I LAVA GOOD VOLCANO

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We changed islands. After a week in San Cristobal we were ready to move. I t had been memorable, I think. A lovely little harbour, nice collection of shops and a couple of restaurants, fresh market, renovated malecon, always friendly people, the usual resorts and research places for the turtle huggers and cute little water taxis to get us to and fro the boat. Altho’ it may be hard to equate little bashed up dinghies and outboards with the elegant gondolas of the sunken city……I felt it was a bit Venetian….(and even more so in Isabela where the roads were kerb high flooded after big rains but that’s later)

(You know…… there’s soo much control here in the Galapagos…..on everything except crap T-shirts… including, naturally, every possible single and double entendre on Boobies)

And there’s a panaderia with some of the best bread I’ve seen in a while, carnaceria, for meat, great pork chops…..but everything comes in from the mainland, by plane or ship, and with alarming infrequency, it’s always a lottery to go shopping!

Blue booted Booby birds bob for baitfish, from the surface, sitting there, heads totally underwater, coming up for air momentarily, then duck-diving for fish….but also, sometimes they plunge from 30 metres, wings braced, totally into the water with a huge splash, I mean, they’re not your most streamlined bird, not like your shag or cormorant, these are tubby little guys, but they go deep for their prey. Quite contrasting methods of getting fish. And just this morning I saw them flying only a metre off the water and diving, such a flat angle I thought they would skip….there you do go, 1 bird 3 methods of catching fish!
Tres cool, the other arvo watching a flock of boobies diving en masse, co-ordinated, wheeling round and simultaneously hitting the water, 10 or 12 at a time.
And now, 6am, first light and right outside, the huge and disconcerting ker-splash as the big pelicans plunge into the bubbling mass of sardines, now there’s an ungainly sight, and a bloody scary sound until you cotton on.

Everything that you see here asks the question…”how did this evolve?” or is this evolution or just convenience?

I can hear dogs barking ashore but it may be sea lions, v similar some sounds, but I reckon they’re dogs tonight….or maybe sea lions.

I went off to sleep with a somewhat somnolent, slow rolling swell just rocking me peacefully. At 4am I awoke to the oddest movement I’ve ever felt in the boat (except for scraping the bottom). We were head up to the wind but the current had changed and the waves were now different again so we were rocking sharply up and down while twisting back and forward then side to side, an almost circular motion. For the first time I just couldn’t get back to sleep.
Anchor, currents, swells, waves and wind all have their effects, an unpredictably bizarre cocktail of forces at work.
And with the onset of this rock n roll every fluid thing onboard starts to slurch and gurgle, bottles in the galley, the sink, the rumrack, larder, bilges, heads and of course my bunkhead, loaded with beer, rum and wine, and my guts too, and the slopping against the hulls, the splashing and smacking of the bridle, sea lions fooling around, scoops dipping and pouring, it was a very liquid morning.

So, san cristobal. We had a big downpour one night and when I went to town the next day the big piles of road repair material that had been deposited in great heaps at strategic corners had been spread…..washed across intersections, down side streets, gutters totally choked with gravel and sand. No-one seemed too perturbed.

They say there are 140 cops in this little town, maybe for the whole island, but nearly everything is here. Lots a cops around. Friendly tho’, just bored witless. There has been a group of four, 3 guys and a chica, all abso immaculately uniformed, just hanging around one street (like 3 blocks) all day, lounging at one corner, slouching down to a café, cross over to some other shopfront, chatting amongst themselves, with friends. I ask the chica-cop what I have to do to get her to arrest me, she says she won’t!

We’re ready for dinner, plates handed out, grab your fork and pin down the chicken, now, turn on the lights….eat as fast as you can before the mosquitoes fly off with the chicken leg. Actually they weren’t as bad as we expected (then) later we copped a few more.

And of course the ever present sea lions, or seals, just what is the difference? I thought sea lions had external ears and seals not, but there’s some dissention in the ranks about this. Whatever they are (I’m pretty sure they’re sea lions) there are lots of them and we see them in different lights.

Firstly, the awesomely cute swim buddies. If you just hang there in the water they don’t do much but if you start to dive around, blow bubbles, swim off fast, then they get going. They swim up to you upside down and then swoop down in front, rolling, twisting, blowing bubbles in your face, always just out of reach, disappearing like magic, so fast and agile. I joined a small group playing with a feather and eventually I caught it, they were on to me and after a few barrel rolls I let it go and immediately one of them swooped in and grabbed it. It was on again. Later we had a game with a small rock, just unbelievable!

