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On our way to Isabella? Not yet.

We woke up at 5:30 this morning planning to set sail for Isabella. Sadly we saw less than 4 knots of wind out of the SSW. With the NW setting current that effectively put Isabella on our nose. We’ve decided to wait until this afternoon and sail overnight. If we can’t get to Isabella by tomorrow afternoon we’ll motor the balance of the distance. We’ve done way too much motoring in the last few months and I feel it is time to act like a sailboat again.

We had planned to do some minor repairs in Isabella. I’ll do some of them today while it is calm here. I plan to switch on of the port bilge pumps and replace the fresh water foot pump in the galley. Both are working but both leak. The foot pump leaks water into the port bilge and the leak in the port bilge hinders pump out. We have a nice clean bilge but that’s at the expense of the pump going off every few hours. Time to get busy.

Playa Tortuga

This morning Helen and hiked off to Playa Tortuga leaving John to get on with Internet catch up. We walked about ½ a mile through town to where the made path to the beach began. This made path was an impressive effort as it ran for about a mile or so over and around piles of lava covered with cactus and other flora.

At the end of this path we were rewarded a fine white sanded beach with crashing waves (reminding us much of South Africa) which stretched on for nearly another mile.

We kicked off our shoes and walked the length of the beach enjoying the crash of the waves and the feel of the sand in our toes.

At the end of the beach we came upon a small clump of mangroves where we caught sight of our first set of iguanas of the day. Soon we were seeing more and more iguanas lying around in the shade from the sun, sometimes in piles.

The terrain soon became more rugged and more unlike anywhere we’ve been before.

There was a popular public beach at the end of the walk which we didn’t hang around. We headed back the way we came feeling as though we’d really had a ‘Galapagos Experience’ on this hike. We’d recommend it to anyone coming this way.

Back in town we had a look around for John so we could have lunch together. We weren’t successful so we went shopping to top up our provisions and headed back to the boat for lunch. After lunch I had a brief nap then headed over to Scott Free in the dinghy to settle up for the fuel from the previous day’s efforts.

I’m now back in town uploading pictures and finishing my own internet bits and pieces. We’ve decided to head off to Isabella at first light tomorrow. We’ve heard that others have had to motor to get there. I’d rather have all day to minimise fuel use. We’ll spend a couple of days there doing some boat work and mostly relaxing. We’re exhausted.

Santa Cruz Highlands

As I had a 9am appointment with the Port Captain to obtain my fuel permit I decided to go ashore early and visit the internet café. While we’ve had internet from the boat it has been patchy and a number of services blocked. I needed to make some calls as well as upload the albums that have been accumulating. In the hour I had I made the calls necessary but only some of our albums uploaded. As ever, the recently updated blog entries can be found by clicking on the ‘Recently Updated’ category.

At 9am I packed up, paid up and headed over to the Port Captain half suspecting that I would not be in luck. Things got a little confusing when the official took me over to another cruiser, a lady called Irene from Scott Free, to try and explain something. It took a while to figure out what was going on but what it turned out to be was that she had had to return to the Galapagos as a result of mechanical difficulties. She was after some more fuel but cruisers are allowed fuel permits only once. The official was circumventing this constraint by adding her need of 40 gallons onto our request. This turned out to be correct as our permit ended up having her 40 gallons added on so all seemed well. In fact, this was a bonus for us. Irene agree to let us borrow her 40 gallons of jerry cans which reduced the number of trip we had to make to the fuel station to 2. We could fill them all up, transfer most to Dignity’s tanks then refill the empties, drop hers off then ours.

Back on Dignity we refined the plan by deciding to take a taxi out to the Highlands of Santa Cruz. We’d heard that the local taxi drivers do this for far less than the official tours. We tied our cans into a ring, headed off to Scott Free, picked up Irene’s cans then headed ashore. We soon found a taxi driver, Marcos, who could speak a little English, flung the 15 cans in the back and headed off on our island tour.

