Diving Adventure in the Galapagos #9

April 19th – Seymour Island in The Galapagos

Got up too early this morning; forgot to set my watch back one hour and got up at 0445! I wasn’t alone, so did Dicksie and David. Sent Mike up for coffee and he came back fussing about the time, but brought coffee anyway.

The boat traveled all night while we slept; cruised about 70 miles to Seymour Island. I had been a little worried about sea sickness, but so far absolutely no problems. In fact, I love sleeping in the boat. The swells create a gentle rocking that just soothes you to sleep. I woke up several times and just lay there enjoying myself. It was sort of like being back in the womb with Mother Earth singing a cadence in her sea voice, “Love…, love…, love…

Poor Mike, he still has the turista in spite of lomotil, but hasn’t let it slow him down much. In fact, he saved my butt yesterday. I dropped my weight belt at the boat and Mike went after it for me, fortunately it was only in 40 feet of water.

Think I better make one final entry before this AM dive: Arrived at anchorage, Seymour Island just at breakfast this morning. As I sat down to eat I looked out the window and saw FINS everywhere! Sharks – hammerheads! – and they were circling the boat. So if this is my last entry – Well, Mike I love you. Always will, always have. And you can have my new skis.

2030: I survived! Better than that, also saw so many fish that we were just overwhelmed. Dozens of white-tip sharks, one Galapagos shark; new and amazing sights around every bend!

Found a new friend and dive buddy: Eloise “elo” Buckler is a great diver, a great buddy and a happy companion. She uses air bout like I do, so I have someone to stay down with. She had a couple of face to face encounters with sharks today, both as unexpected as comical. Scared the sharks as badly as it did Elo.

The land walk on Seymour Island was equally amazing. Animals and birds totally unafraid and accessible. Saw marine iguanas, sea lions, red and blue footed boobies, scissortailed gulls, lava lizards, and frigate birds. Able to walk within inches of all but the bull sea lions, and they tend to be rather impressively territorial.

With the Aggressor II as our base, we dove from rubber dinghies. The dingy drivers were very observant and quick to pick us up. We are a group of wide experience levels, from Walter with thousands of dives, Elo with more than a thousand, and Evelyn with seven. Also a wide range of O² usage, so consequently we were coming to the surface all over the place. And since most were diving computers, we were pretty much allowed to go our own way. We certainly kept the dinghies busy retrieving us from all over!

Dicksie and David are doing very well. Dicksie is holding up with never a complaint although I know she is cold and her knee is causing her pain.

Tomorrow we dive Cousin Rock off Bartholome Island twice in the morning. After lunch we’ll snorkel with penguins at Batholome and follow with a dry landing on volcanic Isla Isabella. Jaime promises we’ll see hammerheads!

P.S. Mike still has the trots and David is serving up lomotil on the cuy paw!

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