Galapagos Islands
Author: Neil

So finally I'm back online on the group. This may be short lived as I'm based in Cairo most of the time at the moment, but I should have local access there soon, so, any Red Sea queries, I have a number of good contacts in Sharm, Dahab and Hurghada (eg the best bar in Sharm is the Camel Bar in Naama Bay), just email me.

Anyway, enough rambling - I just returned from 10 days diving in the Galapagos so I thought a trip report might be in order. Hopefully there's some useful info in here and it's not just another "Look where I've been!" job.

For info, I'm a PADI Rescue diver with 95 dives.

I booked everything over the net via a company called Diving Adventures based in Miami in the US. Their website is at http://personal.mia.bellsouth.net/mia/h/s/hspan16/ . The owner, Ken Weemhof, is involved in booking trips for various locations and always accompanies the dive party - ie he's not simply an agent but an interested and keen diver which showed in his enthusiasm throughout.

The cost of my trip was $2845 which included all the diving, the liveaboard, accomodation en route, and flights to the Galapagos via Guayaquil in Ecuador ex Miami (we had to add a cheapie BA flight to Miami for about GBP250 on top). This price compared very favourably against some of the pricing from UK operators. (In fact my trip cost a bit more than that, but I added in flights to Peru and some other internal flights)

Of the 10 days, you spend a few days travelling or waiting to fly after the last dive, so you only get 6 days diving. In that 6 days, you can do one of two trips; either the Northern route, taking in Wolf and Darwin Islands - no introduction required for those names surely - two of the world's top dive sites - this being a pure diving trip; or the Southern route which takes in more islands and can be a split between diving and general nature treks on the islands. The two can't be combined in a week due to long sailing times up to Darwin and Wolf.

Our trip was on the southern route and the passengers were split 50/50 divers/land only. The boat was the M/Y Letty and is configured for 20 passengers total. The crew and guides are handpicked by Ken who knows them all personally, so we had an excellent crew on board. I'll state here and now that this was the best liveaboard that I've ever been on. Cabins were spacious and the facilities on board were very good. Only quibble is that it wasn't originally designed as a dive boat and doesn't have a great back deck for kitting up - generally had to kit up on an upper deck and the crew would have to pass the BC/tank down to put on just before you got into the dinghy.

All entries/exits were by dinghy. Diving was in strong currents so entries were all negatively buoyant to attempt to keep the group together. ie straight down to 10 m, regroup and onward.

The water is cool/cold (15 - 18 C) and I found my 7mm semi-dry + 5 mm shortie perfectly adequate for the job, even a little warm. Despite being on the equator, the Galapagos is subject to the cold Humboldt current coming up from Antartica, so it gets a bit cool on occasion. The El Nino event back in 1997 had severe effects on the Galapagos, with a lot of deaths amongst the sea lions, boobies and iguanas, and the pelagics seeking deeper cooler water. You could dive in a lycra skin back then. Things have turned around now and the wildlife has recovered (surprisingly) quickly.

Rather than describe each of the dives in detail, I'll describe a typical day - on most of the dives we saw pretty much the same range of species, though of course, numbers would change.

Most dives had a max depth between 25 - 28 m and typical dive times were 40 - 45 mins. Buoyancy control was interesting as a lot of weight was required to get under with the thick wetsuits, then of course you needed a lot of air in the BC to compensate for the compression of the wetsuits at depth. Although the dives were guided, it was pretty much every man (or buddy team) for themselves - it was made clear that problems and kit were your own responsibility, though the dive guide was there for emergencies, his prime role was guide rather than divemaster.

Viz was generally iffy, being around 10 m for most of the trip. Viz gets worse during the day due to the action of the currents on the sediment and generally speaking diving after 2 pm is a waste of time. (though having said that we did have one excellent late dive and one horrendous early morning one).

Typical day

0600 wake up 0630 in the water (and I thought they were joking!) 0730 brekkie 0800 land tour 1000 second dive 1100 snorkelling trip 1200 lunch 1300 land tour or third dive 1500 snorkelling trip 1600 land trip for divers 1800 briefing

So it was pretty intense if you wanted to take in all that was available.

The diving (finally)

Our first dive was at North Seymour plaza. We entered the water in the middle of a school of hammerheads. All about 4m in length. There were well over 100 of them. While they were going past, we encountered 30 - 40 whitetip sharks and about the same number of Galapagos sharks (look like a minature great white), a school of eagle rays, 3 turtles. Our dive leader said he'd never seen so many hammerheads in any one place other than Darwin or Wolf. In some ways the dive was too much - there was so much going on that it was difficult to concentrate on any one thing.

We saw hammerheads on every dive bar one and other sharks on every dive. We also had a number of playful sealions that would come down and show off by outfinning the group (and attempting to steal snorkels, fins etc).

There was so much big stuff going on that it was difficult to look around and check for some of the smaller stuff - we never did find the seahorses we'd been told to look out for.

Normal group diving practice went out of the window - we had to group very close together and actively use our hands (horror!) for propulsion against the current on the rocks (gloves are a must) - we had to keep together and as close to the "ground" as possible in order to minimise our presence so as not to scare the animals away. Felt more like stalking rather than diving in some cases.

The close proximity of other divers and the need to keep together plus the currents and the general murkiness of the water made photography difficult.

We did have 2 dives that were hard work, with poor viz and strong surge (at 25m!) but apart from those the rest of the dives were top of the range. I'd suggest that the diving is not for the novice - 30 dives would be a rough minimum requirement, with a number of those dives in poor viz/strong current environments. British water divers should have no problems in that respect. Less experienced divers would find it OK in good conditions, but the currents and conditions are quite unpredictable, so caution would be advised.

So, we saw lots of big stuff, but by the middle of the trip we had started to take an interest in some of the smaller fish around - lots of barracuda and wahoo (small barracuda), number of different types of jacks, stingrays, garden eels, small morays, octopus, angels, moorish idols, parrotfish.

Other highlights included a school (50+) eagle rays, marbled rays, blacktips, silvertips........

We almost mutinied and demanded that we headed for Darwin when we heard a report that 8 whale sharks had been sighted up there the day before. Next time....

The snorkelling was also very rewarding. The snorkellers managed to swim with a pod of bottlenose dolphins while the divers were bobbing about in a boat with a dodgy spark plug and couldn't dive (soon fixed, but missed opportunity - though I suspect we wouldn't have managed to get near due to our bubbles anyway - in that respect snorkellers have the advantage). I also managed to snorkel with some sea lions and Galapagos penguins. We even went paddling (I kid you not) with Galapagos sharks in a shallow bay.

I also had the living daylights scared out of me when a blue footed booby bird dive bombed and snatched up a fish about a metre away from me.

Did you know sealions can surf? Amazing to watch.

As this is a dive report, I won't even attempt to cover the land excursion side of the trip, which was equally as enthralling as the underwater side. Donations to the "send me back to the Galapagos ASAP" fund gratefully received.

Comments/queries - email at top.

Cheers

Neil