6. A Galaxy at Sea: time to dive!

Patches of strong wifi have enabled an upload … I'll do it and publish now, while I can!….

All aboard Galaxy Diver II for the week (no idea what happened the first one - may be best not to ask - and apparently there’s a third on the way!). It’s a motor yacht with 16 divers and 13 crew. Seems a little understaffed to me so I hope we’re ok! Divers aboard come from the UK (me and another Dad & daughter pair where the Mum has stayed at home as didn’t want to travel this far!), Canada, NZ, Switzerland, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico and Australia. We started with a full brief of the boat including such essentials as where the life jackets are kept (& performed a fire drill), where to store dive gear and charge cameras and how to work the fancy coffee machine!

Our first dive was what’s known as a ‘check dive’, where we all gear up and go somewhere close and calm, drop into the water & hope, initially, that you’ve got the weights right so you can sink, but don’t sink like an irretrievable stone. It’s generally not a terribly spectacular dive as it’s more for convenience than the site so we were all quite delighted to spot several reef sharks cruising along. When I asked the name of the dive site for my log, they said it was best to write ‘Baltra North Wall’. It turned out that this was because the translation for the Spanish of the actual name is essentially ‘A load of rubbish’!

Day 2 was a morning still close to the island of Santa Cruz but at a site called Punta Carrion. Visibility last week was, apparently, only around 4m but we were treated to much clearer water with around 20m visibility for our dives there. We went to see some of the reef sharks and juveniles - and we did indeed see them, some baby Galápagos sharks and also several hammerhead sharks who came to check out the cause of the noise! They swam over us each time and not quite close enough for photos yet but marvellous all the same!

After ‘just’ two dives on day 2, we picked up anchor and set sail on a 12-14 hour journey. This meant we had a free afternoon so after breakfast, a dive, second breakfast and another dive, they then served us a 5 course lunch of Ecuadorean highlands specialities. Once I’d had that, I went up to the top deck to watch the frigate birds who float along above our boat, using the wind stream it creates for an easy ride. It’s a mix of female (with the white necks) and males (with red necks) who are there. You can tell the males fairly clearly as their red appendages are quite the feature. I, for one, am rather glad that male humans don’t have their ball bags hanging from their chins.

Once we arrive there, the following three days will be diving at Wolf and Darwin the two most famous dive sites in Galapagos, reachable on by the liveaboards. Darwin island used to be a huge archway formed between two stacks (& called ‘Darwin’s Arch). However, years or erosion lead to the arch finally collapsing into the sea in 2021. They’ve worked with a few names since but none quite as grand … Darwin’s Stumps or Darwin’s Stacks. I believe the name they’re trying to promote is ‘Darwin’s Pillars of Evolution’. Not perhaps as catchy definitely grand enough! Wolf island is named for Theodor Wolf, born in Germany but lived for years in Equador as a geologist. He is credited with mapping the geology and geography of mainland Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands. He proved the island are made from oceanic volcanoes, which differ from most other South American mountains. I imagine all of that excellent male prowess of past explorers is why the fish have chosen to hang out there!

After a fairly rocking and rolling sail, we woke up in Wolf Island. We were moored up at the foot of soaring sea cliffs which were absolutely covered in and being circled by thousands of sea birds, some of which were huge. It wasn’t unlike a scene from Jurassic Park, although the boat boys assured me they were just big birds and not actual pterodactyls!

At Wolf island, we did four dives; three in the morning and one in the afternoon. Here we saw the schooling hammerheads as the main attraction. It was in some fairly mega current that tended to swoosh from both directions and was often accompanied by some additional surge pushing up and down. This meant that for the most part, it was ‘hold on with two hands and try to stay roughly in one place and at one level’. I didn’t take many photos as I was slightly concerned that releasing one hand’s grip might lead to being wooshed away in the current to live forever more amongst the hammers!! We’ve all got air horn alarms, which connect into our air hoses so we can call for help on the surface if we’ve got lost or been pulled away from the group. We also each have our own GPS emergency beacon we can activate, which sends a signal out 35 miles in all directions in case we need rescue! So no need to worry … Nonetheless, I hung on with two hands and just took a couple of slightly blurred photos of the hammers - and a curious parrot fish wondering what all the fuss was about! The current was quite hard work and even drifting with it was a tumbling ride but I actually found it ok. Lots of people weren’t so confident or full of joy so skipped at least one dive today but I did them all so I was very pleased! A reward for the final dive were some playful sea lions, a school of big-eyed jack and moray eels. Time  for a three course dinner to celebrate now … then bed! Full day at Darwin island tomorrow …