While we had arranged with the folks from Sail Away to go to the Saturday morning market at 8am, we had learned that it was better to go much earlier. Furthermore we wanted to speak to Jackster on the 8am Pacific Net so we ended up heading in shortly after 6am. We hailed the water taxi and on the way in, David and Mary-Margaret from Leu Cat joined us. We ended up sharing a taxi to the market which was really a pickup truck with room for four so John and I had the fun of sitting in the back.
The market had a lot of fresh fruit, veg, meat and fish. We picked up plenty including strawberries, ribs, chicken, pears. We left John in town to explore while we went back to the boat to put things away and handle the communications at 8am. We apologized to the Sail Aways when the arrived at 8am hoping to see them again soon. Unfortunately there was a lot of electrical noise in the area, despite our turning everything off, so talking to the Jackster’s on the net became impossible. It looks like we’re all in favour of a hook up in Isabella on the way out of the Galapagos. Even though we may not be able to go ashore we can swim with the penguins there (on the equator???) and it makes an excellent rendezvous/staging before the next 3,000nm jaunt.
When we again headed ashore we shared the water taxi with an Australian couple living aboard a Lagoon 410. They know John 
and Jill aboard Stevee Jean so we were quickly chatting.
We met John ashore and headed to the Darwin Center. Here we were able to see and get close to the giant tortoises that are unique to these islands. The center is involved in trying to rebuild the tortoise population in the Galapagos following near extinction from 
their being prized for food by whalers, pirates, etc. First we got to see the young tortoises which had been reared. Later we were able to descend into rocky enclosures and get close to mature tortoises. We even got to see ‘Lonesome George’, the last surviving Galapagos Pinta Tortoise.
The center also kept a few land iguana, also part of a repopulation programme.
After our visit to the center we walked to short distance back into Ayora to book our dive outing for Sunday (today) and have lunch. We’re all set up to visit Gordon Rocks today where, hopefully, we’ll get to see sharks, seals and sea lions.
We spent the rest of the afternoon back on the boat. John and I emptied all our jerry cans of diesels into our main tanks. We have heard that we can get fuel locally a lot cheaper than getting it via our agent. We have also heard we need approval from the port captain so there may be hurdles to jump. If we can do this we’ll need to collect it in our jerry cans which will be a pain but it will save us a couple of hundred bucks.
We finished the day BBQing half of the ribs we bought in the morning market and some chicken. It was a fine feast.
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.
