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........

Galapagos Sealion

Can you spot the second sealion?

I think the sealion is one of the best animals I have seen so far on my trip.  I have had so many amazing experiences with sealions in the Galapagos, but unfortunately it has now come to an end and we have moved on. 

Some of the sealions are very cute, like this one

And this one

The baby sealions stay with their mums for up to two years. 

When the sealions grow up, some of them are very big and scary, and they don't want to play.  There is normally one male bull sealion in charge of 20-30 sealions.  We were told that he is so busy protecting the other sealions that he doesn't have time to eat properly and after a few months can get weak.  This is when other males might fight with him for his position.  

We watched a male patrol the beach for the three days that we were at La Loberia, in San Cristobal, swimming just by the shore from side to side, barking very loudly to show he is the boss. He would sometimes swim very near to us if he thought we were getting too close to the other sealions in the water.  One time he bumped into Daddy's leg in the water.  Daddy didn't go near him again!

facts
The Galapagos sealion is related to the Californian sealion.  The Californian sealions are bigger.  The Galapagos male bull sealions can reach up to about 500lbs by the time they are seven years old. 

The Galapagos sealions don’t live as long as the Californian sealions because they have to put there bodies under more stress to get their food.  They go up to 6 miles out, and dive down to 300 metres deep, because the fish they like go much deeper here.   The Galapagos sealions live to around 15 to 20, whereas the Californian sealions can live up to 35.
They like to eat sardines and can eat up to 15kg of fish per day.  

There are two main differences between sealions and seals.  They are:
1) Sealions have little ears that stick out and seals don’t, and 2) Sealions use their front flippers and their back flippers and bottoms to move along, whereas seals move along only with their front flippers.

By Louis

Now THAT'S what I call a treehouse......

In the highlands of San Cristobal, we visited a huge, 300 year-old baobab tree (the only one on the Galapagos) with our friends Paul, Gaby and Danny and Emily.  The people there had built this amazing tree house complete with a little kitchen, a sitting room and a mezzanine twin bedroom, not to mention a 10 metre fireman’s pole if you wanted to get down more quickly than the use of the rickety bridge allowed. 

Then when you got back down to ground level, they had dug out a channel in the centre of the root system, and you went down a ladder to another little sitting room - say 8 x 6 feet -  complete with a little toilet.  (which Louis used - I hope it wasn't just for show!)  the downstairs room had something of an earthy smell to it, but apparently you could rent the place out and live there if you wish!

After this we took lunch at an authentic place to eat which turned out to be more expensive than we thought, and with chicken so tough I couldn’t even cut it with all my strength.  We wondered if it was just a very old bird, but it turns out that they did cockfighting so these were the muscly losers, goodness knows what the winners would have tasted like then!

Louis writes:

We were on our way back from the highlands in the back of the truck and decided to stop off at a chicken-fighting restaurant.  So we had our lunch there and I had meat and everyone else had chicken. The meat was nice and the chicken was absolutely terrible, it was so hard, and that was only the loser of the fight! Imagine what the winner tasted like! After that we went to a treehouse which was apparently the biggest tree in the neighbourhood.  When we got there, we went across the bridge to a "ladder case" (not a staircase) and went up and up and up and finally we got to the top.   

We saw why people bother to stay here, it even had a telephone, a toilet, a shower, a bar, and a top terrace and even a 10 metre pole!!!!!!!  It was "grande" which means "big".  We were all begging our Mums and Dads to let us go down, but they said no, luckily for Frankie, because he wasn't particularly positive he wanted to do it. 

When we got down, we heard Paul say there was an underground house, and you got there by the roots. It had a big bed and a toilet and a table.  The only negative for Frankie was that it smelt like earth.........

I can't believe we are actually in a TREE!!!!

Looking down the root inside the base of the tree

Wow, these roots are massive!

We are sailing.......

Its closer than it looks.  Don't look up Frankie.....

One of our best days on the Galapagos was a day sailing trip to Islas Plazas, on the Queen Karen boat.  There were 16 of us, like the island-hopping boats we’d been on, on this occasion mostly French or Canadian.  However unlike previously, this was a proper boat you could get up and walk around on, sit down for lunch, find space to lie in the sun together, and admire the view, whilst looking out for dolphins, rays and flying fish which would jump out of the water every now and again. In fact you could almost reach out and touch the frigate birds that accompanied us, which might have been more obvious if I hadn’t left the wide angle on the lens for this photo!

The boat left from Baltra at around 09:00, sailed around the east coast to Punta Carrion for a snorkel, then continued around to Islas Plazas, where we would stop for a land trip, after which we’d continue round to the south of the island to Puerto Ayora, where we ended the day.

