Louis' first sea lion experience!

Undoubtedly one of the most popular animals that people want to see, and swim with, are the Galapagos sea lions.    Louis has written separately about the Galapagos sea lion in the "Animals we have seen" section. 

We spent our first week on Santa Cruz, and only saw one. He had his own place, competing with the pelicans for the fish scraps left by the fisherman, after slicing up their catches.  

There is a beach that we went to just a short walk from our hostal in San Cristobal, there were only a couple of people there and about 30 sea lions.  The boys insisted I went for a swim first to prove that I wasn't about to get eaten by the sea lions, after which Louis agreed to come snorkelling with me. It was fantastic, because a playful sea lion came right up to us and was swimming round and round, and then kept feigning to ram us and twisting into a 180 degree turn at the very last second, seemingly getting closer and closer until literally just a few inches from your face.  We were treading water together, and holding hands and I could hear Louis (in that strange way that snorkelling sounds transmit if you are nearby) very much enjoying the experience, even though he was shivering a little, I have to say the water was very cold. When he came out it was lovely to hear his enthusiasm as he explained what happened to Frankie and Jules.  There was a large bull sea lion though that was swimming about and barking a lot, which persuaded Frankie to wait until another day!

Louis wrote in his journal:

We all went to Playaman today, a beach in the Galapagos on San Cristobal, near Casa de Nelly where all the sea lions hang out. It was full of sea lions, they were everywhere.  First we had a round of suncream and that was over and done with quickly, so I got in and we saw lots of little fish and big ones too. I got a bit cold and so I went back to the beach.  

Then I went back in and felt a bit more civilised and so we went further out this time, and we saw a big shape in the distance. At first it was scary, but then it got better. It turned out to be a lovely litle friendly sea lion that came up to me and I said to Daddy: “Bloopooobuuonatoutaaploopedoopese” translated meant “Look, it’s a sea lion and he’s coming up to us!”  He was having great fun and we were too, that was amazing, so we went to tell Mummy at the beach. 

Here's Louis' enthusiastic report on the experience, just after we got out of the water........