We jumped on a speed boat at 7:30 am. 280 horsepowers and an hour later and we were pulling on the wet suits getting ready to 'swim with the fishes' as they say. Quatros Hermanos means four brothers and is a group of four small islands near the coast of San Isabela. We passed Isla Tortuga on our way from Floreana and it is a crescent shaped rock which looks like it may have been the rim of a volcanic crater. Both Quatro Hermanos and Tortuga are popular dive spots where they often see hammerhead sharks, whale sharks and manta rays.
On the wall of one of the islands is a grotto which our dive boat slowly backed into. We could hear sea lions and see birds nesting on the walls. We came back out and did our back flips into the sea. The water was a lovely 21.5 degrees Celsius and visibility was about 15 meters. The sea lions jumped in the water and entertained us with their underwater acrobatics. But, pay attention because just there is a small bull tailed ray and look at that school of fish just ahead, there are so many of them! Oh, wow. Look at the rock formations. It is easy to see that this was formed by a volcanic eruption hundreds of thousands of years ago. Oh, and there is a white tipped reef shark resting on the bottom. How cool is that. Oops, too close now and off he goes. I guess we interrupted his nap. Check my depth...we are at about 13 meters. That's a good depth, still a lot of light. And here comes a turtle, oops, there goes the turtle. Yes, I see a beautiful star fish. Oh and another one, oh wait there's two more, no six, no it looks like maybe a dozen or more here. Wow, nice designs on these ones. Oh, there's a baby one. I love star fish. I wonder if there are as many stars in the sea as there are in the sky. We saw a lot of star fish in San Blas. Paco, our dive master is trying to get my attention .... Darn, there goes a hammerhead. Missed that one. But that's ok, cause I am suddenly surrounded by a school of barracuda. Nice. Time to check our air levels. All is good. Ok, now we have a little current here and we are all just drifting along. Another turtle. I must learn to differentiate between the green turtle and the sea turtle. Next time we are on the Internet, I need to look that up. My, it is so peaceful under here. Look at those damselfish. They are really pretty. And there's a parrotfish. What is that thing that just floated by. It's so small. Oh my. It looks like a baby jelly fish. Oh, now I see more of them. Bigger ones now. With long threads hanging down. I am sure they sting. Glad to have a wetsuit with a built in hood. The only thing exposed is my face not covered by my mask. Gosh, there is actually a huge mess of these jellyfish. They are everywhere around us. Look at how they move so gracefully. We're getting a little deeper now. Got to equalize my ears again. The water is looking a little wavy under here. Uhuh. It's a thermocline and the temperature has dropped suddenly. Brrr. Man that is a cold one. I think I'll go up a meter and try to find the warmer water. Ok, now Paco is signaling us. It is time to do our decompression stop. Seems we have reached our time limit. We make our way up to five meters and hang there for three minutes before getting to the surface and back to the boat. A great dive. Lots and lots of life in this ocean. Even without seeing 'the big three', it has been an excellent dive.
Los Tunneles
The next day we were off again with Paco and Julio, our boat captain. And they brought another crew member. Whiskey is his name. He'll help out the Captain when it comes to navigating through the maze of lava. This time we are headed west. Los Tunneles is a lava flow that has reached the ocean with the lava hardening on the surface more quickly due to the cold water of the sea while the hot molten lava continues to flow underneath. Over time, these tunnels collapse and erode creating interesting formations and many pools of water where the aquatic life is plentiful. The tricky part of this journey is getting through the surf.
Julio waits for the right moment, riding the waves in and hitting the entry point perfectly between two rocky areas. It is a narrow gap and he has to watch that the wave behind us doesn't swamp us or knock us into a rock. He is extremely skilled, managing those two horses well and once over the surf he guides us through the rock formations. We have an opportunity to walk along the tops of some of the tunnels, where the blue footed boobies have their nests. We see large turtles swimming, cactus growing on the tops of these tunnels and many small finches. And, as with every bit of rocky coastline here in the Galapagos, there are many crabs running about.
We do a bit of snorkeling in and around and through the tunnels swimming with the turtles and small rays. Back in the boat again and Julio has to get us out of this bay through the waves that are five to six meters high now. He powers through and after a few tense seconds we are safely on the other side.
We head to another great snorkeling spot where we see white tip reef sharks hiding in small caves. I just love exploring these waters and although there isn't so much coral, the lava rocks make it quite interesting.
Penguins, Flightless Cormorant, Whales and Yellow Finned Tuna
We spent a third day with Paco, Julio and Whiskey in their speedboat Rafael. This time we headed up the west coast of San Isabel looking for penguins. Zipping along the coast we see huge great lava fields, cone vents and craters. On this side, it is clearly an active island.
Whiskey spots a school of Albacore (tuna) and we slow down to get the fishing rods out. Within five minutes we had caught a beautiful yellow finned tuna. In anticipation of such a catch, they brought all the makings of Ceviche (onion, lime, salt, tomato and green pepper) and that was to be the treat of the day.
We motored for four hours covering about 80 nautical miles, far enough north that we could see Isla Fernandina in the distance. We saw the flightless cormorants in the water and nesting on the shore. Julio took us into a small bay where we swam with sea lions and turtles and got quite close to the flightless cormorants. Their wings are very short and stubby and I wonder if they look at the frigate birds swooping and diving around them with a bit of envy. Mind you, the frigate birds can not go in the water as their feathers don't have the coating of oil that is necessary to protect them and keep them afloat. They can only dive down and scoop up fish near the surface of the water. Or, they steal the catch of other birds, giving them the nickname of pirates of the sea.
While we were snorkeling, Chef Whiskey started preparing the tune for the ceviche. The frigate birds were circling around as he would toss the scraps in the air. They would get snapped up before even touching the water. What a show that was.
After lunch and ceviche we headed off to another small cove. Remember, we still hadn't seen the penguins! And, of course, Paco would not let us down. The penguins were patiently waiting for us on the rocks. They were so cute standing tall ready to have their photo taken before showing us how they can dive into the surf and then scramble out again. We also jumped in for some snorkeling. The water on the west side of the island is very cold, probably 17 degrees c at best. But, I can say it was worth it. The turtles and the rays love this cove. We saw so many I couldn't keep track. They were just lovely to be with.
On the way back we spotted a couple of whales, saw lots of manta rays and swung by Union Island for a few beauty shots. Another fantastic day!
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