Ecuador Week 3: Snorkeling with Sharks, Hanging Out with Sea Lions, and Feeding Giant Turtles
Guayaquil to San Cristobal Island
My alarm clock woke me up early Sunday morning so I could have enough time to get ready and eat a quick breakfast from the hotel, which featured delicious traditional Ecuadorian food. After breakfast, around 6:30 in the morning, we gathered everyone’s luggage and boarded our bus again to drive to the Guayaquil José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport. Our flight didn’t actually leave until 9:15 am, but we needed enough time to get our whole group through check-in, a biosecurity checkpoint, and security. After successfully reaching our gate, we boarded our LATAM flight to the Galapagos Islands and took off over the Pacific Ocean.
Want to find great deals on flights across the globe? Be sure to search on Skyscanner.com!
Apparently it was one of the flight attendant’s first day on the job, and the rest of the crew wanted to play a prank on her. One of the crew members asked our professor, who was sitting next to me, if he’d be willing to help them out, but he volunteered me for the part instead. I agreed, followed their instructions, and was rewarded with a bag of chips for my service as we deplaned to the ground. Mission accomplished.
San Cristobal Island Airport
As we stepped out of the plane and onto the ground in San Cristobal, the ocean breeze greeted us as we walked to the customs area. The San Cristobal airport isn’t much more than a runway and a warehouse divided between areas for arrivals and departures, but works just as fine as any other airport. We were required to show our special entrance card, passport, and pay $100 in cash upfront for access to the protected national park areas of the archipelago.
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal
Our main guides for the week, Carlos and Raul, met us outside the terminal and had a pickup truck ready for us to put our suitcases on. From there we walked, straight from the airport, to the city center of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. After walking for about 10 minutes we passed a group of sea lions sprawled out on a beach, and stopped to take group pictures at the island’s welcome sign.
After walking a few more blocks we reached our next stop, a rental store, where we collected our snorkel gear for the next couple of days. Afterwards we went to get lunch, and ate at the restaurant Rosita, where I munched on some delicious cordon-bleu. After lunch we stopped by our hotel, the Casa de Cristhi, to drop off our backpacks and change into swimsuits for our afternoon activities.
Looking for a place to stay on a trip to San Cristobal? Start your search on Booking.com here!
San Cristobal Biological Reserve
Once the entire group was ready, we headed down to the San Cristobal Biological Reserve, and stopped at an Interpretive Center, the Centro de Interpretación Ambiental Gianni Arismendy, along the way. After viewing the exhibits in the center and hearing a message about the area from Carlos, we walked into the park. All visits to protected areas in the Galapagos are required to have an accompanied guide. Additionally, all guides on the islands are local, and their insider knowledge is genuinely invaluable. If you visit, I highly recommend hiring a guide. Once Carlos had finished he led us on a hike up to a lookout point, the Mirador Cerro Tijeretas, and we were rewarded with a breathtaking panoramic view.
Snorkeling with Sea Lions and Sea Turtles
We hiked back down to the bay that we had just been overlooking, the exact same bay Charles Darwin anchored in when he first arrived in the Galapagos Islands hundreds of years earlier. We put our snorkel gear on, which gratefully included a wetsuit, because the water in the bay was freezing cold. It took a minute to get used to the water temperature, but once you stuck your face in the water, all concerns about the cold disappeared. The snorkel masks revealed an entire unseen world underneath the surface of the brilliant blue water. Hundreds of fish swam in schools around the bay, and every once in a while a giant sea turtle would gracefully pass by. It was magnificent.
After being in the water for a while, some of the young sea lions who had been basking on the shore decided to come join us. They dazzled us with their elite aquatic agility, swimming towards us and then bending to turn directions at the last moment. On land the sea lions might look funny as the flop around the beach, but in the water they are truly in their element. They would dive underneath us and blow bubbles, and swim alongside us as we snorkeled around the cove, playing like aquatic puppies. The sea turtles didn’t pay us any attention as we swam by, as their focus was more on searching the rocks on the ocean floor for something to eat, but they were still incredible to watch.
Playa Punta Carola, San Cristobal
We all shivered a bit as we changed out of our wetsuits when it was time to leave, but that couldn’t stop us from grinning from ear to ear as we finished our first snorkel session in the Galapagos. We walked up from the shore to take pictures with a Charles Darwin statue that overlooks the bay in honor of his scientific contributions. After admiring the view for a bit, we followed the path along the shore to a lookout point of the ocean, and eventually arrived at another beach where sea lions had taken over. We stayed for a while at Playa Punta Carola as the sun began to set, surrounded by sea lions lazily enjoying a nap in the sand.
Eventually we headed back to our hotel to take a shower before dinner, but once it was my turn the power went out and I just ended up showering with water about the same temperature as the water from the bay. We walked back to the same restaurant for dinner, and I bought a triple chocolate Magnum ice cream bar on our way back to the hotel from a small corner store.
El Junco, San Cristobal
Monday morning I woke to the sound of roosters nearby and from the light from the sunrise. My room was on the top floor of our hotel, so I went outside to view the city of San Cristobal and the ocean in the distance. A little while later the rest of the group woke up and came upstairs for breakfast, and then we got ready for the day’s adventures. We took a bus up into the highlands of the island, and passed dozens of fruits and flowers growing on trees as we drove about twenty minutes to our destination. The landscape and weather changed drastically as we climbed almost 2000 feet in altitude, and it started to rain as we reached La Laguna El Junco.
