Walking with iguanas, snorkelling with sea lions and swimming with sharks (Galapagos Islands, Ecuador)

After arriving in Ecuador, I spent a couple of days chilling out in the city of Guayaquil before heading on to the next stop on my travels - the Galapagos Islands. I'd debated for some time whether or not to visit the islands while I was in Ecuador, as they can be incredibly expensive to visit. Typically, people book an eight day, seven night tour of the islands, which can cost many hundreds of dollars. However, after doing some research I found that there were cheaper alternatives that would still enable me to visit the islands, if slightly less comprehensively than on a package tour. The thought of being confined to a boat with other travellers for eight days wasn't particularly up my street anyway, so this more independent way of doing things was quite appealing.

I therefore decided to book a flight to one of the islands, San Cristobal, where I could base myself for a few days and hopefully pick up some good deals on last minute day trips. This meant arriving on San Cristobal without a hostel booked or any plans for the next few days, but I enjoyed the freedom this gave me and once I'd found somewhere to stay I set about exploring the main town on the island, Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. 

sea lions chilling out in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno

First, I took a stroll up to the new Galapagos Interpretation Centre just outside the town which gave a helpful oversight of the islands history, geography and wildlife. What I hadn't perhaps appreciated before I came to the islands was just how many islands there are (there are 18 main islands, as well as over a hundred other rocks and islets), how large some of them are, and how spread out they are. It quickly became apparent that I might only be able to get a taster of the Galapagos Islands from San Cristobal with the time and money I had, but I figured it would be better to see at least some of what the islands had to offer rather than missing them altogether.

That afternoon I took a walk up to Frigatebird Hill, a small hill just outside the town so-called because of the frigatebirds that seem to constantly circle above it. I'd expected the island to be really busy and touristy, and although in places it was, on this walk I had the path more or less to myself, particularly once I walked down the other side of the hill and on to a secluded beach about forty minutes walk away along a rather overgrown path. During the course of my walk I saw lots of frigatebirds, plenty of lava lizards, and even spotted an iguana or two running away in to the undergrowth as I approached.

Darwin's finch

Frigatebird

Marine iguana

Lava lizard

The secluded beach I walked to  

Pelican

The following day I booked myself on a day trip which is the most popular from San Cristobal and involves a boat ride to several interesting sights surrounding the island and the opportunity to snorkel or scuba dive in the sea. Our first stop was Isla las Lobos, a small island which is home to a large colony of sea lions. We were quickly in the water with our snorkelling equipment on and after a minute or so of wondering if we would see anything, suddenly a sea lion swam right up to me! For the next twenty minutes, numerous sea lions swam right up to our group and were close enough to reach out and touch, such was their inquisitiveness and confidence around humans. We also spotted a few marine iguanas basking on the rocks, and saw the male frigatebirds puffing up their chests in to huge red balloons to attract female birds.

Sea lion (thanks google images!)

Male frigatebird

Once back on the boat, we headed on to our next stop, the impressive island of Leon Dormido which is said to resemble a sleeping lion. Here we got two opportunities to snorkel in the channel between the two sections of the islands, which had calmer, clearer waters than the choppy sea around the island.

Leon Dormido

The channel we snorkelled through

This time we were able to swim amongst galapagos sharks, hammerhead sharks and turtles, which was an amazing experience. The sharks were relatively small and a few metres below us, but however you look at it we were swimming with sharks! We also spotted a few sea turtles and an eagle ray so quite an impressive haul of marine life for a few minutes of snorkelling.

Unfortunately I don't have a waterproof camera so I'll have to let Google Images do the honours...

Galapagos shark

Hammerhead shark

Galapagos sea turtle

Eagle ray

The next day, I signed up for another tour that would take me around San Cristobal island itself. No-one else had signed up for the tour so it was just me and a taxi driver/guide who I had a good morning practising my Spanish on as we drove between the different sites. First up was the only source of freshwater on the island, Laguna El Junco, a natural lake formed in the crater of an old volcano which I spent some time walking around. 

Laguna El Junco

We then headed to La Galapaguera, a giant tortoise sanctuary, which is helping to restore numbers of the endangered species by breeding them in captivity. If you've seen the QI episode that discusses the giant tortoise then you'll know part of the reason there are so few left is because they apparently   taste so delicious - unfortunately none of the restaurants on San Cristobal offered the opportunity to test this out! The tortoises were amazing creatures to watch moving slowly around minding their own business, and we were able to get really close to them, as well as see some of the younger tortoises that have been bred there.

The final stop of the day was at Puerto Chino, a small sandy beach where I had a quick swim in the sea before we headed back to town.

Puerto Chino

On my final full day on the island, I hired a bike and explored a couple of other parts of San Cristobal which hadn't been covered on the previous day's tour. After a couple of false starts with faulty bikes, I finally found a bike in the hire shop that had the holy trinity of inflated tyres, functioning brakes and a full complement of gears (the staff seemingly didn't own a bicycle pump or any knowledge of bike maintenance), and set off for the village of El Progreso. This involved a rather punishing 45 minute ride uphill to the centre of the island, which although hard work was worth it for the brilliant views across the island I got from a couple of viewpoints around the village.

I then stopped in at the rather wonderful El Ceibo, an incredible tree house sat in a huge three hundred year old Ceibo tree which was well worth a visit. As well as the tree house (which you can stay in for $20 a night if you've got a good head for heights) there was an underground room among the roots of the tree and a bar made from thousands of old beer bottles.

El Ceibo

Heading down in to the roots

El Ceibo bar

After a much quicker ride back down the hill into town, I headed for La Loberia, a beach known for its large sea lion colony. While I didn't see quite as many sea lions as I expected, a walk along the cliffs beyond the beach allowed me to see a number of marine iguanas. Again I had the path entirely to myself meaning that I unexpectedly crept up on quite a few iguanas and surprised both myself and them on each occasion. The iguanas were really well camouflaged against the rock and once I'd begun to spot them suddenly every rock looked like an iguana! I certainly got better at spotting them during the course of my walk as on the way back I spotted two or three groups of iguanas close to the path that I'd completely missed when going the other way.

The following morning it was time to catch a flight back to mainland Ecuador, bringing an end to a great few days on San Cristobal. Although I had only seen one of the islands and so only really gotten a small taste of the Galapagos Islands as a whole, I'd nevertheless seen a great variety of wildlife and got up close to a lot of different creatures in their natural habitat.

Sunset over Puerto Baquerizo Moreno