WEATHER: Overcast and 23C in the morning – Sunny and 23C in the afternoon
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing more sharks and not totally losing it
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Camera battery dying and not getting some ‘shots’ in the afternoon
WORD OF THE DAY: I am going to finish yesterday’s blog today-for the 6th day in a row
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MEEEEEE
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
So another year passes me by. This time last year I was ¾ of the way planning my World Odyssey. I had moved out of my home, packed all my worldly possessions into a shipping container for at least the next 2 years, left my husband and moved in with my BEST friend and my beautiful God-daughters. It was a busy time and I hadn’t even thought at that point where I would be spending my 37th birthday in 2011. So here I am in the Galapagos Islands sharing my day with Amy, a great friend I met on my Contiki tour a few years ago, and whom I try and catch up with every 12-18 months, floating around on a luxury yacht with a busy day planned ahead. I wonder how many people can say they had their birthday in the Galapagos Islands. Oh besides Peter, another passenger on the cruise who is enjoying his 62nd birthday today. Okay so at least 2 of us can say that. What’s the chance out of 22 people that there are 2 people with the same birthday?
Amy was first to wish me a happy birthday armed with a beautiful necklace purchased from San Cristobal. I was wondering why she kept trying to get away from me all morning while we were there. Sneaky gal. My Facebook messages just keep on coming in and I got an email from my best friend Shelly with messages from my god-daughters and that she had cooked my favorite foods and quote “You have 37 little Banana Cakes with Candles........ 37 mini quiches..... and 37 Jam Donuts waiting at the CAXTON” Apparently Shane couldn’t wait for my birthday to come around to help consume my birthday feast. So I really have got 2 days of birthday wishes due to the time zones and I am loving it. So BIG thanks to every single one of you who have messaged, emailed and written on my wall in the last 48 hours, it keeps me going knowing I have friends out there. You guys are my family.
I need to also pause a moment and remember my mum as she passed away 3 years ago today. We think it was earlier than my actual birthday date by a few days, but the Police came to work on my birthday this time 3 years ago to tell me the bad news. I would not have been able to do this trip without my mum’s hard work and dedication throughout her life and I am thankful and I appreciate every day that I am on my journey. My mum had always wanted to travel overseas and kept saying next year, next year and it never eventuated for her. In saying that she wouldn’t have travelled for 16 months, that is all me, but as long as I am happy and don’t go too crazy, I hope she would be looking down and giving me the thumbs up sign and that she would be proud of me. There isn’t a day I don’t think about you Ruth Susan McAnally and I miss you every day. I received a message from a squash friend yesterday that one of mum’s friends had lost his battle to cancer. So my thoughts and prayers go out to the Miles Family in their time of grief and you just never know what is around the corner and live each day as if it’s your last. It sounds so cliché, but it is so true. Trust me.
So it was another busy day for us in the Galapagos. Our first stop this morning at 8.30am was Floreana Island. More commonly known as Isla Floreana or Isla Charles, Isla Santa Maria as it is officially known, is the sixth largest island in the Galapagos Archipelago at 173 sq. km. With the fourth largest human settlement, this island has a very colorful history and has often been associated with whalers, pirates, buccaneers, convicts and colonists over the years. In September 1835 the second voyage of HMS Beagle brought Charles Darwin to Charles Island. The ship's crew was greeted by the Acting Governor of Galápagos, Nicolas Lawson, and at the prison colony Darwin was told that tortoises differed in the shape of the shells from island to island, but this was not obvious on the islands he visited and he did not bother with collecting their shells. He industriously collected all the animals, plants, insects and reptiles, and speculated about finding "from future comparison to what district or 'center of creation' the organized beings of this archipelago must be attached.
Also known as Mystery Island, in 1929, Frederich Ritter and Dore Straucher arrived in Guayaquil from Berlin to settle on Floreana, and sent messages back encouraging others. In 1932 Heinz and Margaret Wittmer arrived with their son Harry, and shortly afterwards their son Rolf was born there, the first citizen of the island to have been born in the Galápagos. Later in 1932, the self-described "Baroness" von Wagner Bosquet arrived with companions, but a series of strange disappearances and deaths left Margaret Wittmer as the sole survivor of the group who had settled there. To this day their bodies have never been found. But she set up a hotel which is still managed by her descendants, and wrote an account of her experiences in her book Floreana: A Woman's Pilgrimage to the Galapagos. There are a few books now on my list, that I hope to download and read at some point.
