Long, gory details follow for those still interested.....
Our trip was to spend a few days in Quito, then fly to the Galapagos Islands and get on the Reina Silvia. Most of the group only stayed the first week. Elizabeth and I did back-to-back charters.
The trip began in Quito. We spent the first full day hiking in the Pasochoa Forest Reserve which is what is called a cloud forest (kind of like a rain forest except at altitude). During the second day, we hired two taxis to take us as high up Cotapaxi (a volcano about 2 hours south of Quito) as they could go. We walked once the taxis couldn't make it any further, but stopped far short of the summit. (You need real mountaineering gear to climb the snow-covered peak of Cotapaxi.) After we descended Cotapaxi, we visited a number of the little towns south of Quito including Ambato which was having a market day. We arrived back at our hotel in Quito after a 13 hour day. The following day we had a city tour of Quito itself which was fairly uneventful except for the political leanings of our tour guide who seemed to dislike the catholic church, the military, definitely the west, just to mention a few.
Finally, we were set to leave the smog and altitude of Quito for the Galapagos Islands. We arrived around mid-day, unpacked, ate lunch, and were ready for the first dive at Rabida. The water was colder than I expected -- high 60s or barely 70. We saw some rays, a few white tips, and a couple of hammerheads. There weren't the abundant invertibrates that I came to expect from Pacific diving. We did see some pretty amazing nudibranchs, though. Next day we dove with the sea lions at James Bay. They were very playful and seemed to love it when you hung upside-down. After a snorkel with the fur seals, we started the long crossing up to Darwin which is one of the northern islands. We dove at the arch which is a 50 or 60 foot high arch a few hundred feet from Darwin itself. The first dive didn't look very promising. We were obviously dropped at the wrong spot for the way the current was blowing (and boy was it blowing). The second dive was just incredible, though. We saw hundreds and hundreds of hammerheads. In the first 3 minutes, I saw more hammerheads than in all my years of diving. They let you get pretty close especially if you hid behind rocks as you approached. The next dive we didn't see quite as many, but still a great hammer dive. When we got out the water, the divemaster and one of the passengers told us they had seen a whale shark. In fact, they had about 10 minutes of video footage of it. My frustration level was high as I was busy looking for hammerheads and had missed what I feared might be the only sighting of the week. We had a lovely night dive at Darwin where we saw lots of lobsters, crabs, marbled rays, large cleaner shrimp in the sea urchins, and moray eels out in the open. There was nothing like surfacing on the other side of Darwin where you couldn't see the boat -- it was a clear night, and with my lights turned off, the stars were just incredible. The plan had been to move the boat to Wolf Island, but with the whale shark sighting on the last day dive at the arch, nobody wanted to move the boat.
The next day as the people in our dingy hit the water, we saw the people in the other dingy screaming into the blue. We took off after them. At a distance of about 30 or 40 feet, a moderately large whale shark swam by very quickly (and being chased by a dozen or more divers). The whale shark out swam even Elizabeth. All I had gotten was a brief glimpse of the immense creature. Sitting on the dingy at the end of the dive heading back to the boat, most people were excited that they had actually seen a whale shark. I had said to myself that just seeing a whale shark would make the trip a success, but as I sat on the boat, I realized just how greedy I am. That quick sighting was completely unsatisfying. I took one look at Elizabeth and realized her reaction was identical.
The next dive, Elizabeth took control. She told the divemaster that we had not been alternating who went out first, and it seemed our dingy (the one the divemaster was diving from) was always going last, and that needed to change. We hit the water, and decided to dump that lets hang out in the rocks until we see something strategy. We headed into blue water and waited. About 3 minutes into the dive, I see it. It's heading right for me. It starts to dive and we all take off after it. This time it's swimming much slower although dropping at a quick pace. Those of us who can equalize quickly are dropping with it. I pull up at about 110 feet, but after spending a good 5 or 6 minutes swimming with it. I stopped swimming, but then almost got hit by the tail as it went by me. Just incredible. At the end of the dive, I was low on air and doing a safety stop at 20 feet. The whale shark showed up again, and again dove. Demonstrating an impressive lapse in my usual good judgement (like running out on 128 to get my BC which flew out of Keith's truck, but that's another story), I dove with it back down to about 80 feet. I spent a minute or so more with the shark until I decided I really needed to get back up to the surface before my air ran out. I basically breathed my tank dry doing an extra long safety stop given the sawtooth profile of the dive. The next dive was by far the best. The whale shark was spotted at about 20 feet. It circled back, and descended right past me, then again turned right back towards me, giving me an amazing view from all sides including a face to face view. I swam with it for a good 10 minutes until it dove and swam out of sight. The next morning, we again dove the arch. This time it took almost a half-hour of hanging out in the blue water for a whale shark to appear. This one was much smaller, maybe 25 feet. The final dive at Darwin was fairly uneventful as we hung out in blue water for most of it without any sign of a whale shark.
We headed back in for two dives the next day at Cousins Rock. With the previous 3 days of hard diving with current (and swimming like crazy after whale sharks), my back and neck were really bothering me. (I was in a car accident a couple of weeks ago which really did a job on my head and neck and upper back.) I sat out the two dives at Cousins, but reports were they were very nice dive. I confirmed this the following week when we returned. After the diving, we went to Sullivan Bay on Bartolomy Island to try to find penguins. We did see a few, but they wouldn't get into the water while we were there, so we had to be content to watch them on the rocks. We did snorkel with some very playful sea lions.
