Woke up this morning at Chinese Hat, a small island off the coast of Santa Cruz. It features a lava field that everyone but me hiked this morning. I’m done with hiking/walking as it doesn’t take long for my hip to start hurting and scrambling over lava rocks – well, it doesn’t appeal to me this morning.
I stayed on board, downloaded photos from my phone to post with the blog when we get back to “civilization,” i.e. wifi. The crew on the boat consists of nine people: the captain and his and co-captain, the chef and co-chef, bartender Carina and three young, strong men who do everything. And then there is Venus, the boss (CEO) of the entire operation. The crew work really hard, as I watched what they did when everybody was gone. They clean the rooms, make the beds, empty the trash, clean the windows, clean the railings, wash down the decks – and they do it every day. And the young men are vital to getting people like us in and out of the pangas, which is very challenging when the water is choppy. Couldn’t do it without them. One of the young men goes on our walks with us – Derrick, the man from England I spoke about earlier, had a stroke six months ago that left his left side paralyzed but he’s been doing rehab and is able to walk with us with the help of the young man. He and his wife, Carol, have planned this trip for three years. I couldn’t visit with any of the crew, as none of them speak English which is unfortunate because I always enjoy talking with the locals.
Beth returned early from the walk, suffering with “traveler’s discomfort.” She said it was probably wise I didn’t do the hike as there were stretches of treacherous lava rocks. She said they spotted a Galapagos penguin in the water about 100 feet from there they stood. They are tiny penguins – less than a foot tall – and they are endemic to the islands. It’s the only penguin found north of the equator. They can propel themselves at up to 40 km per hour through the water because they have small, muscular wings that act as paddles and their wings act as rudders. She reported that they also saw two dead baby sea lions that were well on their way to rotting and some black baby iguanas.
The Galapagos Islands consist of 13 large islands and 100-plus small islands, islets and rocks. In 1978, the archipelago was one of the first places to be made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which declared it a World Biosphere Reserve six years later. Its position as strengthened in 1998 with the creation of the Reserva Marina de Galapagos, protecting 133,000 square kilometres of ocean, making it one of the largest marine reserves in the world.
So now Beth is on the boat with me, and we’ve decided that this is going to be our down day since we now don’t have one next week. We travel tomorrow back to Quito, hoping we don’t have to spend hours in the Guayaquil airport again, then on Monday we do a day trip to Artisana Volcano then our original down day on Tuesday now will be a full day of sightseeing in Quito.
We sat on the sun deck for an hour or so until the wind came up and chilled us so we retreated to our cabin for a brief “nap” before lunch.
Joined everyone at lunch to hear about the snorkeling. They saw some black-tipped sharks and one penguin swimming. They agreed that yesterday’s snorkel was the best and couldn’t be topped so I was relieved since we love to snorkel, and it was difficult to pass on the last snorkel but Beth is not comfortable enough to get in a wetsuit, and I’m just tired.
Everyone took off around 2:30 pm for another walk on Santa Cruz. The captain motored over to our new site after lunch. The water was choppy again, so the best place to be was lying prone on your bed.
Beth remained on the boat with me so we’re reading and resting, waiting for everybody to return and report what they saw on the walk.
The report about the walk was that it was hot, which was not the case on the boat. The sun was warm but the breeze kept things comfortable. They did spot lots of iguanas and boobies (there are the blue-footed ones and the Nazca boobies).
Supper was delightful because Venus brought the crew up, Carina served us some kind of wine cocktail and was said farewell.
The one shocker was our bar bill – we usually drank a glass of wine each evening before supper. I think Beth had a gin & tonic as well as a pina colada at some point, and we drank TWO glasses of wine the night everyone tested negative for COVID as well as the final night. I figured, at $7 a glass, it would be around $140. Not. It was $206 which apparently included a 25% service fee. Wowza – and it needed to be cash so we were glad we withdrew $300 from the bank when we were in Porto Ayora.
We have one more activity tomorrow before breakfast and beginning the travel to Quito.
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