Galapagos - San Cristobal

Seals to the left of me, tortoise to the right

Seals lounging on the dock

After arriving in San Cristobal and passing our inspection, we are free to explore, as long as we follow the rules! One of the many rules here in Galapagos is that it’s not permitted to use your own dinghy. Frankly you wouldn’t want to as the surge on the docks is pretty bad so there is really no where safe to leave it. In addition we see the local boats here using barbed wire to keep the seals off, so any dinghy left at the dock would be fair game. To get ashore you hail a water taxi (or taxi aquatico) on VHF14  -  US$1 per person. The drivers nudge their wooden boat into your transom and you jump on/off, we got very good at this by the end of our three week stay. I think our pronunciation of “taxi aquatico” even became quite convincing!
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The small town is fairly colourful and chilled out, not too crowded. Kinda has a holiday / back packer feel. The Seals have the run of the foreshore taking up most of the available seating along the pier and lounging around under them as well. The famous marine iguanas are sunbathing on the black lava rocks which line the foreshore as well as wandering happily along the street, completely oblivious to humans. I guess they know they are protected!
 
There are numerous statues of Charles Darwin around the town and we also visit the Darwin interpretation centre, which gives some insight into the flora and fauna of the islands, as well as Darwin's travels and time here. The centre is also a gateway to some walking paths around the headland.

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Where are we?

Darwin and other animals

The headland walk from San Cristobal is really lovely, although challenging in the heat. We head all the way up to a mirador (lookout) facing north west. We can see kicker rock and down along the west coast of San Cristobal island. The lava rock paths are wide and mostly shadey and the walk takes us down to the largest statue of Darwin, overlooking a few of the iconic animals of the Galapagos. ​The beautiful white sand beach at Punta Carola provides a quiet place for the marine iguanas to bask in the sun and watch over the light house. There is no postal service in The Galapagos so to send mail (postcards mainly) we must rely on other travelers to take mail back with them and deliver it by hand. No stamp required but no idea how long that might take. We pass one of these on our walk and check the contents, but no mail for Australia... The walk back takes us via Playa Mann, the beach facing the anchorage, and its time for a refreshing swim and to relax and watch the young seals frolicking in the surf. They just dont have a care in the world, and are fortunate that we feel the same!

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Mail Box

HIGHLAND TOUR

The Galapagos taxi is actually a twin cab ute (don’t ask me the brand) and the three of us fit comfortably in for a half day taxi tour of San Cristobal island. Fantastic. The tour takes us through the centre of this volcanic island and across to the east coast.

• First stop was El Junco which is the extinct volcano crater, which has a small lake in the crater. It was a 15 minute walk up some steps to the crater, its quite misty and there is a strongish breeze blowing, so it’s a little cool. We walk down to a viewing platform closer to the lake. There is a walking track around the crater rim but it takes 2 hours, so it's not for us to day. We see a large Frigate bird circling and diving here and he has the lake to himself.

• Next stop is the Giant Tortoise sanctuary. The Galapagos is famous for these creatures, which were hunted almost to extinction by whalers and explorers as they are pretty handy to have onboard as a nutritious source of fresh food. We are greeted at the gate by two amiable chaps (the Walmart door greeters?). One walks along the path and we have to get out of the way! He almost topples over as he climbs off the walkway - would have needed a crane to lift him back up! We walk around the grounds following the path and spot quite a few more tortoises amongst the rocks and trees. It looks very dry and stoney but apparently it is perfect for the animals, it gives enough shade and they are fed daily with green plants. We come to the nursery area, where there are some baby tortoises in cages, they have just been feed. There are also larger pens with various sizes of adolescent tortoises. Again it is feeding time and we watch for a while, seeing some aggressive behaviour and sadly one poor bugger turned turtle. It thrashed around intermittently trying to right itself but to no avail. Meanwhile everyone else is munching away, oblivious. By the time it turns over there will be no food left! We learned that the animals can live up to 120+ years (I recall the death of George, the biggest and oldest one, made the news in Australia!)

Giant Tortoise

• Finally we head down to the coast to Playa Chino. We follow the path winding down through the cacti, many of which resemble Mickey Mouse. The beach is stunning, beautiful white sand and surrounded by black lava rocks. I walk up to the headland for a great view overlooking the coast. Seals are frolicking in the shallows and Keith goes to join them. The water is beautiful. There are fur seals lounging around in the shade of the rocks as well as the odd iguana just hanging around enjoying the sunshine

Keith swimming at Playa Chino

KICKER ROCK

Kicker Rock

​A highlight of our stay on San Cristobal was a day tour by small power boat to Kicker Rock. It lies off the north west coast of San Cristobal, not far from the coast, and we passed it as a distance as we came in. We motor slowly through a small, protected lagoon along the coast of San Cristobal where we see some frigate birds in the mangrove trees. It is breeding season so the male's red throats make them stand out. They puff these up to impress the females. Of course we see plenty of seals resting on the rocks and then our first sighting of the famous blue-footed booby! So exciting, hopefully we will see more of these in the coming weeks. We anchored off a beautiful white sand beach and were ferried ashore by dinghy for a walk along the beach and a swim in the pristine waters. Here there are plenty of marine iguanas sunning themselves in the sand and dipping their toes in the water. They are very hard to see on the black lava rocks and I almost step on one as I try to get a photo of another one. There are turtle nesting areas on the beach so those are off limits but there are clear turtle tracks heading across the sand. There was a small reef shark swimming in the in the shallows.

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Short armed selfie

On to Kicker rock for a snorkel, the water is freezing! I mentioned that Galapagos is at a convergence between two currents. One minute you are swimming along and the water becomes freezing cold, and just when you think you can’t take it any more you swim into a blissfully warm patch, which hopefully was not generated by the person in front… Snorkelling is not that great and I bail out early. We went back to the boat and the skipper went chasing dolphins, which were playing around with the boat for a while. We also saw some hammerheads sharks swimming on the surface and were able to follow these for a while. Super large turtles as well. I went back in the water a little later and rejoined the group and I am glad I did as I saw reef tip sharks and a hammerhead swimming around below us. Also followed a turtle with lots of fish stuck to its back. We had a simple lunch on board and on the way back Keith went up to the helm and the skipper gave him the wheel! Arrived back at 3 and had a rest before heading out to a farewell dinner - Morrie’s treat for his last night. Had a wonderful meal at Midori, sushi restaurant. Excellent food and a great way to end our time in San Cristobal.

Farewell and thank you Morrie!