Cocos to Galapagos

 Cocos to Galapagos:

We started out VERY slow, engine on and no wind. Only made 78 nm the first day out. Next day, we began to get hit with some squalls.   Fun time, sailing again but just ½ hr and then dead again.   Later at 1, squalls just kept coming through and we could dodge and shift between them avoiding the rain but getting the wind, finally we started to move.   103 miles that day and 127 the next and the eve before our arrival in Galapagos the winds came up so much that we were flying between 8-9 kts!!   We finally had to reef down the sails as we would get in durning the dark.  We finally arrived right at sunrise.   It was beautiful!!   Our agent was waiting for us in a panga and escorted us to a nice anchorage.

Checking in was long but because we had an agent, Senor Bolivar, that we had worked with already from 3 weeks before, our paperwork was in order and all went pretty smoothly.   Later on we met another boat that had not checked in through an agent in advance and they were forced to waste a week in that harbour before being allowed to move the boat on to the other islands.  In order to clear in we were visited by  customs, immigration and agriculture.  Agriculture gave us a real inspection and shake down.  They are vigilent about the possibility of tourists bringing new plants, seeds or pets to the islands.  Finally we got the water taxi into town.   The town is occupied more by sea lions than people!!

They were everywhere!   And what a smell!!   When we got back to the boat we had our own 3 sea lion occupation to deal with!!   One had even the audacity to be sunning on our sun cushions in the cockpit and what a ruckus when Ken tried to shoo him away.  They bark something like dogs.   









Our Galapagos welcoming party




Occupy S/V Dancing Walrus.  'WHAT YOU WANT ME TO LEAVE??'

 

 

 





 


 




More friendly Galapagos welcomes.




Sunrise over a neighbors boat





Sea Lion smile 'DOG BREATH DOESN'T DO IT JUSTICE''




Occupy San Cristobel, The benches had a sun shade above and the sea lions liked to be in the shade!




Volcanic Lake at the top of the island



Mom nursing a pup on the beach



Marine Iguana





Land Iguana




Local customers at the fish market



This sea lion looks for hand outs at the local fish market and so do the pelicans.  I noticed pelican poop running down the cutting table and under the fish!

Today we took a walk to a place where 2 walls of volcanic rock opened up and resulted in a  very deep crack  with a salt water pond at the bottom.   The pond had fish in it.  The pond at the bottom was a wonderful swimming hole about 40 feet deep. Most water like this is quite warm but due to shading from the sun this one was nice and cool.  Its a very wonderful place called Las Grietas which is less than a 20 min. walk along a trail just away from the main town.



Las Grietas



Scenery along the way...



Delightful swimming at Las Grietas, Joni's shadow on the bottom while taking the picture swimming above.



Ken's waiting for Joni after his swim.



View from the top





Great Blue heron along the way



Red Crabs everywhere along the ocean shore....

Cocos Island more

Cocos Island, Costa Rica:  2/27/12

Please watch the wonderful footage by Howard and Michelle Hall, videographers of the IMAX, who captured the beauty in a short film of diving Cocos. www.vimeo.com/12520722.  Thank you, Michelle and Howard

Day 2: Quiet day as we needed rest. We brought the boat around to Wafer Bay and hooked up our router so all of us could do internet. That pretty much says it all……Rest of the day done.

Day 3: Cloudy so we thought it best that Ken take on his big project….changing the seal on the starboard sail drive by scuba!!! Doesn’t  really seem like a monumental task but when you have to include disassembling the max prop and then reassembling it as the last thing you do, it’s hard even under the best circumstances (on hard ground breathing air, not in 80’ of water breathing from scuba and in low light conditions dealing with very tiny parts).  I dove into making our blog more readable and user friendly and Robin was helping wherever needed, always the best jack of all trades (and master of most) that he is!!! Ken will have more detailed discussion of his fix and post it separate on this same blog (it may be helpful to others that face the same repair)  and I hope you’ve noticed the fruits of my efforts by now reading this blog with ease.