The boys are getting much more accustomed to snorkelling now and it was good to give them some new water entry experiences - on this occasion we had disembarked on to the small Nautilus tender, and once they had their gear on, I encouraged them to just fall backwards, as if we were scuba diving. Louis said he thought for a moment about the double-twisting, triple somersault echo-saltzer with obligatory pike, but then opted just for a straightforward front flop dive.  Visibility was very clear, over 30 metres, the best we’d seen it so far, so really good for the boys to enjoy this.  We stayed broadly in a group, with Kike, our guide pointing out a few fish types along the way like rays and blennies, and stopping to explain these. He picked up a spikey sea urchin and let us feel it creeping along on our hand, a strange sensation.  The boys are now adept at diving down to get a closer look at things, and Frankie at one point must have been more than four metres down.  It surprised me given we hadn’t yet discussed equalising pressure, he later told me he just ignored the fact that his ears started hurting a bit when he went down!  Not surprisingly, when Frankie went down, Louis would often go down and try and match him.

We’d been swimming in the deeper water and then ended in shallower water just a couple of metres deep, in the hope of seeing a shark, since they like to find the warmer water. 
It wasn’t till just after we’d got out that we saw a shark just where we would have been moments later!  Frustrating as we were hoping to give Louis his first shark experience and Frankie a much clearer one than yesterday at Finch Bay.

We had an hour or so in the boat, sailing to Islas Plazas.  In some ways the journey was as good as the destination, the novelty of standing in the front of the boat on a beautiful sunny day, with the wind in your hair, making quite an impression on the boys. They are getting slightly better at putting sun cream on - even after 10 weeks, we are down to about 45 seconds of protesting now.

Some useful advice posted on the trails.....

We hopped onto the tender to make a dry landing at Islas Plazas and KiKe pointed out Gordon’s Rocks in the distance. Jules and I remembered scuba diving there ten years ago when we came before. We discussed it - we couldn’t remember much about the dive, but something about the name had stuck though........

Say "CHEEEESE!"

Kike guided us through a leisurely walk around one of the beautiful, yet arid and hostile islands. Sealions were abundant, keeping very close to the shores, as sharks like to come through and help themselves to seal pups, especially at dawn and dusk when they typically feed.  We learnt lots of good information from Kike and the boys gradually got braver at asking questions.  Frankie has already completed a separate entry on the Frigate Bird, with the Land and Marine Iguanas, both of which we saw here, to follow, and Louis to contribute on the Galapagos Sealion.

After an excellent lunch, we lay out again on the top deck at the front, and enjoyed one of those moments where even as you are experiencing it together, you know you will revisit it many times in the future to try and recapture the feeling of calmness, freedom,and happiness we shared.

This is the life......

Slight reality check towards 4pm as we approached Puerto Ayora and the engine failed. After some delay, we had a trip back in the tender  But the way we saw it, we had an extended stay on the boat at no extra charge!

Highlights of our Galapagos adventure

When you arrive at the tiny Galapagos airport on Baltra island and follow the path from the plane to the open air “terminal”, you pass all the people waiting to board the plane on which you have just arrived, most of whom are probably sharing the same thought - “I wish we were in their shoes, starting over”. True enough, earlier this week, that was exactly our experience as we moved on to the next leg of our trip.

We’ve enjoyed some really interesting shared experiences together living on the three main islands: Santa Cruz, San Cristobal and Isabela, each with their own appeal and character. 

At Santa Cruz, we settled into a pleasant little apartment in a residential area a ten minute walk from the main town of Puerto Ayora.  You got a sense of “life as normal” here, walking around the back streets, trying to avoid the noisy roadworks and regular dynamite explosions as they try and improve the main street that follows the coast.  As you get nearer the town, there are lots of little convenience shops dotted around, a bustling Saturday market, a little paneria which was our favourite place to buy fresh bread and croissants first thing in the morning, all places for us and the boys to practice our broken Spanish. Taxis anywhere in town are just a dollar (as the boys sometimes reminded me whenever we were walking with all our gear) but you get more of a feel for the place walking around, and besides, what’s the rush? 

The boys surprised us with their washing up skills!

Many of the experiences that the Galapagos are famous for are part of tours, but there are quite a few that can be done independently, if you have the time to get to the main islands, which has been our strategy.  We were also very fortunate that Paul and Gaby, who owned the apartment we stayed in on Santa Cruz, not only are very personable and competent guides themselves, but also have two delightful children, Emily and Danny, that the boys really loved spending time with, so we had some great experiences sharing time with these guys too.  They also very kindly allowed us to use the apartment as a base from which to visit the other two islands, which was a big help.  

Poor old Lonesome George

Santa Cruz gave us our first wildlife experiences - you see the pelicans and sealions almost immediately fighting over the fish from the fisherman at Pelican Bay which Louis has reported on (The Galapagos Brown Pelican.) We saw some giant tortoises at the Charles Darwin Research Station, although alas no more Solitario George - Lonesome George - as he sadly died in June this year, making his species, the Pinta island Giant Tortoise, extinct. 