Post Office Bay was our first wet landing of the day. On our approach into the island we saw for the first time some Pacific Green Sea Turtles. The water was clear here and you could see them in the water, and they would also poke their heads up out of the water to get some air before heading back down again. They were so cute. We will get a chance to swim with them this afternoon hopefully. We also had the Blue footed boobies doing their amazing fish diving while we came in; I just LOVE watching their fishing skills. At Post Office Bay, since the 18th century whalers kept a wooden barrel that served as post office so that mail could be picked up and delivered to their destination, mainly Europe and the United States by ships on their way home. It was first post office in the Galapagos, which was established by the British in 1793 to send and receive letters from England. Cards and letters are still placed in the barrel without any postage and continues to this day. Visitors sift through the letters and cards looking for addresses that are close to their home addresses back home in order to deliver them by hand. There were 3 big snap lock bags in the barrel that contained a few hundred letters, postcards and bits of paper with people’s stories and addresses on them. It would have been great to have had more time to read the backs of some of the postcards, as they all told very different stories. There was quite a few of DO NOT DELIVER postcards who were waiting for the arrival of other people or I guess the possibility that they may come back to the Galapagos one day. Some people I don’t think understood how the whole concept worked as there was no address on some of the cards. Um how do they think it is going to get somewhere if there is no address? Der. There was one card I did read and it was dated October 2010 to an unborn child. The mother was 25 weeks pregnant when they came to the Galapagos and they wrote a card to the expected child with a DO NOT DELIVER on it with the hope that when she gets old enough she will come and collect the postcard. Sweet idea. Out of all the postcards there were a few Sydney based addresses and a Williamstown one, which isn’t far from my Nan, but I did manage to find a Wooloongabba address from a Jan Hore, but she had just written on a piece of paper that she enjoyed her time here and had no date. But I have taken the piece of paper and hope to deliver it next year when I return back home. Amy got 3 postcards for nick of the woods, so it would be pretty cool to be on the receiving end of one of the intended postcards. My postcard drop offs were thought about in advance. I didn’t think there would be many Ethiopians or Tuross Head people passing through the Galapagos, so I wrote one for myself wishing me a happy birthday, Dave in Ireland and Amy was also the other recipient. I wonder if we will ever see the cards again? It was a novel idea though and a game with fate. Amy and I also signed the barrel with our names and the date. I also plugged my blog address on there as well. I wish I had of been better prepared and bought a nikko pen, a sticker of Australia or something along those lines. Oh well my name and date will just have to be enough.
We got around one hour here before heading back to the ship and relocating to Champion Islet where a group of us were going to be deep water snorkeling for the last time while the rest got a zodiac ride of the area. We had about an hour before we dropped anchor, so it was enough time for Antonio to fit in a talk about the fish that we have been seeing while we have been in the water. It sounds boring, but when you are snorkeling it is nice to know what fish we are actually looking at. So Champion Islet is an island off Floreana. The deep sea snorkelers got ready and we left the boat at 10.30 with all our gear. I have to say after what Amy saw last night at the side of the boat in the light, I have lost a little of my ‘Rambo’ confidence and am still contemplating going in, even on my zodiac ride to the drop site. The sun had disappeared again, and the water was colder than yesterday, so it was NOT 20C as Carlos tells us each morning and again Amy and I are not in wetsuit while the rest of the snorkel Muppets are all rugged up and ready to go. Hell, it’s my birthday, it’s our last deep snorkel, our second last day of the cruise…I’m going in. It was another current dive, as it was actually quite strong, so once we were in and our bodies had dropped 20C it didn’t feel too bad!!! Champion Islet is a small crater fun wall and another drift dive. We saw a few sea lions in the area, but not in the water.
There were heaps of fish and plenty of schools as well. We had only been in the water 10 minutes and Carlos and others had seen over 7 sharks swimming up current. With the call up of ‘sharks over here’ I was brave and swam over, all the while looking around me frantically hoping I would and wouldn’t see them all at the same time. But they were gone. By this time the current had swept us a fair way down the coast, so Carlos made the call to get us all back on the zodiac and head further up than the last drop point to then drift back down again. As I was waiting my turn to get back in the zodiac, I saw a small (well 1.5m) white tip swim under me and that just made me go white and scuttle as fast as I could back on the boat. I was done. I was more than happy to sit on the zodiac while the others went back in for a second time, but I was done and dusted. Well my fellow snorkelers would have nothing of it and I crumpled under pier pressure and went in for the last time, hoping we wouldn’t see those damn sharks. Well I saw 2 more below me and then when something touched my leg and I screamed out, I knew that I had totally lost my nerve and was just hanging on by a thread to returning to the boat. Dermot looked over after the scream to make sure I was okay to which I replied with a thumbs up as okay, but I found out later that night that means I need help and should have done the ok signal. Either way I was okay, just super jumpy and the call to go back to the zodiac couldn’t have come quick enough. So much for big and brave snorkeling……Pffffffffffffff chicken!!!
