We got to the dive/snorkel shop at the agreed upon time of 7:30am, but they weren´t there. Punctuality isn´t a prerequisite for business here, but the owner of the shop showed up after about fifteen minutes and got us onto the boat that he´d hired after we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get flippers for me that fit. I wear 15; the biggest size he had was 11. I grimaced and made do.
Our boat driver, Luis, a handsome dark hispanic, spoke not one lick of English, but was very enthusiastic and did his best to give us the lowdown of the highlights along the way to our destination. My embryonic Spanish was strained to understand the majority of his discourse. Nonetheless, he did well enough that I understood most of what he tried to get across. He showed us where Darwin and the Beagle first arrived and came to port there at the island of San Cristobal. The coastline was comprised of black volcanic rocks which were apparently bleached white in certain places. I asked Luis and he confirmed my suspicions: centuries of birdpoo had coated them like paint.
The boat ride was about fifty minutes and we went out to a gargantuan rock formation about a mile off shore. It was 300 meters long and split in two, the sixty foot gap separating the 100 meter peak from an 85meter peak, four-fifths of the way to one end. It was covered in bird offerings as well and the birds were specks circling near the top. But for the break it reminded me of the rock of Gibraltar. Luis slowly puttered around the rock, which I believe he called "sleeping sea-lions" after the many we saw piled on ledges basking in the sun.
Once we´d made our way around, Andrew and I weren´t quite certain what was going to happen next, but we soon figured out we were supposed to start snorkling there in the canal and follow the path around that he´d taken us on.
It was with a minor sense of building trepidation that I put on the flippers and mask and went over the side. My courage had not been helped when I picked out the word "tiburon" from the various creatures Luis said were in the water there. I asked him if it was okay to swim with sharks and he laughed, saying "it's not the Mediterranean!" Having been scarred by Jaws at an early age, I've always been a bit reticent about open water. Nonetheless, in I went.
I couldn't see a thing there in the center of the canal because it was so deep, but as I got near the rock faces the world underneath came into focus. The water was clear, which was startling for me having mostly experienced the Atlantic there on the east coast. Fish, sea anemone, and various small creatures flitted and scrambled along as I swam by. I was careful to keep a three foot minimum distance from the wall, as the barnacles and other organisms growing on the rocks would have torn me to shreds.
After fifteen minutes or so, something moving out away from the rock caught my eye. It was just on the barrier of what I could make out, perhaps 30 feet away. I turned towards it, focused, and got my flimpse of a Galapagos turtle swimming. I pulled up to call Andrew over, and as I waited I watched the turtle lazily swim. Unfortunately, Andrew´s mask was foggy and he couldn´t make it out and the turtle was going out to sea. We headed back to the rock.
We passed the area where the sea lions were swimming and I mimicked their bellow, which did nothing more than cause one bull to lift his head, look at me, and then go right back to sleep, though the bellow had caused Andrew to yank his head out of the water to figure out where the howling sea lion was.
Shortly after that, as we were turning beyond where the rock wall would block the sun, a hammerhead shark, perhaps five to six feet long, slid by fifteen or twenty feet below me. My heart raced and I surfaced to tell Andrew. He nonchalantly said we should keep going, so I swallowed my fear and kept swimming. I did keep my arms pinned to my body so it wouldn´t get an arm if it bit me.
We´d gone perhaps twenty more feet when I saw a fleet of hammerheads (6-8) down just at my limit of vision. That was it. I told Andrew, gave the thumbs up to Luis (who´d been following us in the boat), and skidaddled back to the boat. I was not happy. We got back in the boat and I explained to Luis about the sharks. He laughed and said it was no reason to worry.
We sped along from there to a cove where Luis told us the baby sea lions swam. Again, he drove us along our swimming route, showing us the sea lions and the black iguanas, which matched the color of the rocks exactly, and thus making them very hard to see, as they sat perfectly still facing the sun as though in prayer.
When Andrew and I got back into the water, I wasn't nearly as perturbed as the water was only about fifteen feet deep and I could see well. We meandered along for a time and then the sea lions came to play. At first the babies, three to four feet long, darted around us, coming directly at us before bolting away. Soon the parents came by, doing much the same as the babies, though at a much slower pace. There were eight to twelve sea lions between and around us as we languidly swam/drifted, going about us in a fashion that brought to mind images of biplanes dogfighting.
Finally, they lost interest in us and wandered off somewhere. Our other big glimpses were a manta ray and a flittering school of tropical fish. We got back in the boat and Luis took us back to San Cristobal. We were happy and felt we got our money´s worth.
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