Then there are the dirty fcukers who just want to come aboard. The first morning, when we had a couple on the scoops and a couple in the ding I hadn’t thought anything more than…”where’s the camera…ooh aah…how cute!” Later, we had to clean up. Let me tell you, not that you want to know, but seal piss stains like acid, impossible to remove until we accidentally discovered Clorox, the industrial strength bleach (banned in many countries) actually cleaned it up.
And these buggers are just dirty, they leave a mud trail and squillions of little hairs, they shed constantly…yuck!…and the stink…omg!
We devised some barriers to stop them: a string of beer cans across the bottom scoop (how terribly Australian, but actually Jim came up with that idea!) buckets of water, the milk crate of empty cans, wine bottles in mesh bags….all with only limited success, and we watch the other boats all trying different strategies also.

The sea lions are pretty laid back, and seem to sleep most of the time, sometimes, if they can’t get aboard, they just float on their backs out in the water, flapping a flipper or fin from time to time, abso relaxed, then they’ll just fool around, playing together.

Then there’s the noise, omg, no wonder the early settlers were a bit windy. If you heard this racket at night, just down the beach from your camp, you would be cacking the tweeds.

The big males have big territorial disputes and howl and growl like demented, drunken ogres, then there’s the continuos, regular, hawking, gagging, vomitous coughing splutter that’s normal sea lion behaviour, it’s the most gut-wrenching (theirs) retching sound, puts you right off your weeties. Then there’s the short abrupt bark that really gets your attention when one pokes it’s head in your hatch and makes the delivery. Then there’s the lamblike bleat of little sea lion cubs(?) calling their moms, swimming plaintively from boat to boat, bleating, trying to find where the old tart is hanging out tonight. Ahh, but they are all pretty fun and it is their world after all.

Out in the middle of nowhere, a kilometre of water deep, a yellow fin tuna is keeping up with his 4,000 fellows, a big mob, following the currents, following the scent of a giant school of sardines, millions of them, just ahead, the tuna are jostling for position, our buddy is getting pushed out, the first of the pack hit the sardines, gorging themselves, a frenzy in the swirling mass of panicked sardines, silver yellow flashes carving thru’ the horde, our tuna is caught out and swept upwards but he sees a small pinky silver flash above, several fish go for it together, he shoulders the others aside and snaps, taking the bright little fish, then, plunging to the depths. But wait, something is dragging at the side of his mouth, he swims deeper but keeps getting brought back….

I was just contemplating a book. I had just finished, Ken Kesey’s ‘Sometimes a great notion’ fantastic read, anyway, the line screamed out and by the time I got to it I could see the line spinning away, I knew the end was near, it came, I was sort of expecting the line to just tear off and leave me weeping but it held, the rod is bending over, luckily I’d seen a better way to tie the end of the line to the reel and it’s working!! The boat is gradually slowing down, I cautiously tighten the tensioner enough to start gingerly pulling it in. Several times he ran again, always down deep, always never enough. (I wanted to tire him out as Jim had just lost a really big yellowfin an hour earlier when it got to the surface and did a big last ditched panic attack and snapped the line.) Finally I got him close and Jim netted him for me, a nice yellow fin.
M bought a set of scales so we can brag with certainty but this was only 8lbs!! Jesus wept, so the big ones from last week would have been 10 and 12 probably. I can see how we lose so many lines and lures when these (relatively) small fish fight like all fcuk, I can imagine what happens when a 30 pounder takes the line….sayonara hook, line and todas……
Anyway, you probably don’t want to know but we had the obligatory sashimi. Or is it now saSHUMi ?
And we’re down to the last tube of wasabe so some nervous anxiety building.

There are 2 places where sand is particularly unpleasant. One is between the big toe and the index toe when you’re wearing flip flops….

Jim and Charley and I had gone ashore to see if anything was moving. The lovely little island of Floreana, the most southerly of the galapagoses, one navy guy the only official, on duty 24/7 but he has a nice little house and a nice little wife, a 1 year posting then back to the mainland.
Floreana is really quiet, a few houses, navy place, research place, hotel place, everything closed, silent, it is hot and sweaty.
The few roads are made of crushed lava rock, sharp and shaky. The ‘main’ road runs up the hill and peters out. A few side streets run off into nowhere. There’s a huge hill behind the settlement, and a few other old volcanic features, some relatively fresh, mostly covered in tough green, stringy vegetation and everything at ground level covered by a voracious green-leaf vine that is almost alive.