Lunch was served on the sun deck at the stern of the ship. Today’s theme was an Ecuadorian feast and my favorite was the delicious pork and the caramel biscuits! As usual we ate too much, but I guess I should make the most of shipboard food, as in a few days I will be back to overland food, and at this point I am thinking it is not a bad idea as ship food I think has added a few pounds in the last 4 weeks.
Our afternoon landing was at a place called Punta Cormorant. Named not after the bird but a US ship, there is a wet landing onto a, literally, green / black beach - so colored because it is made from olivine crystals (volcanic silicates of magnesium and iron) and the first thing that hot us was the smell. It was like bad rubbish / sea lion smell and it was pretty disgusting. The smell comes from the brackish lagoon that is located at the back of the beach. Pencil sea urchins may be found on the beach. Amy was in the first kayak group for the afternoon, so I decided to get some photos of the Sally Lightfoot crabs, which are really pretty in colour and then wait on the beach for her to return so we could go snorkeling off the beach in search of Pacific Green Sea Turtles. The water was freezing here, so I didn’t want to get in too early and snorkeling from the beach didn’t faze me, it’s that damn deep sea snorkeling that freaks me out. Well the first kayak group arrived back and no Amy, and then I see her little head bobbing up and down in the surf. She had decided after kayaking to cool off and swim in, but she was swimming against the current with no flippers, so being the great friend I am, I manned up in my snorkel gear and swan out to give her hers. This water was the coldest by far that we have swum in and I rekon my limbs were nearly frozen it was that cold. It was worth it though as we did see 2 turtles swimming beneath us, around 2m away, so it was the last thing to check off out list and it was pretty cool to see them swimming around us in the wild.
So once we had defrosted the group left on a walk of Floreana Island. A short walk inland and the trail took us to that damn smelly brackish lagoon. This is home to one of the biggest populations of flamingos in the archipelago, these pink residents spend about 7 hours a day or more eating. Looking into the mud of the lagoon there appears to be 'cracks' in the mud. These cracks are not caused from dryness but are actually the footpaths of flamingos. We were terribly unlucky and only saw one flamingo, all on his own, as a speck on the horizon. My camera battery was starting to die and for the first time I didn’t have a backup battery, so I had to conserve what I had and I snapped one photo to say we had seen one and then moved on.
From here the trail crosses a narrow neck of land and comes to a white beach on the eastern side of the island. Ghost crabs inhabit the beach, and rays and turtles can be seen in the sea. We couldn’t get too close to the water as the Diamond Head rays were right there and they have a sharp barb to them if you come into contact with them. We could see around 10 Pacific green sea turtles in the sea and 2 of them were mating, but all we could see was the occasional head popping up and there dark shadows in the crystal blue water. The Sea turtles nest at here December to May. The sand was really fine and white and the beach is known as Flour Beach because of this. There were also a few sea lions resting near the rocks and a marine iguana further down the beach. My camera was dead by this stage, which is a shame as the colours of the sky; beach and water were magical as the day set. So Amy and I stood next to each other looked, closed our eyes and committed the scene to memory. It really was beautiful.
I have to mention after 6 days of early mornings, 2 activities a day, we are really feeling the pinch tonight. We are SO tired. So much for having a few birthday drinks tonight. We were still seriously thinking about it till we saw that tomorrow mornings start was at 6am. Um, yeah I think we won’t be having a big night tonight. Nothing wrong with having a sober birthday, well not entirely alcohol free. Mike and Nicola bought Amy and I a birthday drink during the briefing and then Dermot and Jane kept my wine glass filled all night over dinner. To finish off the evening Amy had ordered a cake through the ship and Happy Birthday was sung to Peter and I with those jokey candles that never blow out, and trust me after a few glasses of wine I tried! So thanks to you all for making my day a GREAT one. To be able to spend it with new and old friends in an amazing destination was certainly a highlight!
So HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. I wonder where I will be for my birthday next year? That will be in the hands of fate and destiny and I am sure a whole lot of other contributing factors!!!
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