The end of the Enchanted Isles

On our first afternoon back on dry land, the boys (Peter and Adam) went round the dive shops and booked themselves in for a dive on Gordon rocks the next day, then we met up with the others for dinner just incase we hadnt had enough of each other. I spent the next morning in bed and met them after their spectacular hammerhead filled dive to look at their photos and curse myself for not going with them!
The day after we hired mountain bikes and headed out towards some lava tunnels, but on reaching them decided to head further up the dirt road first as we still had plenty of energy. Pete was off like a shot and Adam was torn between racing him and sticking chivalrously with me. With Pete already out of site we had no choice but to slog on up the hills till a deadend forced him to stop and wait for us. We then climbed a wall and up to the top of a small hill for a view out over the island, down to Gordon rocks and over to the quickly advancing black clouds. Adam didn’t think it was going to rain (as usual) and so as soon as we set off back we started to get drenched, all we could do was laugh as the already heavy rain stepped up a mark until we could hardly see for water in our eyes. That’s about when Adam got a puncture and had to slowly limp along behind us in the storm while me and Pete sheltered on the veranda of the entrance to the lava tunnels.
We debated the risks of flash floods in the tunnels and whether it was worth doing now but I reasoned that we couldn’t get any wetter and besides we were already there now anyway.
So we spent about half an hour in the relative dry with torches, in what looked more or less like the channel tunnel, but without the trains. Then I got a lovely warm pickup taxi back to town with the busted bike while the boys braved the rain one more time.
I saw Pete and Adam off to miss their flight a day later after a big breakfast and caught a boat to San Cristobal where I wanted to do a few more dives and hunt down a marine iguana feeding. This was one of the principal ideas I had about this trip… that there would be all these funny lizards swimming around underwater with us and had so far failed to spot a single one that wasn’t sunbathing.
My first day on San Cristobal I headed off on my quest to a beach called La Loberia but as soon as I reached the car park it started to rain again. Thinking it might only be a quick shower and not wanting to get my camera wet I jumped into a parked truck which had its windows down and doors unlocked but got turfed out when the owner came back. He kindly lent me a bin bag though and so I put it on and trotted off down the beach. Snorkelling in the rain is a lovely feeling but it was far too cloudy and wet for any marine iguanas to be out as they have to heat up their blood by sunbathing before braving the cold water. The rain still hadnt let up by the time I got bored and so I was completely drenched for the second time in the last week walking back to my hotel, where I found a small swimming pool under my bed where the rain was coming in through the airconditioning unit!
It turned out that the main town of San Cristobal was pretty sleepy, the main attraction was the evening gathering of noisy sea lions on the beach, and there was not much chance of going on any of the tours that I had planned as there was no one else to make up a group. I even struggled to find a dive group to go to Kicker rock and had to do a bit of recruiting myself.
I had bumped into an Aussie Guy who I had dived with on Gordon rocks who wanted to free dive at the same site, so along with him, his friend and a few other random people we set off to dive through the channel where the big rock had split in two.
It was an awesome dive, we could see Tom and the others snorkeling above us silhouetted against the thin strip of light at the top with the channel walls on either side. Swimming through the channel we saw a few small Galapagos sharks and White tips but when we reached the end it was like being in a shark bubble. There were a number of hammerheads and other sharks of varying sizes and species just cruising backwards and forwards about 5m and upwards over our heads as we were washed backwards and forwards with the swell at the entrance to the channel. Brilliant.
On the way back to shore we also stopped at La Isla de Lobos where, as soon as we cut the engine the whole pack of sea lions which had been resting on the rocks, swam straight over ready for a very energetic but slightly one sided game of non contact tag. We were only in a few feet of turquoise water and it was just a churning mass of slick brown bodies for about 10 minutes.
So I left the Galapagos islands after a fantastic few weeks and some great experiences but keen to get back to Colombia, I had planned to stay in Quito as little time as possible to sort out a problem with my new camera before heading straight back to Colombia.
However when I took it to the shop on Saturday morning they couldn’t do anything for me until Monday, so cursing and depressed at having to stay in rainy cold Quito for the weekend I went to check my email. I soon cheered up when I found that Adams plans to climb Cotopaxi had been snowed off and he was going to be in Quito again that afternoon.
I spent a lovely afternoon, drinking tea in my Hostel - El Cafecito and chatting to the friendly manager - Lider, whilst trying to do crossword puzzles in Spanish to kill time until Adam turned up. The next day, apart from eating, and hunting down Ecuador football shirts we also managed to get out and take the cable car up to the view point over the city…..which was completely obscured by clouds the moment we stepped off the cable car! Luckily we had a brief moment where they cleared enough for some photos of the city and the peaks around us but actually it was a lovely walk in the mist and easy to forget we were only just out of the city. On the way back down we regressed a few years and had a go on some of the fun fair rides at the bottom and I made Adam buy my some candy floss.
The night we’d met up again Adam had asked me if I wanted to go with him and his mate to a remote town in the north of Ecuador that they had been planning a trip to. It only took me a short while to decide… what the hell, and accept. Colombia would still be there in a few weeks.

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