The first stop was a couple of extraordinary craters, one about 80m deep and the other about 60m deep. These craters were formed when the solidified lava/land above giant bubbles of gas collapsed some time ago. One hopes there aren’t any other bubbles waiting to burst.

The trail ended up a little further down the road and the taxi driver picked us up there. Our next stop was a farm where we could see giant tortoises in the wild. We had to exchange our flip flops for wellington boots before heading out into the farmlands, with Marcos as our guide, to find tortoises. It took a while but we eventually found three separate female giant tortoises, the last one right by our way back to the buildings.

Here we removed our boots and put our flip flops back on. There was a small building showing two empty giant tortoise shells. We were shown the insides of them and to our surprise, we were encouraged to get inside and have our photos taken. Doing press ups inside a tortoise shell was not that easy but we managed it.

Our final stop of the tour was to visit a lava tube. We didn’t know what to expect so we were pleasantly surprised to find a 600m long traversable lava tube. It started with steps leading down into the ground and soon we were walking along the tube along an even floor with a ceiling way above our heads.

It wasn’t going to stay that simple. In places parts of the tunnel roof had collapsed requiring us to climb over muddy rock falls. We eventually came to a part of the tunnel where the roof came down to 1 meter above the muddy ground. Limbo was out of the question so we had to crawl underneath as best we could unsuccessfully attempting to avoid getting muddy. On the far side of our crawl we were close to the exit where again Marcos was waiting for us.

We then headed back to Ayora and the fuel station only to find it closed for lunch so we stopped in town for a bite to eat leaving all our jerry cans on the pavement. After lunch Helen took the bags and went shopping leaving John and I to revisit the fuel station and get our first batch of diesel.

After presenting my form to the office I was given my ticket to present to the pump attendant. They duly provided us 80 gallons of diesel and presented me with a bill for nearly $240. I was expecting to pay the local rate of $1.02 per gallon so this was a bit of a shock. I went back to the office only to be firmly told I was getting the tourist rate and not the local rate and that there was no alternative. This was still cheaper than having fuel delivered to the boat but it was not the savings I was hoping for. I also had the problem that I did not have $240 on me so we had to remove all the cans from the back of the taxi truck. Leaving John at the station I went back into town to obtain enough cash then return to pick up John and reload the cans. We dropped off as close to the water taxi dock as possible and schlepped the cans over to the taxi dock then onto the water taxi. We ended up putting all 80 gallons into Dignity as a result of all the motoring we’d done as well as accidentally not quite filling the starboard tank in Costa Rica.

Another run to the fuel station was required and on the way back we dropped off Ilene’s seven cans then headed back with ours and put them away. We had a 5pm date with Phil and Christine aboard Songline and it was now 5pm so we quickly showered and readied and dingied over to their boat. After a strenuous day we had a pleasant evening chatting with them over beers and gin and tonics.

Floreana Diving

John and I were up and ashore by shortly after 7am. The dock in Ayora was crowded so the dive boat ended up rafting up the other side of the garbage barge. Tanks and equipment were chain ganged over and around the barge before the dive boat moved to the taxi dock for us to board. The ride was about 90 minutes to where 5 more divers were picked up from a small cruise ship. In another 10-15 minutes we were at our first dive site.

This dive was over a gently descending sea floor covered with sand, rocks and small ledges. We saw a number of rays and plenty of fish. As the dive progressed the current picked up and soon we were floating effortlessly over the sea floor.

After our dive the boat took us to a calm anchorage for lunch near to a small colony of seals. John snorkeled with the seals for a while. I was about to join him when we were called to ready for our second dive. The second dive was along a wall which gave us plenty of opportunities for exploring the nooks and crannies. We saw a very well disguised lion fish – see if you can see it in the picture to the left. We were also joined by a couple of seals who swam by quite closely. It’s always a pleasure to be in the water with animals that are in their own environment rather than an enclosure.

The return trip was just as lengthy but I managed to sleep most of the way. We stayed aboard Dignity for a quiet and restful evening.

The Grotto