Wreck Bay, San Cristobal, Galapagos.

We arrived at The Galapagos at dawn on Monday 2nd March and sailed down the coast of Isla San Cristobal. A pod of dolphins joined us as a welcoming committee and swam at our bow. We anchored in Wreck bay, at the town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, the administrative capital of the islands. Here we engaged an agent as is required to complete our check in procedure. This was quite a lengthy process involving a visit to the boat by the navy plus a trip to the police station and the port captain's office for William. We are allowed to stay for up to twenty days but the boat must remain in Wreck bay. If we had wanted to cruise in the National Park in our own boat, we would have had to organise it in advance and get a cruising permit which is very expensive. Wreck bay is a pleasant, safe anchorage and the town has lots of tour operators to choose from.

Galapagos Sea lions are everywhere. On the rocks, on the beach, on the steps up to the dock, on boats, in dinghies and on our swimming platform. They are very noisy, continually barking at each other over the best spots to sunbathe. We hear them around the boat squabbling over possession of our swimming platform. They are very amusing to watch but they don't smell very nice and they have a fine set of teeth, so we don't want to get too cosy. Marine iguanas also sit on the rocks along with loads of bright red Sally light foot crabs. Blue footed boobies are also close by and everything poses while you take it's photograph, no need for zoom lenses, they don't run away. Huge frigate birds swoop overhead plus pelicans and numerous other sea birds and that's just here in town. A neighbouring boat who has been here longer, have had crabs crawling up their drain into the sink and even found them in their bed!

We have been on a land tour of San Cristobal, organised by Fernando, a local tour operator. We visited Cerro Colorado, where giant tortoises are being bred for release back into the wild. A number of wild adults have been brought from the northern end of San Cristobal and are kept in an area where conditions are more or less identical to their natural habitat. The oldest individual is about a hundred, (middle aged, they can live to 180) and is the one in the picture on the right rearing up eating it's dinner. There was a lot of hissing and pushing and shoving and shell banging going on round the food, very poor table manners. There are different types of tortoise on the islands with different shaped shells, domed, intermediate and saddle back. The ones on San Cristobal are intermediate. Jim fell off the path and landed in the bushes but luckily neither Jim nor the bushes were harmed and he hadn't had anything stronger than water!

After this we went to Laguna El Junco, a volcanic crater lake. It was a long climb to the lake up lots of steps and very windy, gusting 60 knots at the top. Nancy left Jim's camera case at the top, only realising as we were driving away, so the taxi driver turned round and William climbed all the steps again to retrieve it. What a gentleman! There were several large trees blown down across the road. We went to a beach on the south of the island, where large marine iguanas sat sunning themselves on the black lave rocks and sea lion pups slept while waiting for their mothers to return. Finally we had a very nice dinner at Fernando's house.