2016-11-21 Galapagos

Friday, November 18th, 2016 - Mojave, CA

Wait, why does this story start in Mojave when we're supposed to be in the Galapagos?  Simple, it's because I like to have long, drawn out introductions to all these blog posts and you guys aren't bored of reading my ramblings yet.  Anyhow, all of Virgin Galactic's potentially hazardous testing happens near the Mojave airport, same place that stores all the decommissioned commercial airplanes, lovingly nicknamed the the airplane graveyard.  This is only relevant because this was the start of my trip.  A very likely delay in testing meant that we had to stay another day in Mojave and I started to worry that I'd be late for my flight.  Luckily everything was everything, which means absolutely nothing, but I stole that line from the movie Drumline, which is awesome, you should watch it.  Then watch PCU, because its my favorite movie and you'll understand what all my stupid references are.  Anyhow, here are a couple cool pictures from Mojave; the clouds on the ground are liquid nitrogen, that's all I'm allowed to tell you.  Also there are unicorns hiding in there.

Saturday, November 19th, 2016 - Quito, Ecuador

So my sister has begun to check off her bucket list starting with the polar bears in Churchill, Canada.  Immediately after that vacation she goes "That was so cool!  Now lets go dive with hammerhead sharks!"  I've been the lucky innocent bystander that gets to go on all these trips with her, score one for me!

While planning this trip, we were warned many many times to not be late for our departure on the dive boat.  Luckily, the dive company coordinates with the airline to ensure that everyone who makes their flight will make it on the boat.  But there's only one flight on one airline that will get you to San Cristobal on time to make the boat.  All that boils down to flying into Quito for our connection a day early just to make sure we don't miss that connection.  No matter, we get a pretty baller room in the city center and grab our cameras to see what Quito has to offer.  That roughly translates to, let's eat!  I'm a huge proponent of skipping the fancy pants restaurants and heading straight to the places where the locals eat local food.  It did not take long to find delicious looking food just outside the main quad.

What I loved most about Quito is that it was clearly not a tourist spot; the plaza was full of locals enjoying the weather and each others company.  It is something that I'm not accustomed to seeing.  People we not on their phones, they weren't exercising, they weren't partying, they were just there; totally present and just socializing.  It was great. 

That pup is going to have smelly farts later...

She's making hand turned ice cream!

This was not ice cream!  It kinda tasted like meringue and it was 50 cents. 

Sunday, November 20th, 2016 - San Cristobal, Galapagos

When we landed at San Cristobal airport, we were the only plane there which is a good  thing since this airport only had 2 gates!  This airport was so small that people rode their bicycles to the airport.  The good thing about a tiny airport on a tiny island is that everything is super close together.  We get onto a little bus that takes us on the 5 minute ride through town, through the one stop light in town, and to one of the many ports on the island.  We board our Panga which took us to our badass live-a-board.  This massive yacht has been customized for scuba diving.  Two sets of preparation areas, cleaning stations, a separate camera cleaning station, a camera staging area, Nitrox air fill stations, hot outdoor showers, a towel station that was filled with towels fresh out of the dryer after every dive, 2 Pangas, and a crane to load and unload the Pangas.  This was just the back of one level.  Overall, it felt pretty damn luxurious.  Plus the customer service was hands down better than any experience I've ever had with a 1 to 1 crew to diver ratio and every single crew member was genuinely concerned with ensuring that the divers had a wonderful experience. 

Day one was a lot of briefings about safety and setting expectations of what we'd be doing over the next 7 days.  We did go for a tiny checkout dive to make sure that we had enough weight since we were in 7ml wetsuits.  Basically we were told, you guys need to figure out your weight because tomorrow you have to have your weight and buoyancy perfect.  Yikes! These guys are serious!

Other than that, its time to eat... a note about the food onboard.  My sister is vegan, so she got a special meal for all of her meals everyday.  I had some of them, the 2 chefs did a really good job making all her meals flavorful, interesting, and unique.  The food for the rest of us was pretty fantastic.  It took me a few days to realize that the menu was actually created by a few french chefs a while ago and this menu repeats.  While I was disappointed in the lack of local recipes, I really appreciated the fact the meals were all diverse.  I'd go crazy eating the same style of food 7 days in a row.  Plus the meals were of significantly high caliber, so you can't really be mad at that.  One thing to note, is that since the Galapagos are a set of islands, all the food is either grown locally or imported from the mainland.  It was really easy to tell which food came from the mainland and which was locally grown.  The local stuff was so much better that it was almost distracting to have such a huge difference in the same meal.  Oh, and the chicken, pork, and obviously the seafood was all naturally raised.  You know how I know?  Cause I kept saying, why is the meat here so much freaking better than home?  Oh, its because we raise our animals like commodities.  Makes you really want to shop exclusively at farmers markets.

