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Published: January 15th 2010
A quick fruit salad in the hotel and we were picked up for the trip to the airport; seemed a little small... and we generally made a nuisance of ourselves by pushing into the queues where ever possible.There´s only 6 of us on this trip... 2 american couples and 2 brits.
In true south american style our aeroplane was late, and then turned out to be a little on the old side. No matter, after a quick stop in Guyaquil (?) we made the hop over to San Cristobal safely, only to be greeted with sullen, rain filled skies. The bags were visibly sniffed for drugs, then we were met by Sambo, and taken to the hotel. Ironically I had been recommended a different tour company so that I would get Sambo as a guide, but it seems he swapped just for this week. The island was a lot bigger than I was expecting, and the other islands are over the horizon, although anything could have been out there, the amount it was raining! After lunch (seafood seems to be a theme) we headed out to the interpretation centre (a short history of oceanic island hotspots, like Hawaii, Reunion, here...), but
to get there we nearly tripped over about five sealions - you can get to within about a metre before they pipe up. We headed up the hill, through the incense trees - currently leafless - and up to Frigate Bird hill. Sure enough there were a few, but no displays or much excitement, apart from us slipping in the mud! A quiet dinner then bed. I felt like i'd gone to the circus with all the sealions honking.
We were woken early by the blare from the island´s oil tanker, come to top up the tanks. Then after a quick brekkie we jumped in to a couple of pick up trucks and went up to "the highlands" for a downhill ride back down the roads (in the rain) to another sealion colony, then on to the boat for snorkelling. The captain seemed to be playing "how close can I get to the rocks" meanwhile I was playing "try not to have kittens". The idea was to take pictures of the boobies and frigate birds.. Then we headed on to kicker rock, to go swimming with sharks. We'd also been promised deep water and poor visibility. Great, pretty much all
of my oceanic fears rolled in to one swim. I was the last one into the water, and instantly one of my flippers fell off. Inauspicious start. Off we swam, and a school of fish swam towards us. This had me thinking "what are they swimming away from?" sure enough, there was a school of sharks about 20 ft below. My heart was beating faster than a geiger counter at Chenobyl, and that school was followed by even more - there must have been 30 of them! On the other hand, they were all less than a metre long, so there was never any real threat. Further on we saw a couple of turtles and I started to calm down. I was still the first person back in the boat, mind! On to lunch, by a sheltered sandy beach, then back to town, just in time for it to start raining!
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Sadik
non-member comment
Not Bad
I think picture not bad.