El Junco is the only freshwater lagoon in the entire Galapagos, and sits in the caldera of an extinct volcano. The first explorers on Charles Darwin’s ship built their first buildings near here for access to the lagoon’s water resources, but now it’s part of the protected national park. Birds can often be seen flying up to the lagoon to bathe before returning back down to the seaside, but we couldn’t see any as we looked over the top of the lagoon. Because of the rain clouds our visibility was pretty low during the hike, and the trail was a little muddy, but it was still cool to explore this unique place on the island.
Cerro Colorado Galapagos Turtle Breeding Center
After we hiked back down from the edge of the caldera, we drove to the Cerro Colorado Galapagos Turtle Breeding Center. As we walked through the center, we saw massive turtles munching down on Papa China plants at centralized feeding locations. The turtles in the breeding center get fed three times a week, and we were fortunate to be visiting on one of those days. This meant we got to see more groups of turtles together, because typically they’re pretty solitary creatures. We learned that the turtles we were watching have a lifespan of around 200 years old, which is just incredible. One even ate a leaf I was given to feed the turtles, which was pretty cool.
As we walked up a rocky path to another area of the breeding center, we passed by trees filled with poisonous apples, which weren’t technically apples but do look like them. Maybe the Evil Queen from Snow White had visited the Galapagos Islands and was inspired. Who knows? At the top of the path was a center filled with young turtles separated by their ages – anywhere from five days old to six years old. The smallest turtles were adorable, and it was amazing to see the different developmental stages of the turtles right there in person next to each other.
Puerto Chino and Playa La Loberia
We said goodbye to the turtles and drove to a scenic beach nearby known as Puerto Chino. Similar to basically every other location in the Galapagos, there was an abundance of wildlife at the beach, including another group of basking sea lions and multiple pinzones – some of the island’s famous finches. A few of us walked up to a rocky point to take some pictures, take in the panoramic scenery and watch the waves as they crashed into the rocks beneath us and the shoreline along the horizon.
We drove back into town for lunch at Rosita again, and I had soup, chicken, and rice for lunch – Ecuadorian staples. After buying another ice cream from a corner store on the way back to the hotel, we got ready for another round of snorkeling that afternoon. Around 3:00 in the afternoon we took the bus to Playa La Loberia. As we walked along the path to the beach, we passed a group of iguanas relaxing in the sand which was cool to see.
When we reached the beach we put on our wetsuits, fins, and masks and swam off into the cove. We saw all types of fishes, including a few big rainbow fishes that were really pretty. There were also plenty of sea turtles swimming around, and we watched them drift along the ocean floor. Two giant sea lions, much bigger than the ones playing with us yesterday, also raced right past us in the water as they headed to the beach.
San Cristobal Island Pickup Soccer
We drove back into town for dinner, and then I spent some time walking around the boardwalk area of the city. On my way back to the hotel I spotted a group of locals playing pickup soccer on a concrete court just down the street and asked to join in. They thought it was hilarious that a Spanish-speaking Gringo wanted to play with them, but they were super nice about it and let me into the game. We played for over two hours, and some of my classmates even stopped by to watch or sub in as well. It was a blast, but I was definitely ready to snooze for a couple of hours after all of the day’s activities.
El Leon Dormido/Kicker Rock
After another breakfast featuring delicious locally-grown bananas, we walked down to the harbor to board our boat for a tour along the island’s western coast. The ride was beautiful! On one side of the boat the ocean stretched out as far and as wide as the eye could see. On the other, we watched miles of pristine green forests, untouched wilderness with unbelievable natural beauty, and remnants of ancient volcanoes pass by. Eventually we diverted away from the coastline and towards our first stop of the day – el Leon Dormido, also known as Kicker Rock.
As we got closer to the rock, we could spot some of the island’s famous Blue Footed Boobies perched as we circled around it. After circumnavigating around this impressive yet isolated geographical feature, we geared up for an open-sea snorkeling adventure. We jumped into the churning water off of the boat and began to explore the unseen world around the rock beneath the surface.
Snorkeling with Galapagos Sharks
Like other places we had snorkeled so far, there were all sorts of species of fish swimming around us, along with occasional sea turtles drifting by. Unlike the other places we had snorkeled however, there were sharks. While floating near the rock we saw a couple of sharks deep beneath us gliding through the water. It was magnificent to watch these fierce aquatic predators in their element, but a small part of me was still really grateful that my view of them was still from a distance. The constant rocking of the waves in the open ocean tired us out more quickly than when we had been swimming around in a calmer cove, so a little while later we swam back to the boat to replenish ourselves with a snack and some water.
Playa Cerro Bruja
Once everyone had safely made it back onto the boat we took off for our next stop, a beach known as Cerro Bruja. This beach was genuinely one of the most naturally gorgeous I have ever seen. Not many people make the trip out to this beach, and our group only had to share the space with the ever present sea lions. Right next to the beach was a field of solidified lava rock, and we explored the area and saw a few lagoons nearby.
After relaxing at the beautiful shore for a while, we were shuttled back to our boat for our ride back to San Cristobal. We stayed closer to the shoreline on the way back, and watched the island pass by us. The expansive forest was broken up by little pockets of sandy beaches, and birds flew over the water, offering us a majestic view as we traveled south.
Evening in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal
After a little over an hour we arrived at the San Cristobal harbor again, worn out but exhilarated from the day’s adventure. Before heading to Rosita’s for dinner, I stopped at one of the tourist shops along the boardwalk to buy a souvenir Galapagos t-shirt. I headed back over to the court I had played at yesterday hoping for another pickup game of soccer, but the local league had games scheduled on the court. So, instead, I watched the end of one of the local games before heading back to the hotel for my last night in San Cristobal.
Click here to read about my next few days in the Galapagos exploring Santa Cruz and Isabela Islands!
Pingback: From The Andes To The Coast: Cuenca To Guayaquil
Comments are closed.