There will be pictures of food sporadically placed throughout the blog.  Don't be surprised when it goes: turtle, hammerhead shark, moral eel, bacon wrapped prawns with grilled asparagus on wild rice, spotted eagle ray, sea lion.

Monday, November 21th, 2016 - Pinzon, Galapagos

In the Galapagos Archipelago, there are a ton of dive sites and since we're living on a boat, we get to go to all the best ones!  By my count, we went on 16 dives though we did have a couple of cancelled dives due to poor visibility and dangerous currents.   You know, no biggie.  With that consideration, let me explain to you the safety lecture we got for scuba diving.  Basically it went: you have to be a super advanced diver, or you could die, and if you're in the blue (open water) without your dive master, you could could die, if you don't pay attention to the current you should be pushed into the wave breaker rocks, and die, make sure you don't step on a sea urchin or a moray eel, or you could die, and learn how to use this waterproof walkie talkie, cause it could save your life, or you could die... I could be paraphrasing.  You should probably do your own safety course if you're gonna dive the Galapagos (or you could die).

Cool, lets go diving!  And maybe die.

Schooling Salema

Galapagos Puffer

Guineagowl Puffer (Golden Phase)

So this is my very first time diving with a camera.  Turn out it's REALLY hard.  My buoyancy was effing crappy, I was eating up air like it was white rice (I love rice), my spatial awareness was non-existent, and my camera was being super difficult.  Turns out, a great diver plus a great photographer equals a really crappy underwater photographer.  LOL.  Good thing all that camera equipment is really cheap.  

I'm kidding, my underwater photos will get better, I just have to dive a ton more.  And I have to stop taking photos of people underwater instead of the actual animals.  Ever taken a selfie underwater?  I have!!

Coronet Fish

Schooling Barracuda

Moray Eel

Guineafowl Puffer

Cortez Rainbow Wrasse

Our first couple dives were at Pinzon and Cousins Rock.  My first impression: this is some of the best diving I've ever had.  You literally have to wait for fish to get out of your frame to take a picture of something else and the fish are really not scared of you, though they don't like bubbles.  There were so many moral eels you really do have to watch where you pick your spots on the reef because one may bite you if you annoy it enough.  It really freaked me out the first couple times I saw one right next to my fins.

But this is the Galapagos people, I'm here to see the hammerhead sharks!  For that, we need to go to the northern most islands Wolf and Darwin.  This is the home of a few hammerhead shark cleaning stations.  Basically, schools of hammerhead sharks slowly swim by these reefs and smaller fish come and eat the parasites off their skin.  Cool right?  BTW, A group of over twelve hammerhead sharks is called a 'toolbox'. A group of under twelve is a 'toolbelt'. A group of any number of great white sharks is called a 'nightmare'  I'm not sure if that's actually true, but its on the internet, so someone thinks it true.  So here's the technique.  We enter the water with a negative buoyancy backwards entry off the Panga all at the same time.  If you don't descend fast enough, you could get swept off in the current (and die).  Then the guides lead us to the cleaning station and we all form a line, kinda like we are going to watch a movie.  Then, you physically hold on to a rock so you don't get swept away, and then you sit and wait.  Most of the time, the hammerheads were already there so we didn't have to look very hard.  However, if you want the hammerheads to come closer to you or swim over you, you have to hold your breath so that your bubbles don't scare them off.  Also, never hold your breath while you are scuba diving, you could unknowingly ascend, the air in your lungs could expand, your lungs could explode, and you could die.  This is unless of course you are clinging onto the reef rocks.

Lemme tell you, seeing a hammerhead, let alone a toolbox of hammerheads up close is amazingly awesome, intimidating, inspiring, and scary all at the same time.  Sometimes when the cleaner fish bite the shark too hard, the sharks twitch and you can see that they are made of all muscle.  Ferocious, bite your head off, muscle.  Of course this isn't true, the sharks want nothing to do with people.

