The Galapagos

We were SO VERY glad that we decided to stop here – it was just fabulous.  The village of Moreno was charming with plenty of little shops providing all the necessities, and more. There were lots of casual little restaurants that put on a ‘menu del dia’, being a two or three course lunch with a glass of juice for $2 to $3 – such good value that most of us yachties never bothered to cook for the whole time we were there.  There were internet cafes, a Laundromat and a fresh produce market. The people of the Galapagos are Ecuadorian, a fine looking and hospitable people.  There appeared to be no crime and everyone seemed to have his place with no apparent vagrants or beggars, which made a pleasant change from Panama, but plenty of well fed and cared for dogs and cats wandering around.  I think you can tell a lot about people by the way they treat their animals. The wild life was incredible. 

Sea lions are the sweetest and funniest creatures and so friendly.

The village square

 – in fact too friendly and they’d climb onto the back of your boat given half a chance.   They are rather heavy and would easily sink your dinghy if you left it unattended.  Boats with swim platforms at the back had endless problems and many had to resort to barbed wire to keep them off; all the local fishing boats were rigged with barbed wire for that reason.  There were loads of these endearing (but smelly) creatures everywhere and they have a comical bark, which many a drunken sailor thought it witty to imitate.

Together with Duncan, Irene and Huub from Moose, we hired a taxi and took a tour of the island. We visited the turtle sanctuary, swam off a beautiful rugged beach where hundreds of iguanas basked languidly on the rocks, then climbed a volcano and walked round the lake set into the, now inactive, crater.  We saw Pelicans and blue footed Boobies, both of which dive bomb into the water beside your boat and pop up again with a fish in their beaks.

 

There were Frigate birds with bright scarlet pouches under their beaks, finches, canaries and many others. Our brave friend, Huub, went scuba diving, saw Orca whales and swam amongst hammerhead sharks.

 

Although the anchorage wasn’t heaving with yachts, most that were there were taking the same trip across the Pacific so we had a lot in common and made some good friends. It was a very sociable time and we had a lot of fun. New people to add to our group were Cyril and Jackie on Hi C’s, Nicole and Pieter on Petima, and Rick and Mary on Capensis, amongst many others. Mike had his birthday here and we took ourselves off for a day snorkelling at La Loberia beach, had a lunch of prawns and rice, followed by a swim on the university beach - they have this lovely little university right on the beach.

 

After two weeks, we left San Cristobal and sailed over to Isabella Island. One is supposed to do the official check out of the Galapagos at San Cristobel as they do not have that facility at Isabella. However, once again we failed to check out, so were unable to check into Isabella. Other cruisers informed us that the Capitan there was very laid back and seemed unconcerned how long yachts stayed, as long as they let him know what they were doing. So, we just kept our heads down, and stayed along with the group. The anchorage was small, crowded and very sociable. 

Isabella is the largest of the islands in the archipelago with plenty of active volcanoes - the most recent eruption on Isabella was in 2008.  A bunch of us took a tour of one – the Sierra Negra (not the one that erupted in 2008).  At ten kilometres in diameter it is the second largest crater in the world. The tour started with an hour's taxi ride, followed by a ninety minute horse ride up to the top of the volcano, an hour’s walk around (part of) the crater, and then back again.  The crater was beautiful and bizarre - there were huge cracks in the rock hard lava emitting odourous clouds of yellow sulphur.  The sulphur crystals settled around the edges creating exquisite 'flowers'.

  

The whole thing was good exercise and good fun.  I got the stupidest nag, a greedy little number who stopped every few yards to munch on the grass, but also insisted on being ‘number two’ after the lead horse, so it was stop, munch, and then gallop, rudely overtaking any that may have passed us in those few minutes. The other horses didn’t like her, unsurprisingly, and a couple of them tried to take a bite out of her in passing.  Not being much of a horsewoman, I found this very discomforting. Mike, who loves to ride and practically grew up on horses, got the slowest nag in the pack, much to his disgust.  Poor Jackie got the friskiest horse who galloped off into the bushes at one point, Jackie wailing frantically.  Our guide gave chase and managed to calm the creature down - and I was very glad I hadn't drawn that one!  I'm with Oscar Wilde who apparently said that horses are dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.

There were loads of sea lions again, we also saw white tailed sharks and, surprisingly and delightfully, penguins.

We found a free Internet café, and once again the lunches were good as well as really cheap. The town was quite quaint, everything looked rather new, some of it charmingly tumbledown and rustic and some of it rather sleek and modern looking, but well laid out and there was a beautiful beach. The streets were unpaved with a sedate 25 kph speed limit!

On our last night, the optimistically named Club Nautico, comprising a basic wooden hut on the beach, organized a barbeque dinner. Henry, the manager, came out in his water taxi to pick us all up, as it is a treacherous ride across the reefs at night in a dinghy and even he managed to hit rocks on a few occasions. Almost all the boats in the anchorage (and there were about 15 of various nationalities, including English, South African, American, Canadian, German, Curacao and Turkish) attended and we had lots of fun sitting on logs in the sand with good food and drink and excellent music provided by a group of locals with guitars.

Pieter and Nicole on Petima refused to come.  Pieter thought we were all mad; he had heard tell of a sailor who had attended such a farewell party with food cooked by an unreliable source such as was surely the case here, the man contracted food poisoning which only became apparent after setting sail on a long ocean trip and died as a result.  He didn’t elaborate on how cause of death had been established.  It was a good point, but not one that we ever bothered to take and being sociable beasts we always attended any gatherings that came our way.

Clockwise from left, the crews from Forever, Sturmvogel, Moose, Kiwitt & Globitou.