Location: Puerta Ayora, Santa Cruz, Galapagos
Oh my gosh, where to start, today was literally the best day of my life. Today was the second dive group’s turn to dive in the Galapagos for the first time this trip, and in honor of that, we all woke up at 0600 sharp in order to get ready. Even the bus ride to the dive boat was scenic as we saw wild giant tortoises and a few doggies! Soon we were on the dive boat, and my group had the two best guides in the Galapagos (according to the two totally unbiased guides), Ciche and Claudia. Claudia even had a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio diving with them on her phone! But the real excitement came when we finally got to roll into the water for our first dive. I have never seen so much wildlife in one place for so long! We saw (to only name a few):
Hammerhead Sharks!!!!!!!!
Whitetip reef sharks
Blacktip reef sharks
Moray eels
An Octopus who changed color and swam away
Golden rays
Sun Fish
Seals
Sea lions
Dolphins
Bumphead fish
Sea turtles
hundreds of fish
And literally any other sea creature you could imagine!! (except an Orca fighting a sunfish, but that would have been cool) To top it off, Lewis had a dance party with sea lions, turtles, and dolphins! Between dives, we even got to jump back in to swim with an extremely talkative and jumpy pod of dolphins and two supposedly shy sunfish that swam right up to us like they wanted to give us all a kiss! We all were rendered speechless by the end of two dives, whether that was due to the pure excitement and lack of proper words or the fact that Lolo and Steph spent the whole time screaming from joy, which is something we will never know. I will never be able to adequately describe what we saw and experienced down there, so you’ll just have to come and find out for yourselves! Continuing the theme of greatness, the provided food was immaculate, cold apples Izzy described as the best one of her life, cinnamon rolls, chicken, mashed potatoes and veggies, some refreshing tamarind juice, all put together with a napkin on top, a luxury forgotten about on Argo. Also, a sticker with the dive shop’s logo because who doesn’t like stickers! To end the perfect day, we got to climb back on Argo to the smiling and equally excited faces of all our crewmates and eat an amazing southern-style dinner cooked by Amanda and her sous chefs in a late but also technically early fashion. Fully ending dinner with many hugs! So yeah, all-in-all, today was mind-blowingly awesome!
P.S. Hi Mom and everyone back home! I miss you and will see at some point returning from some location!
Pictures:
1. Dive group 2 doing our hammerhead signals before our dive
2. Dive group 2 on the bow after our dives
3. Gordon’s rock dive site
4. Nicko, NIck, and Louis before dinner all dressed up
5. Almost complete group pic before dinner
6. Tim working on the new mainsail after a full day of diving because the staff just don’t stop!