Today is the day that I finally depart aboard the Deep Blue Dive Boat for the famous Wolf and Darwin Islands, 10 hr boat ride from San Cristobal. They are known as some of the best diving in the world because Whale Sharks frequent this area, hammerheads swim in schools of 100 to 200, sea turtles are everywhere, sea lions and many varieties of rays.
I am excited partly because this specific trip is what I have read about for such a long time and also because my Turtle Soup disease (Kevin and I made up the name for water poisoning in Galapagos, aka montazuma^s revenge)
. I have not been able to eat much in the past three days, eating only saltines in the last day. My energy is very low and I started getting shaky in my hands last night. Today, I will begin eating light food again per the doctor and be ready for diving on the live aboard.
As I walked down the street, I bumped into My Cousin Vinny again. We had breakfast and said goodbye for about the fifth time on my trip, although we will probably bump into each into Machu Picchu or somewhere else. I am currently 3 hrs from our first island and still bumped into him with 10 minutes of coming to this island.
Side note: I stayed in a shady hostel last night with kevin gone. The lady did not speak english and did not understand my broken spanish. Needless to say I got a cheap place to stay that made me paranoid that all my stuff would be stolen if I was not there. I can^t wait to ditch my dive gear and travel a bit lighter. I am constantly hiding my money in clever hiding spots only to find out that the locations are so clever that even I cant find the money
. Sorry, no apóstrophes, galapagos keyboards have their own buttons and apostrophe does not want to work as well as many other keys.
I was very concerned that the operator that I booked my trip with on the Deep Blue was legit or not. As I arrived on the Deep Blue boat, it is one of the most beautiful vessels that I have been on. I was given my own cabin with private bath and window. There are 4 decks and many spots to escape and either sleep on the deck or read in between dives. The food is first class and very incredible or maybe I am just very hungry. I will update this tomorrow. The group on the boat consists of 10 Russians that dont speak a lick of english and an italian. The italian and one of the Russian speak a little bit of Spanish. The dive instructor speaks pretty good english and he serves as the translator as well as the dive master. So, it is kind of like being underwater all the time. I use mostly hand signals to communicate to others. The Italian is my dive buddy and he is a good guy and good diver
. The Russians are pretty bad and I am worried for their safety on some of the difficult dives after seeing them today on our checkout dive. Overall, I am looking forward to the trip. Internet and phone service is available, but for something like $3-min, so I probably wont be doing much calling.
Our dive today was pretty cool. We had tons of sea lions swimming around us. I videod them coming right up to me. Such playful creatures. So, far they are my favorite creature that I have seen down here. We also had boobie birds flying all around us and swooping down into the water getting fish. Still amazing to me how much wildlife is out here. We are so far from anything. Perhaps one of the most interesting thoughts when cruising around here.
We came back to port to get more food for our journey. We are leaving at night for Seymore Channel. We then continue on to Wolf and Darwin islands for three days, return via Bartolome Island and do a combination of land tours and 3 to 4 dives per day. Evenings are spent sharing videos that everyone took on the big screen in the center of the boat. Pretty cool set up. So far, Russian are getting drunk and annoying. Staff and Italian are cool.
Well, that is it for now. Wish me luck. I will write a weeks worth of journals when I get back from live aboard.
Day 9: I depart on Deep Blue Liveaboard
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Galapagos, Ecuador
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