2. San Cristobal, Galapagos - where the sea lions lie!

Our flight to the islands all went smoothly, after the initial disappointment of not being able to access the VIP lounge and being forced to sit out in gen-pop. The airline with flew with have only recently introduced business class and because I’d booked the ‘up the front, extra leg room seats’ (for Dad - and for me in solidarity with tall people), we’d been automatically upgraded to business when it was launched, which was fun. On this short hop of a journey, that really just translated to slightly bigger seats with legroom, a free packet of banana crisps and a lady who came and took a drinks order from the 12 of us in that section then returned 15 minutes later with the wrong drink. I think they’re still working on ironing out a few of the processes!

At the airport, the usual slight chaos reigned as various passports, landing declaration cards and Galapagos entry passes had to be shown to various people before $200 was demanded from each foreign arrival as a galapagos entry tax. The sophisticated luggage arrival system of men lobbing the bags out the plane and them being lined up in the ‘arrival hall’ commenced and a sniffer dog was despatched to check them all. Although the dog didn’t identify my bag, it seemed to get selected for a search anyway so I had to wait while a man unzipped and riffled about in my case. I was waiting to be asked about why I was travelling with a kettle, a vast supply of tea bag and emergency instant noodles but he seemed happy with my packing and waved me on through!

We are staying in a little apartment overlooking the harbour and town for a few days in San Cristobal island. Since the two bedrooms are very similar in size, presentation, position and ‘nice-ness’, I selected my room then Dad kindly took the other. Once we’d made our way to the shop for milk, we sat and enjoyed a delicious cup of tea on our balcony

We ventured into town to have a look round and search out the culprit for the odd sounding wildlife noises echoing around. As we walked down towards the first pier, we spotted a lovely sea lion out on a rock, having a sleep and excitedly took its photos. Very quickly, it became clear that in fact, there is a massive resident population of sea lions here - somewhere around 10,000 on the island, many of whom seem to live in town! There sprawl all over the beaches and rocks and swim about in the sea.  More than that, they come further onto land, ‘walking’ on their forefins and tail fins as they waddle ashore and then collapse to sleep along the pavements, walkways, benches, car parks and where ever they fancy. It’s not so much as they have right of way as it’s just that they are thoroughly unconcerned about humans and go where they please and the humans have to work around them! They lumber onto the beaches and bask out amongst the sunbathers. They are a little stinky up close and bloody noises - mostly the males. The dominant males seem to patrol the sea and beaches doing a fairly constant classic ‘sea lion honk’ while the others then join in and communicate with each other through a series of sounds that are similar to cows, annoyed sheep, grunts, juicy sighs, elongated mega burps and something that sounds almost exactly like a deep voiced human vomiting.

While not at all aggressive towards humans, the sea lions are perhaps slightly hazardous in their lollops, particularly when they chose to haul themselves up onto the beaches, amongst the sunbathers who aren’t keen to test the ‘stay still and they’ll go round you’ idea. An average male sea lion weights in at around 40 stone so as a general rule, when one is lumbering up the beach or rolling about in the sand inches from your towel, myself and the other beach goers tended to scramble away sharpish. They don’t generally move that quickly unless chasing one another or once having made the decision to head back into the sea when they pick up a bit of speed. One decided to do just that as I walked past it and it reared up and started gallumping towards me. I dealt with it very calmly by screeching ‘NO’ at it and running away down the beach. Mind you, the bees here are also roughly 3x the size of a bumble bee and jet black so when one of them buzzed around me quite persistently, I handled that by rushing away while shouting ‘I’m not a flower’ at it. Seemed to do the trick!

In addition to the sea lions, there are endless seabirds swooping around and on the rocks that we’ve seen: pelicans, herons, frigates and blue footed boobies to name a few as well as plenty of little birds, including the famous finches - some of which hop onto our balcony and like to collect crumbs and food. There are also an excellent amount of little lizards and geckos and the marine iguanas, who bask in the sun on the beaches and rocks and swim in the oceans for weed as their main food source. Most days between us, we wander for walks to watch the wildlife - I go for breakfast-lunch, Dad walks after normal person breakfast time. One day he came back from a walk having met and chatted to a few fellow tourists and locals along the way. The locals will often tell you about their restaurants while tourists exchange the usual ‘where are you from? How long are you here for? type chat. One apparently lovely Japanese couple talked to Dad while he was out walking and finished off by handing over a business card with a QR code on. He brought it back for me to work out and we found, perhaps thankfully, that it just opened up the JW .org website advertising the good work of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m not sure they entirely judged their audience correctly with dad as a potential target but it’s interesting to see the modernisation of recruitment strategies! Each evening after our adventurous days (liberally peppered with plenty of sitting down, book reading and tea drinking) we both go for dinner at one of the various harbour and waterside restaurants on offer. At all points, we’re constantly amazed by the various wildlife, taking endless photos and stopping to watch whatever is about.

I’ve also done some local day diving off the coast, some of which was a Kicker Island, formed by some cool rock formations and home to plenty of turtles, octopus, rays and hammerhead sharks! Unfortunately, the visibility here wasn’t great with a lot of sediment and murky green water but you could still make out the giant sharks that appeared quite close as shadows then emerged from the green as sizeable hammerheads! Our guide for the day was Ronnie, who’s been diving here for many years and knew where to go to see the different creatures. He was a great guide but had a diving style surprisingly similar to a brand new diver with his fluttering kicks and movements in the water. He explained everything well during the dive brief and was clear with things underwater, although he did seem to have his own system of signals not entirely consistent with the standard, internationally recognised scuba hand signals. It didn’t matter too much as the other 3 divers in my group had limited experience and also weren’t too clear on the signs anyway. So when Ronnie signalled us to ‘wait where we are’ then disappeared off into the gloom to check for visibility etc, I felt obliged to keep an eye on the group as we waited. Just as well since they seemed gloriously unaware of the slight current that was pulling them away from the wall edge and out into the blue (open ocean). I signalled to them to look around and come back closer to the wall …. Only to realise their grasp of signals was similar to Ronnie’s. I instead fell back on gestures to get them to come back to where I was and a little game of underwater charades to indicate that they should stay by the wall as a group. We had fun and they followed their instructions well until Ronnie returned, with the help of some noise makers and clanging to help him relocate us! It was some great diving, despite the visibility, with some sharks, rays and octopus and then a brief trip to a remote beach for an hour to dry off and see the unique ‘museum’ that the guides have been slowly putting together as they find things and add to it for the visitors!

After a relaxing few days here, Howe join our organised tour tomorrow, moving first to another hotel on this island initially while we whizz about to see some of the site before moving on to a few other islands for the duration.