Scalloped Hammerhead Shark

Black Jacks

Moorish Idols

Giant Hawkfish

Tropical Flounder

Silky Shark

Yellow Galapagos Cup Coral

Trumpet Fish

The Galapagos Islands always has a very unpredictable current and the direction of that current is always changing.  This is because that there are several different continental currents that hit the islands at the same time.  These currents bring all sorts of nutrition for the marine life to eat along with many different species of marine life which is the reason that the Galapagos has such a rich and diverse marine population.  There are several places in the Galapagos where currents mix creating a washing machine effect.  This creates some of the best places to view these marine animals, but are also the reason that diving in the Galapagos can be so dangerous.  I told you already, you could die.  These currents also directly effect the visibility underwater.  When the current is strong, all the plankton in the water is swept away leaving very clear water.  When there is no current, which happened a couple times, the plankton is so thick that you can barely follow the pair of neon yellow fins directly in front of you.  That makes for terrible shark viewing.  The currents are also responsible for the different species of land animals on the Galapagos Islands also, but we'll get into that later.

Darwin's Arch

Flag Carbrilla

Giant Damselfish

Creolefish

Christian and Yiping out in the blue

Schooling Big Eye Tuna and a large Yellowfin Tuna

Schooling Rainbow Runners

Schooling Pompano

Yiping hanging out

Magnus strolling along

Anna checking out the Garden Eels

Garden Eels, they hide as you swim by.  It's like a game of whack-a-mole.

So we're about midway through the trip at the very north most point of the Galapagos Archipelago.  We've seen a ocean full of hammerhead sharks and my sister and I are pretty much satisfied with the trip.  We could go home right now and be like, yeah, totally worth it.  The crew however decided to put some Emeril Lagasse in it and step it up a notch.  How would you do that?  Simple, a bbq dinner outside on the deck which is preceded by dancing!  Then when dinner is over, more dancing!  They were pushing wine, beer, and sangria like it was a fraternity party and all that stuff was included in the price!  You guys know that I love to dance.  LOVE TO DANCE.  Turns out, so did most of the guests also!  The boys from Guernsey, Bob and Kevin, really liked to party, it was awesome.  I think they out drank me every night.  Just a pair of really fun and funny buddies who have been friends for decades.  They've got a boat and dive for halibut and lobster and other things weekly.  After all Guernsey is an island, so I'd say owning a boat is probably a necessity.  Susan and Lise were also no strangers to the dance floor and stayed out to dance the night away with us.  They are super nice ladies from Ottawa, Canada.  They are both in the same dive club; Lise is actually a dive master.  They travel to different dive destinations together, like travel dive buddies while their husband stay on dry land, jealous. Yiping and Christian are a German and Chinese couple who now live in Switzerland for the moment.  They were among the young people on the boat but are very into diving and very into travel.  We spent quite a bit of time picking their brain on where to dive next.  Vesna is from Switzerland also and is super sweet.  She's way into diving also and has a dive trip planned in January to dive with whales.  DIVE WITH WHALES!!!! Yeah, that's bad-ass.  I wanna do that.  I'll introduce the rest of the passengers in a bit.

After about an hour or two of dancing and drinking post dinner, we decided to stop annoying the neighboring ship and turn the music off.  Luckily, when you eat dinner at 6 pm, then party for a few hours, its still really really early and you can get a full nights rest before your next dive.  That was a good thing because the next couple of dive were pretty effing cold. I think it was at this point in the trip where I was perpetually cold.  I think diving in 59 degree water with a strong current has a way of chilling you down to your core.  There were definitely a couple dives where I wanted to give up because I was too cold.  Plus the dive spots for the day ended up having really strong currents.  I think they said it was 6 knots or so.  I know there was definitely a couple surges where it spiked way above that.  We basically were hanging onto the rocks while we flapped in the current like a flag.  It was pretty intense and as you can tell, I couldn't really take any pictures.  We cancelled the remaining dives at that spot and headed south for our afternoon dives.  Unfortunately those were also poor visibility with very strong currents.  So the plan was to head to the next dive spot early and try to make up some dives there.  However, since the current was so strong, and we were driving against the current our normal speed of 12 knots was cut down to 5 knots at full throttle.  This not only meant that we had a very uncomfortable ride, but that we would arrive at our next dive location late, despite leaving early to get there.  Mother nature is no joke.

Stone Scorpionfish

King Angelfish

Sea Urchin

Do you see Homer Simpson?

Galapagos Frigatebird

When we finally arrived at Douglas Cape, we were given the briefing of what we'd be seeing.  We were going to get to see Marine Iguanas!  This is the only place in the world that has these Marine Iguanas.  Hello Evolution!  So it is believed that these Iguanas drifted over from South America on logs and debris and landed on the Galapagos Islands.  The islands were barren and did not provide anything for the Iguanas to eat.  They eventually found the red and green algae that grow on the rocks underwater and those that learned how to eat that algae survived.  They would spend all day warming their cold blooded bodies in the sun and then drop into the water for no more than 10 minutes at a time to feed on the algae.  They have even developed special glands that allow them to expel the salt from the ocean from their bodies by sneezing the salt out.  It's looks insanely odd to see an iguana underwater.  It kinda looks like Jurassic Park 5. 

