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Published: March 28th 2010
Sealion Beach
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, Cristobalh1 Cruise aboard the M/V
Santa Cruz We're actually back in New York now, so I will do an abbreviated version of our second cruise aboard the
Santa Cruz. It is a bit more of the same - although not if you are actually there! We booked this cruise just a week earlier in Puerto Ayora, on Isla Santa Cruz, got a good last-minute deal for less than half the regular rate. Only the larger vessels visit the outer islands such as Fernandina, which Naomi was really keen to see, and I must say was worth the effort.
Before I start, one more pic from San Cristobal - walking back from the restaurant the night before, we passed literally hundreds of sealions adorning the beach, fast asleep and totally oblivious to our presence.
The
Santa Cruz is a much larger cruise ship than the Galaven I, 90 passenger capacity compared to 20. However, she had only 59 on board, so it was less crammed than it might have been. Being bigger she was more luxurious than the Galaven, bigger lounges, dining room, nice cabin. Not to say it was better than the Galaven, just different. There was a
M/V Santa Cruz
Cerro Brujo, San Cristobal mix of nationalities, Ecuadorian nationals, Americans, a largish contingent of Dutch, and a smattering of others - Israelis (2), English (1), Canadians (1) and Australian (only us). Ages were from young kids to seniors. Where do you think we fitted in? Naomi just said it's the kind of cruise that would suit her sister Dianne - you can wear high heels. But not on the pangas.
The cruise started on San Cristobal that same day of boarding, motored to Cerro Brujo, a volcanic headland with some free time on the beach. See the photos - Kicker Rock in the background is a spectular rock split in two by unnnatural forces.
Next day - early morning start, 6am breakfast, 7am on Espanol, the oldest island of the archipelago. A two-and-a-half hours walk on a very rocky track (and only the second time we used our walking poles) to see stunning cliff formations and a blowhole. Obligatory blue footed boobies, marine iguanas (red and green though, breeding season and different algae makes them quite spectacular), white boobies, lava lizards constantly trying to get into the photographs, and sealions. Big white boobies and baby boobies nesting, and iguanas fighting over nesting
Santa Cruz
Upper Deck sites in the mostly hard, rocky ground.
That afternoon, deep water snorkeling off Devil's Crown, an unexpected treat. This is an ancient volcano cone almost swallowed by the sea. Saw dolphins while motoring out, they joined the panga ride. Saw whitetip sharks, fish, mullet, pipe fish and those yellow-tailed things I keep forgetting the name of. Half a dozen curious sealions swam about us and requested we take no photos so I deliberately switched the camera to the wrong setting. Well, that's my story.
Quick change back on the boat, for a walk onshore of Floreana to see another potential flamingo disappointment - except it wasn't. Twenty or thirty pink flamingoes were feeding in the shallow lake, beaks in the water shuffling along, sucking the shrimp from the sand. We walked to another beach to see stingrays in the water just a few feet away, and blue-footed boobies diving for fish. Had a relax and sit on the beach.
Next morning saw an early start at 6 am while we sailed through the narrow Darwin Channel bewteen Islas Fernandina and Isabela. A beautiful sunrise greeted us before breakfast. A walk on this youngest of the islands showed
how they all began, bare volcanic rock that somehow captured plant and animal life. They still don't know how the giant tortoises made their way from the other islands. Marine iguanas carpeted the lava rocks, heads stretched to the sun to warm their artery-rich necks - true sun-worshippers; a penguin chased small fish less than 2 metres from us; a young sealion, waiting for its mother to return played lazily in its own private pool of crystal-clear seawater, finding an empty crab shell to pass the time for a while before something else caught its attention; a small heron hopped in front of the tour group, no more than a metre or two away; flightless cormorants basked in the sun after an earlymorning of fishing; a Galapagos snake at the bottom of a rift in the lava rock. We trod carefully on the marked path along the sandy beach, surrounded on both sides by the buried nests of the iguanas as we returned to the pangas for lunch.
The afternoon saw the highlight for us, a remarkable deep-water snorkel in a sea-cave and surounding stony beaches on Punto Vicente Roca, on the tip of Isabela, the "mouth" of the
Amercian Oystercatchers
Beach at Cerro Brujo, San Cristobal seahorse-shaped island. This is actually an ancient volcano crater, a {i}caldera, or collapsed cone that forms a large bowl-shaped area. Vanessa the head guide promised - guaranteed - us seaturtles, and she wasn't wrong. We saw one, then three, then six, all swimming lazily beneath and around us. Unlike the barrier reef where they swim away from you, these very large turtles just hung around providing ample photo opportunties. Truly magical.
As soon as we dived into the water, we were met by a school of mustard rays. On a rock nearby we saw penguins, iguanas, a pelican and then a sealion decided to hop on as well - the Galapagos all on one rock. All this at the foot of an extraordinary, almost sheer cliff of distorted volcanic rock, the layers of compressed ash looking like sandstone, but partially covered with green vegetation, rare for most of the year but abundant after a good wet season, thanks to El Nino. Regrettably, the El Nino also meant warmer than usual waters, which meant less plankton and algae, in turn less food for the fish and iguanas, and so the penguins and sealions. The guides expected up to half of
Diving Booby
Cerro Brujo, San Cristobal the sealions and iguanas to die off untilt the waters cooled next season.
Back on board, this was our last evening on the
Santa Cruz. The crew threw a cocktail party on the sundeck to watch the sunset, hard to see through the thickening cloud. But as the light fell, the mist enshrouded the cliffs, creating an eerie view reminiscent of a scene from King Kong. We crossed the equator a little before 7 pm on our way around the northern tip of Isabela. We were now, for the first time in our stay in the Galapagos, in the northern hemisphere. We would cross it again in the small hours of the morning as we returned to Santa Cruz.
Our last morning on Monday found us in the channel between Islas Baltra and Santa Cruz. The pangas ferried us over to the ferry crossing, then a bus to Puerto Ayora for a visit to the Charles Darwin Station, our sercond but the first for the other passengers. We decided to go again as we would see the tortoises being fed, which only occurs three times a week.
After the tortoise feeding, we collected our packs from the
Jim and Kicker Rock
Cerro Brujo, San Cristobal bus, bid farewell to the guides and other passengers, and walked back into Puerto Ayora (all of 5 minutes) to the docks area to pourchase our ticket for the trip to Isla Isabela, Puerto Villamil, on another fast boat that afternoon. While we waited for the 2pm departure, we killed time at the Cafe Hernan, our favourite haunt in Puerto Ayora.
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JimandNaomiAbroad
Jim Picot and Naomi Drew
Looks like a great Galapagos journey
Hello Dianne, sorry for the late reply I hadn't seen you post until now. This cruise was aboard the MV Santa Cruz, a larger cruise vessel (90 passenger capacity), 4 days/3 nights. We booked it in Puerto Ayora a week before - saves heaps compared to booking months in advance (but you run the risk of them having no berths left - choose your season carefullly). Cost was around US$1800 for us both, from memory. But this was half of the usual cost. Hope this helps.