Galapagos

Are the Galapagos all that? so far, Yes!! As we flew in and looked down the islands look very bare, brownish around the edges and green in the middle, but no lush palm trees, it looks a bit like flying into Dutch Harbor in the summer. There was nothing to the airport. Got off the plane got our bags paid $1.80 to take a bus ride and then a ferry ride and another hour bus ride to Port Auyroa or something like that on Santa Cruz Island, or in the town of Santa Cruz on some other island, i haven´t quite learned the names of any of the places here. Found a hotel at $12 a night per person. We booked a couple of dives and just got back a few hours ago. The first dive was not all that. There were four of us and our dive guide. Every time you dive with a new outfit, the make you go though a couple of steps to make sure you are competent. you have to let your mask fill with water and clear it our and through out your breathing regulator and be able to retrieve it. It is all very simple and wastes a couple minutes of breath, but whatever. So the first dive, saw some cool fish and a few eels, seen all that before, so i was not too impressed. We got out and had lunch. While we were eating we were anchored out along these rocks and we watched Frigates, which are these really neat birds that dive into the water. The males have this crazy bright red balloon like sack under there beaks, no idea what it is for and i only know it is a frigate, cause i saw a picture of one in a gallery last night. There were also loads of pelicans flying around. Christian really wants to see a manta ray, and the other gal we were with wanted to see turtles, and i just wanted to see something different. So we hit the water and as soon as we submerge we look over and there is this giant Manta Ray circling us. real big, with a wing span of like 20 feet, that my be a bit of an exaggeration but not by much. next with smiles on our faces we look left and there are four Sea Lions swimming around us. These guys spin and glide back and fourth around us for pretty much the rest of the dive, no fear or a care in the world. If i could have stuck my hand out fast enough they were close enough to touch, but way too fast for me. A few minutes later our guide pointed in the distance and there was a small hammer head shark. I did not get a good enough look at it to notice the type of shark but i could tell it was a shark. We also came across a couple very big sea turtles, the were not as close as the ones i saw in Borneo, but there at least twice as big. There were four of us diving and the other two ran low on air so the went up, Christian is a very good diver and i am getting much better so even though we somewhat low on air the dive guide trusted us enough to take us down into this really cool cave, there were loads of colorful fish swimming about, we were near where some big waves were crashing, so you really had to hold on tight to the rocks around the cave because there was a strong surge that would want to suck you into the cave then swoosh you right back out. None of us wanted to be sucked in so we did not stay down there too long. I loved it , i came up with hardly any air in my tank and a big ole smile. There was another group of divers that were in our boat. While we were waiting for them to come up we saw some splashes out in the distance. It was manta rays breaching, they would shoot up out of the water like 5-10 feet sometimes do a couple flips and plop back in the water. One of the guys is a biologist and says he has heard they either do that for fun or to remove sea fleas from there skin? There were 20 or thirty of them that we watched for a while. We are taking tomorrow off from diving since they are going to the same place. We have heard that you can cab over to the other side of the island where there is a turtle farm, which is home to Thomas the 170 year old turtle, oldest known. and a bay of knee deep water where reef sharks hang out. We will dive again on Saturday. So yeah, so far the Galapagos are great.