Even with a dive that cool, there's always more to see in the Galapagos Archipelago.  Like what?  What else can you see?  Umm how about a pair of Orca Whales (Killer Whales) hunting and eating a sea turtle?  Yeah, that happened.  It was crazy!!!  There are some good clips of it in the video at the end of the post.

Marine Iguana

Yep, that's an Orca Whale.

We are nearing the end of the dive trip and I'm starting to realize how much I'm going to miss having catered food 3 times a day, and doing nothing but diving, sleeping, and blogging.  Oh woe is me!  At this point, everything unique that we get to see is just icing on the cake.  However, Vesna says, I have never seen the Mola Mola, and would like to see one.  So the Mola Mola, or the Sunfish is just this ugly looking, really huge slow moving fish that can be as tall as 10 feet and is the heaviest bony fish averaging 2,200 lbs.  I have no idea what evolutionary need could make the Mola Mola look the way it does, but it is definitely funky looking.  But we saw one!!!  Its a big deal people.  Be happy for us.  There's a crappy picture of it here, since it was far away, but our dive guide Max got a great video of it pretty close.  The clip is also in the video at the end of the post. 

Mola Mola!  See video for a better view.

Bullhead/Horn Shark

Do you see the Sea Lion, the Penguins, and the Marine Iguana?

With all but one dive completed, it is time for the Crew to once again step up the fun factor and have another party!  This time, it's live music with a couple of ukelele's, a guitar, a pan flute, and a bucket as a hand drum.  Gonzalo, our Maitre D, is responsible for many things, having fun is definitely one of them.  He leads the dancing tonight long enough for us to take over.  Then he gave us more wine.  Then more wine. Its okay since the next morning is a land excursion and diving with a hangover is ill-advised.  

One of these things are not like the other, one of these thing are not like the other... is that a song?  Or just a saying?  Anyhow, the crew had told us that we were going to go on a small hike and to wear the appropriate footwear.  Since I'm from SoCal, sandals fit the bill for pretty much everything.  However, poor Nicole had her bags lost by the airline.  All her dive gear was in there, along with all her clothes, and her hiking appropriate shoes.  She would come down in these shiny leather shoes and a robe every day.  It was kinda crappy for her, but now its a hilarious story!

Our first of two land excursions are at Bartolome.  Much like the rest of the Galapagos, there is very little animal and plant life on the island.  This is because the Galapagos are made up of a series of volcanoes and if you were paying attention in school, fire kills most anything.  The Galapagos Archipelago were all created from the same hotspot or a Mantle Plume that basically create volcanoes.  This hot spot is right under the boundary of the Nazca tectonic plate (which contain the Galapagos) and the Cocos tectonic plate.  The Nazca plate moves east/southeast about 2 inches a year which of course moves the Galapagos islands with it.  So the islands in the west are new born islands like Fernandina which is 500,000 years old whereas the islands on the east are much older and are dying off with dormant volcanoes like Espanola which is 3,300,000 years old.

This sea lion refused to give up his spot so that we could come ashore.

A pelican that had a bad day

Back on the Panga to go back on the boat!  The first two on the right are Magnus and Anna.  They are the other young people on the boat and are also well traveled.  They come from Holland where there apparently is a lot of very sketchy, very deep, decompression divers who go and look for things to sell from old warships.  Magnus told me quite a few stories about these modern day underwater pirates and how some of them have resulted in paralysis.  Scary stuff!

It wouldn't be a complete trip to the Galapagos without seeing the giant tortoises.  These guys can live up to 150 year old!  They also exhibit evolutionary adaptations just like the marine iguanas did.  Some of the tortoises have really long necks and a bend in their shell to reach cactus that is high off the ground. These guys can grow up to 5 feet in length and 550 lbs.  Spanish sailors discovered that they could take these guys on to their ships, put them upside down for a year and they would stay alive.  It made an excellent source of food for them.  Unfortunately several species of tortoise became extinct because of all the hunting and the tortoise oil was used for street lamp oil in the mainland.  Among the hundreds of tortoise we saw here, we definitely saw a really big male mating with a much smaller female.  Apparently the males have a concave under shell to help them stay on top of the female.  Tortoise Style, its the new Doggy Style.  