There are 130 people here (but it looks like that includes the dogs) a small hotel in three era construction, looks like every 10 years they’ve built another bit, the obligatory parks research set-up, a few scattered houses, a little school, and a remarkable powerhouse, a mass of solar panels covering a small amphitheatre, cool.

Anyway, we wandered around, everywhere deserted, until we found a house with a table and chairs outside, a sign said “Restaurant La Baronessa’. Designed for protection from the wind!!… bummer, as it was 40 degrees and we really needed wind.

Later we walked around to the sea lion nursery ‘loberia’ on the point, saw a couple of boobies, sea lions, human family groups and a strangely deserted little resort. 8 brand new little cabins, but looking neglected and rapidly disappearing under the creeper vines. Some eco-touristy thing for the turtle huggers but now what?…creepy.
On the way back I got my feet wet and hence sticky sand in the flip flops and all the associated problems.

There’s not so many seals here and altho’ one comes over several times a day and sticks his nose onto the scoop, none have ventured further so far….there are several open fishing boats also moored out here and they are covered in sea lions.

I can snorkel off the boat and it’s only 20m to a neat reef, all the usual, brightly coloured suspects, a big herd of grey/blue-with-yellow-tail fish meet me whenever I approach the reef and follow me around, some of them are pretty big, down in the crevices of rock….and this underwater lava is pretty speccy!!, I spot some fern coral, the first sign of coral I have seen.

Also in the cracks, big spiky anemones, they look black but when a shaft of sunlight catches them I can see they are dark blue and green. Amongst the prickly spines, tiny iridescent blue darts with bright orange shoulder patches, some beautiful, slinky blue fish with a constant ripple thru’ a fin that runs from nose to tail, fight like fury to protect their space, giant parrot fish, with their stupid, buck-tooth gawk, bumble around, so inflexible, odd for a fish, some people eat them but for one thing, they scavenge and scrape crap off things and 2, I couldn’t eat anything that colour…green and blue!
I also spotted a couple of turtles and stingrays.

As a bit of a postscript, I was reading one of the info boards and it seemed to indicate that all these animals are collectively sea lions, but individual types may be seals. Let me know if you can find out for me please……..yes you!

So we moved on, we have a 60 day permit to be here but we can only go to 4 places, where there are navy people to check us in and out. (Unless we choose to pay squillions of bux for a live-aboard guide!) The regulations and restrictions are good to see for the overall benefit of the Galapagos but a pain in the arse for us. It seems it would have been a better deal to just park the boat and do a 10 day tour like I did last time.
However, we’ll be doing some one-day tours, something about a horse ride up the volcano, more diving. We dove one day from cristobel, out to that big split rock, I only snorkelled and I reckon the snorkellers got a better deal, we just hung in the channel between the rock sides and it all came to us: lots of fish, sharks, manta and stingrays. Later we got to frolicking with the littler sea lions in the shallows.

On the way in to this island we passed isla tortuga (another one) a gigantic caldera, one kilometre across, collapsed on one quarter, an almost perfect sheltered bay, the steep sides rise up from crashing surf against the rocks, really primeval stuff, forces of nature and all that….I’m impressed.

So we worm our way around the reefs and find the channel entry, these lava flows ,make for the most fascinating, and dangerous, land/sea scapes. Ashore they are building walkways and docks over the lava, tres natural, but in the middle of the dinghy mooring area an absolutely dinghy-ripping rock sticks up barely above the surface…..cuidato…

Where were we? Isabela, the biggest island. I was just sitting having a beer, waiting for M going thru’ the usual dragged out procedures for entry/exit. It happens at each island, unbelievable. The upside is the amount of control that keeps it all clean and protected and safe for the fauna, they are also rehabilitating people off some of the islands, running campaigns to eradicate imported flora and fauna, trying to get it all back. It isn’t easy as parts have been settled by farmers and fishermen for a long time. For these galapagonians more tourists mean more jobs, more $$ etc so there’s a bit of conflict between those who want to bring in more touries and those who want to protect the environment.

