January 1st, 2021
I wisely chose not to schedule anything for the morning
after New Year’s Eve (unlike my dive buddy Tami and her husband Marcos). I opted to go for a tour of the bay in Puerto
Ayora which started around 2pm. I walked
down to the dock at 1:40 as I was instructed to do but really, I could have
shown up 20-30 minutes later as I just sat on the dock and cooked in the sun.
But eventually me and another 14 or so tourists hopped onto
a small boat and headed out into the bay, bobbing along some rolling waves with
some spray coming over the front and misting us a bit. The captain pulled up by some 15-20 feet
rocky cliffs where there were a few frigates hanging out along with my first
sighting a blue-footed booby…and who doesn’t like boobies?!?
The boats in the harbour:
Nearby there was a spot for snorkelling. Most of our group were seniors who weren’t interested in jumping into the ocean but I’m glad I did, along with about 5 others from our boat. I swam towards the shore and was greeted by a school of king angelfish (had to look that up). Shortly after, a super big parrotfish, which I love with there bright colours, and others that I don’t know the name of. Next was a big swarm of one to two inch long grey fish, probably 2-300 of them. The guide later guessed that they were mullets, but I’m not sure about that…cool nonetheless.
I started to get a bit chilly, so I swam back towards the boat and pulled myself onto a little platform beside the engine to soak in some sun. Within a few minutes, a guide from another boat, who was in the water pulling along a life ring attached to a rope, yelled out that there was a sea turtle. Even though I had seen one just a few days ago at Isabela Island, I had to go check it out…I don’t get to see them very often.
Once everyone was back in the boat, we cruised across to
another part of the bay and docked at a pier.
The next stop was Las Grietas, a freshwater swimming hole nestled
between two rock walls, or probably more precisely, a chasm. It was a pretty sweet spot but I’m not the
biggest swimmer and when you’re by yourself, it’s just not that
entertaining. So I jumped in and swam to
the end of the first section, perhaps about 50 meters in length. I still had the snorkel and mask and saw a
fish or two, but nothing like in the ocean.
You could clamber over rocks and jump into the next pool, but I was
barefoot and the rocks were a bit sharp so I just turned back around and swam
back to the little platform at the entrance.
Our last stop was back near where we snorkelled but this
time we hopped onto a dock and went for a walk on a little peninsula. We reached a lookout that faced towards
Puerto Ayora. The cool thing here was a
small, sheltered pool of seawater where about 15-20 white-tipped reef sharks were
sleeping. We could just see their
outlines, but it was still nice to see.
Then we crossed the peninsula to see some marine
iguanas. I had seen a lot of them on
Isabela Island, but I still enjoyed it.
The group found one that looked to be on her last legs. Her body was sunken in, like she was super
low on fluids, and she just didn’t appear to be in a good state. The cycle of life.
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