You can't talk about Charles Darwin, evolution, and the Galapagos with out talking about the Darwin Finches.  There are 13 different species of Darwin finches that are endemic to the Galapagos Archipelago.  There are ground finches, tree finches and warbler finches.  All 13 species of finches evolved from Blue-Black Grassquit Finch which can be found along the pacific coast of South America.  When this species arrived on the Galapagos, their beaks evolved to suit their eating habits. Seed and fruit eaters have claw-like beaks to grind and crush their food, while grub eaters have long thin beaks to poke into holes to reach their food.  Its pretty neat to have science stare you in the face like this.  Its not so neat when they fly above you and poop on you though.

After getting our fill of finches and tortoise style, we had a couple hours to roam the streets of Santa Cruz.  The main drag of it is very touristy and was lined with black friday sales, super crazy happy hours, and souvenir shops.  However, since this is still the Galapagos, there was a ton of animal life mixed into the little city.  My sister and I took a handful of photos while roaming around the streets.  Oh, and that picture of the lobsters was from the fisherman.  They have the department of conservation there to inspect and count each lobster; I have no idea what they were looking for, I'm guessing it was the sex of the lobster.  There was easily 6 times the number of lobsters in that picture at the dock and people were coming in to buy them straight from the fisherman!  Talk about fresh.

Sunday, November 27th, 2016 - San Cristobal, Galapagos

So the end of the dive trip is upon us and we take our last Panga ride back to the dock.  We've got a couple hours to kill before heading to the airport so we are taken to the conservation center to read about the history of the Galapagos.  The short of it was, many countries came to colonize the Galapagos and they all failed because paper beats rock, and rock beats scissors, and volcanoes kill everything that's alive.  Actually it was the barren land and the lack of plantlife on the island that thwarted most attempts to colonize the Islands.  One factoid that I found particularly interesting is that some Americans in the 1960's tried to establish a Utopian Society on the Galapagos and abandoned the project within a year.  I kinda feel like this is going to repeat itself when we try to colonize Mars...

With the rest of the time, people decided to explore the town and get something to eat while my sister and I decided to head back to the beach where we spotted a sea lion pup hanging out.  That was the best decision ever since there was not only a sea lion pup, there were about a dozen of them hanging out in this cove.  We sat with them for over an hour and just watched the interactions.  One of the pups still had an umbilical cord attached!  Who can say they've seen a newborn sea lion in the wild and hung out with it?  We can!!

After a few short goodbye to our new friends, we're back on a plane headed to Quito where I had an uncomfortably short layover to catch my flight to Panama City.  It was especially relaxing when our dive masters told us that it was pretty standard for the flights out of San Cristobal to be an hour or more late.  Super.  Somehow we arrived with plenty of time for me to catch my flight, and get airport Outback Steak house cheese fries and wings.  I know, I know... but I was starving.  And to be fair, it was just as good at it would have been at a non-airport Outback Steakhouse in the US, which doesn't say much for Outback though.

Monday, November 28th, 2016 - Panama City, Panama

Panama City was not what I expected; it was really, really, (really) big, developed, busy, and dirty.  I didn't feel super welcome as a tourist and everything was more expensive than LA.  I was really confused, but I came to Panama City for one reason and one reason only, the Panama Canal.  I originally wanted to take a boat trip through the canal, but the department of Panama Canal transportation authorities police people limit the number of tourist ships that pass through the canal, and in the off season, tourist ships can only pass through on the weekend.  :S  Since I was S.O.L. I did the next best thing, the Miraflores Locks museum.  It had all the history from the building of the canal and all the machines it took to trench out the canal.  Some quick facts: the French started building the Panama Canal in 1879, the US took over after the French failed in 1901, the Panama Canal officially opened in 1914, Panama regained control over the canal from the US in 1999, the Panama Canal expansion began in 2007 and was completed this year in 2016.  Not a bad improvement - 9 years for the expansion versus 35 for the initial build.  Hooray for modern machinery!

What a trip!  Man, its gonna be hard to go on normal dive trips now.  I'm going to expect to see whale sharks when all I'll really be getting is kelp.  Special thanks to the crew of the Galapagos Sky for putting together and amazing trip and hello to all our new friends from North America and Europe.  We'll see you in Ottawa, Gurnsey, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland!  None of us died! Yeay!!

Now that you've spent a considerable amount of time reading this blog post, there's a fun little video that I put together using the GoPro content that the dive masters took.  Be sure to turn on your speakers and enjoy.  SEACREST OUT!