The last day of the first trip was pretty much a throw-away day wandering at the Darwin Research Station on the island of Santa Cruz which is more impressive in what it does than what's there to see. But, we did see some large tortoises although that's not my favorite way to see creatures. We then drove up in the highlands to see some volcanic sink holes. I thought Jonathan summed it up best when he said, "Those are some kind of holes." We walked through some lava tunnels which actually were pretty cool.
Next day was spent saying good bye to the first group and hello to the second. The average age between the first and the second group must have jumped a few decades. There were two couples in their late 60s, and all but a few were in their 50s. I didn't object when the group started to refer to Elizabeth and me as "the girls." (Since we did the land stuff the first week, we opted to dive instead of going to land most of the second week -- the group kept commenting that "the girls" were out diving again, and how we must just love to dive.)
We went back to Rabida for the first dive. This time E and I were in a small dingy with two inexperienced divers. They stuck to us like glue on that dive, especially one of the older men. We skipped the land trip and did two dives at James Bay the next day, the first while everyone else was on land. We saw tons and tons of playful sea lions. Near the boat in the sand were a lot of tube anenomes of all different colors (white, purple, blue, green, red, pink, etc.) On the second dive, with so many people in the water, we saw much fewer sea lions. However, on that dive I saw something I've never seen before (E is going to kill me for including this in the trip report). I guess we got too close to the beach playing with the sea lions because all of a sudden, an enormous male sea lion, the beach master himself, charges us, shows his teeth, growls, and goes face-to-face within inches of Elizabeth. E almost ran me over trying to back away from the beach. (Ok, ok, I'm exaggerating, but it's the first time I've ever seen E even vaguely startled by something in the water.)
We did do one land trip to snorkel with the fur seals (which are really sea lions as well, with the cutest eyes). We then headed back up to Darwin.
Now large pelagic diving is known to be hit or miss, and this became abundantly clear when we got back up there. Only the week before, the water temperature had been nearly 75 with schools of hammers and what we thought were at least 3 and perhaps up to 5 whale sharks. We got back up there, the water was barely 70 degrees with few hammers and no whale sharks. However, on the second day at Darwin we got in the water and heard as loud as can be dolphins. E signals and heads out into blue water. Now if it were anyone else in the world, I'd think to myself, they'll never find the dolphins, but when I've decided not to follow E when she gets the idea to do something, I almost always regret it later. So off I go, although somewhat skeptical (after taking a quick compass heading back to the arch). We swim off into blue water for about 10 minutes at about 60 feet. All of a sudden, we see the dolphins right in front of us. There were 12 to 15 of them, and they didn't seem the least bit afraid or bothered by us. They did twirls through the water, buzzed both E and myself a number of times, headed back to the surface, then came back to us and played some more. They were within arms reach for 12 glorious minutes. Finally, they start to drift off, and we head back to the arch (elizabeth duly impressed that I actually got us back from the blue water - not sure if I should be insulted that she questioned that I could navigate a reciprocal course).
Unfortunately at this point of the trip, the unthinkable happened. Short of someone getting hurt, just about the worst thing that can happen when you're 150 miles from civilization (and I use that word civilization loosely) happened. Both the generator and the backup generator failed: no running water, no desalinator, no refrigeration, no cooking facilities, no a.c., electricity, not even running water for the stored water that we did have. And, worst of all, no compressor. The crew attempted to fix one of the generators most of the day Saturday. At about 1:00 am Sunday morning, they decided to punt and head for home. We spent a grueling 30 hours motoring back to port eating canned peaches and salad sandwiches with no running water or power. I slept down below on the first night, but you could have cut the air with a knife. The second night, I slept on the floor on deck. We pulled in early Monday morning at which time we all moved to a hotel for a shower, hot food, and a quick nap. Since we were on Santa Cruz, we did the Darwin station and the highlands trip a day early (although I went back to the hotel and slept instead since I really hadn't slept much of the previous two nights). That night after it determined that not only couldn't they fix either generator, but the main engines on the boat itself wouldn't start. It was suspected that when they filled the diesel fuel tanks at the beginning of the trip, they got water in the fuel.
To my surprise, the naturalist on board got us onto another boat for one last day of diving, back at Cousins Rock. These turned out to be really nice dives, basically the best diving of the second week. We saw some hammers, lots of eagle rays, turtles, sea lions, and some really nice invertibrate life on the walls. We again did the search for the penguins, but this time we had more success. We hit the water and saw 20 to 30 penguins swimming through the water (running away from us). After they outswam us, we got back in the dingy and found them again. We again, jumped in the water. Most of the group headed right for them, but E and I cut them off from the side. We swam with them within arms reach for a few minutes before we lost them. We again snorkeled with the sea lions at Sullivan Bay. E and I spent a good chunk of the time chasing a sea lion that had a piece of plastic wrapped around his neck. I'm not sure what we would have done if we actually caught her, but we tried to figure out something to do for her until we realized there wasn't much we could do.
Finally, on the way to the airport, we stopped at North Seymour Island which had nesting blue footed boobies and frigate birds. We again saw another sea lion with a plastic ring around her neck. Again, she barked when we got too close so I don't know what we could have done. I did take a few pictures just to document it.
Back in Quito, E and I headed out immediately. The rest of group had been planning on traveling a few days in and around Quito, but as it turned out, the natives called a strike in which they block roads. They had actually burned a few busses the day before we arrived back in Quito, so the guide service canceled everything, so coming back directly turned out to be a good decision.
All in all, it was a great trip. I wouldn't trade the whale shark encounters, the schools of hundreds of hammerheads, the dolphin dive, and the penguin snorkel for anything. The few days without power were pretty grueling both physically and mentally, but stuff happens. Great diving is usually by definition as far away from civilization as you can get since civilization tends to ruin the diving, and if you're in the big ocean in a small boat far away, you're taking your chances.