched - Gordon Rocks. The guy in the dive shop laughed when I asked about the chances of seeing hammerheads and turtles, he said "Of course we'll see them, we'll also see manta rays and whale sharks too". I then did the 45-minute walk to Turtle Beach (Playa de Tortuga) for a swim and along the way saw dozens of marine iguanas perched on the rocks near the beach, animals that swim and surf as they search for their favourite food, seaweed and then blow out the excess salt through their noses, leaving crusts of silver that harden on their heads. Damn funky looking reptiles.

I wandered about Puerto Ayora by myself that evening, finding the row of outdoor eateries where the locals go and soaking up the island atmosphere. I must admit that I don't like doing dinner by myself. Breakfast and lunch are fine but I get bored with myself at dinner. I crashed pretty early after making a sizeable dent in 100 Years of Solitude as the dive trip started at 7am.

I rocked up to the dive shop on the dot of 7am and met a stocky, red head South African called Steve who was also on the trip. Steve was travelling around South America for 9 months - all on the back of a flame red, FZ150 motorbike, which is a Chinese Harley lookalike with a small capacity engine and tons of attitude. Man, he had some stories. Then I met a Frenchman who not only used to own a dive shop on Madagascar but sold it to buy a yacht and travel the world with his wife for three years. Fabulous characters and good to be underwater with them.

The first dive we dived straight down and immediately spied a group of 20-30 hammerhead sharks searching the reef. They are skittish so soon moved away. We swam up to the edge of the old volcanic crater which forms Gordon Rocks above the water and over the edge we saw 4-5 more hammerheads and two of them around 3-4m long came to check us out and were just 2-3 metres away. Magic. We also saw heaps of schoolfish and turtles plus reef sharks. Then we had a break for food and snorkelling with sealions which was wonderful unless you got too close to the dominant male.

The second dive was a little harder as the currents had lifted so the dive master told us to drop down and hang onto the rocks and look around before he would decide when to move off. A few people were caught a little but I managed to drop straight down. We were at about 10-15 metres and suddenly the dive master began frantically pointing and ringing his bell. Out of the deep blue and random groups of fish came this huge shadow silhoutted against the surface above, that resembled a giant space craft. WHALE SHARK! This is the largest fish on the planet and extremely rare. I creamed my wetsuit right there as I had never seen one alive before. I swam over to it as it cruised past and without thinking and contrary to my usual good wildlife habits touched its smooth and exquisitely decorated back as it swooshed past. It also had a scraggly beard of remoras. We swam around with it for 10-15 minutes and I was on a high for...well, I still am!

That afternoon and night we celebrated and Steve and I told the story at every bar, restaurant and cafe we went to. This was day 2 in the Galapagos. Wow.

That night Steve and I met up with two UK girls in Puerto Ayora's Bongo bar - Debs and Rosie - who turned out to also be on the Friendship boat. We renamed it the 'Love Boat' and spent many an hour and several cube libres speculating as to the character of our other passengers and crew.





(more photos are here - http://picasaweb.google.com/nickchasingthesunrise/GalapagosDiving)