Wally in Wafer Bay

Day 4: We started out this beautiful day by heading back to Chatham Bay and tying up to another ball there.  There are around 5 balls in each of the 2 bays where you are allowed to tie up (no anchoring anywhere here except in one other bay on the S.E. tip of the island).  We loaded our dive gear into the dingy and were off to our first dive of the day.  It is required that the dingy be manned by one person so that left only 2 of us to dive.  Many of the dives here are reported to be subject to strong currents although that was not our experience.   Robin and I went first and dropped almost right on top of a hammerhead which promptly swam away. I got a couple more glimpses of him but they actually seem kind of shy, curious but when they know you see them they swim away. The visibility was pretty good and we stayed pretty conservative and saw the usual suspects, LOTS of white tipped reef sharks, everywhere, sleeping, cruising, hanging together on the bottom or in and out of the current pockets with their friends, like a bunch of teenagers.

We saw lots of moray eels of different sizes, lobsters, etc. but I was on a mission to see the red lipped bat fish, one I’ve been dying to see for years. But not so lucky! Just to let you see what I’m after, have a look at this photo!!

 Next we came up and circled the little island, Manuelito, shown below, by dingy. Caves had been dug in by wave action but none right through.

Wally in Chatham Bay

 Next Ken and I saw something in the water and dingied out to it.  It turned out to be a turtle with 2 crabs on him.

                                Mr. Turtle with 2 crab friend

                               Turtle with wally on chatham bay

Then we decided to dive through the channel between the island on the right and the main island on the left, where we had seen the notorious tiger shark the previous day. There were lots of great swim throughs with up and down currents full of fish and yes lots more white tips, but alas no tiger..

                               Ken with white tips

 Day 5: We took the boat around again to a dive site originally discovered by Jacques Cousteau. A sea mount at about 80- 150’ that you drop down a buoy line to get to.  The buoy and down line had been installed by the dive tour operators and it was secured at the bottom to a very big boulder (over 10 tons) with a big chain.  Enough to hold most boats on a calm day like it was.  

It was a very quiet day on the island as the last live-aboard dive boat had left by then. We dropped into the blue…the most amazing shade with flashes of silver jacks circling under the boat. Grabbing the line hand over hand into the blue seeing nothing but blue for a few moments when suddenly the mount comes slowly into focus. It was a day of very little current so we had the chance to swim around.

 This first dive of the day we saw LOTS of white tips, a cow faced ray (like a spotted eagle ray) and about 4 hammerheads which swam up but definitely kept their distance. 2^nd dive we saw lots more action as it was getting later and feeding time had begun. Maybe about 10 hammerheads swam around, a lot less shy and definitely more curious. Some of them were quite big.  For anyone reading this blog that may want to dive this site the correct gps reading  for it is 05. 30’36” N,  87. 01’ 57” W. We had an offset of .20 nm at 140 degrees to our charts, CM93, though.

After coming up we circumnavigated the rest of the island.  It was gorgeous, with  waterfalls and coconut palmed beaches but mostly cliffs coming straight down to the water. We almost collided with an occasionally submerged rock well off the South end of the island which I spotted on the charts just in time.  Apparently there are several more so good charts are a necessity.  None the less, thank goodness for gps and charts! As the (sun was setting we had a group of dolphins escorting us back to Wafer Bay and a perfect day was ending with a rainbow no less!!

                                Waterfalls

                               Gorgeous waterfalls

 

                                And more waterfalls……..

                               Dolphin escorts

                                Rainbow over Dirty Rock

 Day 6: We took the dingy into shore to check out and hike to the waterfall that provides water and electricity on the island.  It was about a 20 minute walk.  The park rangers provided a free guide which they do for most everything if you ask.   Stephanie was our guide and a great English speaker. Thanks Stephanie!! The waterfall was fresh and wonderful and just the right amount of hiking on that hot, sticky day up through the jungle.  Cocos gets a lot of rain so everything is very tropical. 

                               Stephanie

                            Robin under the waterfall

After our hike we headed out again to Jacques undersea mountain spot and did our last dive. Much more current this time and a funny phenomenon, some kind of Tuna,  one silver the other blackish were parading around the sea mount in pairs as if someone had choreographed the scene for us. There were hundreds paired like this.

                               Tunas on parade

Hammerheads seemed to come a bit closer maybe becoming more familiar with us. But alas our time in Cocos had ended and it was off to Galapagos at 1500 hrs.

                               Bye Bye, Cocos Island….