[Jules]

Well after 2 years of planning and several fraught weeks of “are we going or aren’t we?” I found myself packing my bags for Galapagos. It was only at the last minute that it seemed real and I suddenly got excited.

I met up with a gang of people at Manchester, met more people at Amsterdam and only located my "room and dive" buddy when we stopped at Bonaire. Finally most of us made to the hotel after what seemed like a lot of take-offs, landings and airport waits.

We arrived at the hotel all exhausted. So did we go and lie down for a few hours??? Did we hell. Quito is already at altitude (3000m) and we were sleep deprived and light headed so we took a fleet of Taxis to the Teleferico
http://www.in-quito.com/teleferico-quito-ecuador/teleferico.htm and ascended another 1000m to the top of the mountain overlooking Quito.



The views were stunning and we had a nice walk and failed to pull any of the locals. Top marks to Super for trying to chat up a group of soldiers with sub machine gun though. We had a meal and then returned to a more sensible altitude since most of felt a bit wobbly. After returning to the hotel Super and I decided to go on a walking tour of Quito, so armed with a map we set off looking for the parliament building that was a bit dull once we found it. We also walked through a park and saw some sculpture.

On the way back to the hotel we located a supermarket and tried to buy some booze. For some reason they wouldn’t serve us. This was a bit of a disappointment but we got chocolate instead. Altitude is weird when you aren’t use to it. I had a thumping headache and felt lousy.

That evening we went out for a Mexican meal and discovered the reason why we couldn’t buy alcohol. It was election weekend and the country is dry for the duration, so that evening 14 of us went out for a meal and no booze. I think this must be a first for a YD gig.
By 9pm we were shattered and I retired back to the hotel and bed.

8 hours sleep is a wonderful thing! I awoke at 5am feeling great. And after a leisurely breakfast we set off on a site seeing tour of Quito. The old town, lots of churches, and lots of places were you can see the huge statue of the BVM on the hillside (Blessed Virgin Mary) and then a bizarre equator museum, which was cheesy to say the least. The guide was a fit young lady so most of the blokes managed to stay awake. Everyone delighted in showing Caroline the tank with a pickled Anaconda in. It was huge. We returned late afternoon. Exhausted I had a bowl of hen soup and rice in the hotel before crashing into bed.

Monday dawned and we all got quite excited realising that we were actually going to Galapagos TODAY! Long wait for transfer bus, long wait for plane, although we were pleased that all our luggage was checked in by the guide and no-one had to pay excess baggage.

We flew into Baltra Airport and were met by our guides Jeff and Luis. Another bus ride and were at the jetty. All the benches were occupied however.




By sea lions. And although they look cute, some of them can be aggressive and they stink!

We were taken by Panga to Deep blue, which was to be our home for the next 10 days.

Having unpacked a little and set up our dive gear we cruised a little way to the other side of Baltra island to do a weight check dive.

I had a 5mm longy, 5mm shorty and 4th element thermo-cline base layer stuff and no idea how much weight I needed. We also took in our housings to check they were still water tight after the flight.
28lbs later I sunk…

The dive site itself was a rocky slope covered in huge pincushion starfish and there were tiny turquoise blue nudibranchs everywhere. The viz was “murky” 15m or so but there was plenty to see in a gentle drift. We saw some juvenile puffer fish and a huge snail with a purple foot before ascending for our safety stop. Although it wasn’t really required I deployed my SMB and was immediately joined by 3 sea lions want to play with the blob on the surface and intent on chewing my luminous yellow line. They buzzed us for about 10 minutes just showing off and stayed with us till we surfaced. The beauty of SMB deployment is the way that a panga is next to you when you appear on the surface so we crawled into it and rejoined everyone else on the boat. Not bad for a checkout dive at all!

That evening we discussed the itinerary. Jeff explained that we could only do the trips at the times permitted by the national park but most of the itinerary he had submitted had been approved and that we would be spending 5 days at Darwin and Wolf.

We moored overnight at Isabella island and had breakfast overlooking Cape Marshall. Jeff then gave us an extensive briefing on the diving practices. Including “No solo diving or you’ll get attacked by silky sharks”. We all quickly got into the routine of kitting up and stepping onto the panga minus fins and having fins and camera passed to you. Then it was the usual check for mask, fins, computer, weights, air on, camera. And on arriving at the dive site negative entry and regroup on the bottom. No touching the animals! (of course!). The rocks are sharp with Barnacles which get broken by divers and are then really sharp. The bastard yellow fish will then try and eat the barnacles and always get in the way of the picture you are taking. On no account must you poke the bastard yellow fish or otherwise annoy it ….



2nd October
We woke up early and looked outside. At least 4 people independently observed that outside looked like Scotland. The Sound of Mull in fact! And it did, misty and grey-green rocky shoreline and darkish water, at this point I wondered why I had packed 3 bikinis and peeled on my still damp 4th elements and wetsuits.

We did 3 dives at Marshall cape , seeing Manta and huge shoals of barracuda.



Super also spotted an octopus and instead of using the internationally accepted sign for “octopus “ she did a huge charade on the theme of things with eight legs. I got it eventually but the octopus wasn’t playing out. We saw small eagle rays, marbled rays, guinea fowl puffers and tiny barnacle bill blennies inside the barnacles.



The sun finally came out at lunchtime.

On the third dive we went looking for seahorses in the seagrass. The temperature had been 18 degrees on the earlier dives but as we descended down the slope it dropped dramatically in the thermocline to 15. This was just too cold for me (Super had her dry suit) so I went shallower and had a lovely close encounter with a turtle.

Overnight we sailed to wolf island

To be continued…..