Galapagos, Ecuador - Searching for Sea Creatures

The Way it Works Here
Ok, so this is how it works - there are three or four islands inhabited by humans, the rest are taken by the critters.  Just which critters depends on the island.  If, for example, you want to see land iguanas you have to pick a specific island.  You choose a tour company, pay money and they take you by boat to that island, give you lunch, supply you with a knowledgeable guide and take you to the iguanas.  If you want to see penguins the next day, you pick another tour company, take a boat ride, etc and so forth, rinse and repeat.  We chose to see sea wolves first.  We geared up in town getting ourselves wet suits and the newest fangled snorkel masks.

Had we done some research, we could've saved a lot of money.  Turns out there was a sea wolf at the dock, looking like he was sleeping off a bender from the night before.  This fellow was snoozing absolutely deeply - nothing bothered him.  Our tour guide explained that they like to crawl up onto anything dry to sleep.  That includes moored boats - the owners try to keep them off by erecting nets but it usually doesn't work.  The sleep, pee and poop and then swim off in search of fish to eat.

Santa Fe island doesn't look far but it takes two hours to get there by boat.  They cruise rather slowly, especially on the day we went - it is open ocean and it was pretty rough.  You know, the scary waves that go up, down, left, right, up, down, left, right.

So rough that a certain someone had to lie down for most of the trip.  I don't blame her.  I was standing in the middle of the floor, trying to surf the boat to flatten out the swings.  I was thrown across the floor a few times.

We shared the tour with about ten other people, many of them from Germany and a few from Russia.  I noted later that the Russians didn't listen to a single command from our guide nor did they follow any rules.  I felt like throwing them overboard.

We were pulling a dinghy behind us.  We'd be using it to get close to shore once we'd anchored.

Santa Fe was always in view, after an hour and a half of water rodeo, we were almost there.

We anchored in a small cove on the leeward side of the island.  It didn't look very interesting, just an empty beach with cacti in the hills.

We jumped in the dinghy and headed to shore.  Our guide was standing at the front and suddenly said "I smell sharks."  I thought he was joking.  "If you've been a guide for a while you get to know how things smell.  There you go!"  He pointed down into the shallows and sure enough there were a dozen small sharks circling.  He explained that they were White Tipped Reef Sharks, no greater than five feet.  "Please try not to step on them when you get out."  Then they ushered us out right into shark infested waters.

Once we got onto the beach we saw the sea lions laying there, snoozing.  They'd looked like logs from afar.  They originally came from California many millennia ago and were now a different species completely, thus the moniker sea wolf, rather than sea lion.

They didn't seem to have a care in the world.

The only thing our guide warned us about was not getting to close to the newborns.  The momma sea wolves don't like that.  There were many newborns, this one not more than a week old.  The sharks were hoping that one of these guys would stumble into the shallows but the alpha males were there swimming back and forth making sure nothing went awry.

This little guy stuck to his mom like glue the whole time we were there.

They have no predators on land and only out in the deep seas do they need to worry about sharks and orca whales.  Since humans have never hunted them here in the Galapagos, they have no fear of humans at all.

After spending some time with the sea wolves, we headed to an adjacent beach and further inland to try to hunt for the famed land iguanas.

The terrain was similar to the Isla Baltra, where the airport is.

Like the sea wolves, these guys don't give a damn about being the center of attention.  You can walk right up to them and take their photo and they give you a "whatever" stare.

For a finale, we took the dinghy back to the boat and geared up for snorkeling.  I felt invincible in this outfit.  We started out in the darker blue deep water, where it was rockier and better for fish viewing.  It was like being dropped into a tropical fish tank.  There were dozens of colorful fish, some with vertical stripes, some that looked like a rainbow.  As we swam towards the shallows and it became sandier, the less we saw.  We did, however, manage to see some manta rays and large sea turtles.

On the trip back we lounged on the deck, taking in some sun.