It is Friday, the day for our boat tour around the island of San Cristobal.  We are having a bit of trouble with time since we arrived here.  Normally when we change time zones our cell phones pick up the new time and we are good to go.  Not here.  The phones are not picking up this time zone.  My fit bit, which also tells me time is also wrong as it syncs to my phone!  Leslie and I set our phones to manual time update and set them to the local time.  For this early morning we had to set an alarm for 6am.  No problem.  We woke up in the morning and I checked my fit bit.  Wholly crap it is 6:15!!  We have 5 minutes to get our stuff together as Carlos Sr. is driving us to the port.  We scramble, get stuff ready, Stu heads out and I will be just a minute.  Almost immediately he comes back into the room with an odd look on his face (he’d seen the clock in the common room), at that moment I look at the time on my phone.  ARGH!!  5:20.  In my drowsiness  forgot that my fit bit was an hour early.  Now fully dressed we climbed back into bed to see if we can grab a few more zzzzz’s. 

We arrive at the port, find a nearby restaurant for some breakfast before we go to the tour office for our gear.  We get fitted out with short wet suits and fins as we all have our own snorkels.  The other people on our tour are also geared up and we meet our naturalist guide Angel and head to the boat.  We meet the Captain and helper or First Mate. 

We head out to our first stop.  Kicker Rock or Leon Dormido is described as one of the most spectacular landmarks in the Galapagos Islands.  It is two volcanic rock towers 140 meters tall.

We arrive, put on our fins and snorkels and into the water we go.  This is very very deep water.  We see many many fish right away.  Lots and lots of life under this water.  I am using a new full face mask type  snorkel.  I tried it out yesterday at the beach and it worked just fine.  I was feeing a bit uncomfortable with the depth of the water and trying to keep up with the group that I could not really see, through the passage between the two rocks.  As I made my way through the rocks I just headed back to the boat feeling a bit claustrophobic.  There is another split in the rock that the rest of the tour went into.  From my vantage point on the boat the water coming through looked like a tsunami coming through.  The water level rising significantly and our people bobbing on the top.  The guide was calling to them, that they were going to far.  I was a bit concerned, but once they were all safely back on board they told me that the didn’t feel the swells as much as I saw them.

Our next stop is for photo’s only.  This is called Cerro Brujo.  There is an arch here and when the boat positions itself you can see Kicker Rock through the arch. At one point all we could see from one side of the boat were guys butts, all taking their shots through the arch,

We go next to Bahia Sardina.  Here we beach the boat and walk on the sand through some volcanic rocks to where we can see a few Blue Footed Boobies, Frigate Birds (males have a bright red expandable sack at their throat) and Pelicans.

On our way again we head to Punta Pitt.  Here the captain puts out a fishing line to see if we can catch lunch.  😊  This is a great spot for catching tuna we are told.  Sadly we did not catch anything today.  It sounds like they are lucky here a couple times a week.

Leslie and I dressed to protect.

We now head to our last stop where we will have lunch and do some snorkeling.  This is Bahia Rosa Blanca.  We beach the boat again and Angel and the Captain serve pre-prepared lunch boxes.  The other day we all said we would like fish for lunch.  So did the other 8 tour participants it seems.  The lunch is grilled tuna, rice, potato and salad.  Very good.  They also served us fruit a couple of times along the way.

After lunch we leave the boat with our shoes for a bit of a hike to a lagoon for some snorkeling.  The path is rough large lava rock.  They all were solidly in place but at times it was difficult to tell.  On the way to the lagoon, we passed 2 smaller lagoons.  These had among others some small white tipped reef sharks.  These sharks will not harm us.  At the larger lagoon we put on our fins and masks and get into the water.  The visibility is a bit murky but we do see a number of fish.  I used my gopro clone to capture a turtle.

I am taking photos with a tiny go-proish camera. It is very bright out and I cannot see the tiny screen so I have no idea what I am getting. Here are some of the accidentally cool shots. 😉

We are offered beach time for an hour here.  There is no shade and this Galapagos sun is relentless.  Non of us were interested in baking on the beach.  As you can see by what I am wearing I am trying to avoid as much sun as possible.

We head back a bit earlier due to the cancellation of beach time.  We have 3 young Swiss guys onboard, a young Spanish Couple, another Spanish man and the four of us.  The Swiss guys are on the last day of their holiday and must be packing a lot into it.  They are pooped and manage to sleep sitting up in this fast moving, bobbing boat.  A true feat!!

We arrive back in port a bit early.  Not a bad thing.  A very exhausting day  😊