Day 2 in Galapagos - San Cristobal

Today was our first day of snorkeling. We went and rented wet suits, but they obviously didn't have any that fit Yoel. He tried to stuff himself into a wetsuit "shirt" with a hood, but it barely let him breathe, so he decided to brave the cold waters au naturel.

We set out on the boat, and our first snorkeling stop was at "Lobos Island", which is home to a ton of sea lions. This was Kate's first time ever snorkeling, so thankfully the water was pretty shallow and not too choppy, so Kate could stand up whenever she felt in trouble. After a short lesson teaching Kate how to snorkel, we set out to the edge of the rock and found a large group of sea lions playing in the water. We floated for about 15 minutes, just watching the sea lions play. At one point, a small sea lion swam up to Kate and looked her in the eyes, before doing a backflip and swimming away.

The sea lions kept picking up a rock from the bottom and throwing it around

After a while, we left the sea lions alone, and swam around looking for other things. We saw a stingray burying itself in the sand, some boxfish, and also got to watch a sea turtle swimming along! Needless to say, it was a pretty good introduction to snorkeling for Kate.


After the first snorkeling stop, we went on a boat ride to some different rocks out in the ocean, to look for birds. We saw a bunch of frigate birds, which have a red sac on their chest that they inflate with air like a balloon, in order to attract mates.


We then arrived at our second snorkeling stop of the day, a place called Kicker Rock, which was made out of volcanic ash. There was a channel running through two parts of the rock, and this is what we swam through - the current was so strong that it just pulled us right through without any work on our part.

The water here was quite deep, and also much colder than the water with the sea lions. Since it was deep, with a strong current, the group had to pair up on the buddy system, and then we jumped in the water with our buddies. The two of us were actually the first two in the water, and as we were adjusting our masks, etc, the visibility in our general area wasn't great - and all of a sudden, we saw a shark emerge from the murky water, swimming straight towards us. It was pretty frightening for both of us, but of course, the shark just swam by and continued to mind his own business.

This area ended up being an amazing place to snorkel, as the rocks at the sides of the channels were covered with lots of urchins, sea stars, and colorful damselfish and other fish.




And as we swam down the middle of the channel, at one point, we swam directly over a school of about 10 juvenile Galapagos sharks, while at the same time, 4 huge Eagle rays were swimming in front of us. It was one of the coolest moments ever.

After we went through the channel twice, Kate was a bit tired, so she got back on the boat. Yoel continued on, as our guides were going to take us looking for hammerheads. Unfortunately, we never found any hammerheads, but Yoel did get to float along beside a swimming sea turtle for a while.

Afterwards, we boated to a small mangrove beach for lunch and a walk. Here, we encountered our first lava lizard.

Lava lizards are about the same size as American lizards, but they live around lava (obv). Also, they have a neat territorial behavior. When you get too close and they think you are encroaching on their territory, they bob their head up and down in a way that makes it look like they are doing pushups.

Kate and Yoel on the beach (Kicker Rock is in the background)

After the mangrove beach, we went to an interpretation center on San Cristobal, where we learned about the Darwin finches, and some of the geological attributes of the isalnds. After the Center, we went on a hike through an extremely muddy path, where much of our group fell, due to the fact that our shoes were caked in sticky muddy clay. After the grueling hike, which featured a walk up a ton of really slippery stairs, we ended up at Darwin's Cove, which is apparntly where the Beagle was docked. The two of us ventured out on a bunch of big slippery rocks at one end of the beach, and we were rewarded by seeing our first marine iguana up close.

We also sat and watched a very cute sea lion who had found a rock that was perfectly shaped for him to lie down in. The whole time we were there, one of his sea lion friends who was snoozing behind us, would wake up every couple minutes and bark at us. Then, when he realized we weren't leaving, he would go back to sleep.

Sea lion on the perfect sea lion shaped rock