A local guy started chatting to me while I was beering and soon we had the next 2 days organised. Day 1 he picked us up in his plastic panga, a big 115 hp outboard and a smaller one also. We are flying, the water is oily flat with just the big, slow swell. We see lots of turtles, often 2 very close together, the only time you see turtles on the surface for very long is when they are mating! There you go, learn something new every day. Aways down the coast he turns in towards the frantically thrashing surf crashing onto the reef, hesitates, then guns the motor, we leap forwards, riding a big wave and pass over the reef into tranquillity.
At this place, las tuneles, the lava flow pushed out into the water, somehow it has formed into a maze of little passageways, extremely difficult manoeuvring the boat between and over the razor sharp rocks, the water is crystal clear, fish and some turtles, we snorkel around, just beautiful.
Next he takes us to the turtle place, a small bay, water not so clear, I snorkel off thinking I might see one or two. Next thing there are freaking turtles all around me, some just floating, watching me with their dumb, ET looking faces, almost birdlike and really old, others freaking out and, so surprising for such an inelegant, cumbersome, small flippered huge dead weight, a small swish of the flipper and they shoot off like a rocket, one brushed me and the flipper felt solid and powerful.
On the way back we stopped at a rock in the middle of nowhere, again, the extraordinary geology of this place, and all these above-water reminders that many others lurk just below the surface, just no warning, from a smooth bottom, suddenly a jagged volcanic shaft!

Day 2 we headed off in a little twin cab Chevy up into the high country. (The skyline is dominated by one huge volcanic crater rim and several smaller ones) The little truck failed to get up the steep rise so we had to walk the last half a km. Then we got on the horses and headed off up the trail. The trail has several deep ruts about a foot or more deep, worn by the horses over the years. As it had been raining a lot recently, they were muddy, lots of puddles and as slippery as snot. The horses skidded and slipped, Jim’s horse went down and threw him in the mud, luckily no harm done. And as usual, all attempts by us to control the horses were utterly futile! We rode around part of the rim of the gigantic caldera, 7km across, just so mind-bogglingly vast, it had been deeper but an eruption in ’90 almost filled it up, wisps of smoke and steam escaped the cracks, the black surface a mass of contorted strands and streams of lava.

An hour later we get off and walk. An hour or so. Across crumbly, crunchy lava and ash, a totally surreal landscape, so prehistoric, the very essence of the earth, thrown up fresh and raw. And colours, yellows and browns and reds, flashes of silver, we are walking across this barren landscape, small rises and deep channels where lava tunnels have collapsed, smaller volcanic craters, smell of sulphur and regular smoke streams out of really fresh looking craters, I’m waiting for the spurt of lava like at Villarico.
Looking out to the coast, the lava flow just spewed out, cutting a swathe thru’ the greenery, 10 kms to the sea, hills of gases formed then blew out or collapsed, frozen black rivers of stone, quite terrifying but beautiful.
We watched the rain moving closer across the lava beds. It pissed own, we staggered back, got on the horses, slipped and staggered back to the car, my shoes were full of water, one of those experiences of soo much water you know you would be drier if you stepped into a swimming pool. And it was cold, unbelievable, right on the flipping equator and chilly!
We got back to town, at least the rain had washed most of the mud off. We stopped for a beer and hung our stuff over the flagpoles at the side of the cop station to dry. A cop came and told us to get them off.

I realised the ziplock bag with my camera was not fully ziplocked and the camera is fried, fcuk, I’ll see if I can get some pix from the others.

Well, I got some pix off the chip and here they are…the last one, ironically is of the approaching rain, the endless downpour that drowned us over the next few hours getting back, the very rain that penetrated the plastic bag and sealed the little camera’s fate. I’ve had it sitting in a Tupperware container with some rice and tissue in an attempt to draw out the moisture. So far when I hit the start button the lens comes halfway out, a light goes on and it chirrups, nothing more!! I am not optimistic. So, maybe I’ll fly back from Tahiti via NYC on the way to Colombia and get it fixed(?)

OK kids, this is it, off to the cyber café here at santa cruz, the biggest population city in the G’s. Jim and I have spent a couple of days provisioning and just a few last minute things to do and we should be set to leave tomorrow, Thursday 20th for the 5,000kms to the Marquesas, then on the last 1,400 or so to Tahiti.
Until then you can all relax and we’ll see what happens, gotta be a piece of cake I reckon but you know how the stress is…..

Crikey, another 8 pages, god knows what will be on the stick by Tahiti…….

chau

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Photos

last photo (sob) the rain coming that killed the Canon
coño llubia!