And we made a few visits to Tortuga Bay and Playa de Alemanas giving the boys their first close-up views of marine iguanas as well as enabling them to get accustomed to snorkelling, in order to enjoy the amazing experiences to come on the other two islands.

Daddy, can you help me with my flippers?

We snorkelled one on one with the boys at first, to get them used to it, and then, depending on whether one of us needed to stay on the beach to look after our stuff, we’d go in three or four of us.  It’s lovely to snorkel hand in hand with them while they make sense of the underwater world.  Even though the visibility wasn’t that great there in Santa Cruz, you could hear their little excited noises like squeaks in the water, and feel their hand squeezing yours when they saw a fish. In fact, Frankie’s initial preferred mode of communication was to repeatedly slap me over the head when he saw something interesting, even if it was only little.  Luckily I managed to persuade him to adopt a different approach before we saw anything too large.  It was really good to give them some basic confidence in the water, and we were pleased we’d invested in some new “dry snorkels” so that they could start diving down without breathing in any water.

We decided to head for San Cristobal after a week, and took a very bumpy two hour speedboat crossing (described interestingly as “tranqueeel” by the captain, just before we embarked.  Not a description probably shared by many of the 16 passengers judging by most of their expressions during the crossing ). It was on San Cristobal where we really started getting the most memorable wildlife experiences. 

Ssssshhhhhhh!

Even in our first hour there, as we wandered along the coast of the very small town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno (actually the capital of the Galapagos, although a third of the size of Santa Cruz) looking for the hostal we’d booked, we immediately warmed to the much calmer, smaller and friendlier atmosphere here. It’s as if the sea lions must sense it too, because for the most part in Puerto Ayora, they don’t come ashore, whereas here, you see them everywhere along the coastline of the main town: on park benches, lying across walkways, on the docks where you embark and disembark the boat, and of course lying, in their dozens, along the beach and rocks that border the town. 

We had our first wild sealion snorkelling encounters, literally face to face, right on the very first day there at Playa Man.  We then spent three consecutive days at La Loberia, a beautiful, deserted beach populated only by sealions. The boys are reporting separately on our time there and in fact Louis is thinking of making a movie with all the video footage we have of a lovely little baby sealion we spent a lot of time watching.  

Sunset at La Loberia.....time to leave

Hi, we're called Louis and Frankie too!

We had a great weekend in the San Cristobal with Paul and his family in the highlands.  On the way, we visited the Interpretation Centre, which gave us a lucid and well illustrated history of the Galapagos on which the boys are putting together a presentation.

We climbed a steep volcano whilst learning about how the Galapagos is combatting the challenges of "introduced" flora, such as quinine trees and blackberry bushes........






....and were rewarded with a lovely view of the island.

We made it!

Early next morning, we visited a coffee and sugar cane plantation, and learned about the clever ways in which the family there have been making alcohol, brown sugar and coffee there for generations.  Naturally we had to try both the coffee and the alcohol.  The boys are working on keynote presentations for this!

We went down some lava tunnels together, the smaller ones provided great places for the boys to hide, and the larger ones were just scary when you reflected on what it must have been like to witness lava flows of this magnitude.

Who turned the lights out?

Later, we ambled around the rolling hills of a farm owned by Steven Divine where dozens of wild giant tortoises have made their home.   It's a strange experience to hear them hiss if you get too near - you think it is a warning but it's actually them exhaling in order to be able to fit back into their shell!  Steven generously introduced us to the delights of rum in our coffee, not often that we'd had TWO alcoholic drinks before eleven am!

We headed back to Santa Cruz for a few days, during which the boys enjoyed a morning with children at a local school, where they had particular fun with the music lesson!

Then on to the very peaceful Porto Villamil on Isabella, an island with one tenth the population of Santa Cruz, but several times larger. We hooked up with another mobile family that we met the unsteady ferry ride over, and shared some almuerzos, drinks at sunset, homeschooling tips (we probably received more than we have, sorry Daniel!) and exploring together over a couple of days. Louis and Frankie enjoyed sharing hammocks, Lego, some wave-jumping and generally going wild with Daniel and Cecile's great kids, Kasem and Zaki. The highlight was probably a trip to Las Tintoreras, where you could see dozens of white-tipped reef sharks gently swimming through a narrow channel of crystal clear warm water just a few feet below you.

Good boy - go fetch!

At Concha de Perla, just when we thought we'd seen it all, in terms of sealion snorkelling experiences, we were swimming with a sealion when a large marine iguana swam hurriedly past.  We watched closely as the sealion keep swimming up to him from below, nudging the iguana's tummy.  The iguana clearly didn't want to play. Then as if to emphasise the canine qualities of the sealion (well the seal pups do resemble dog puppies a little, don't they?) this seemingly very happy sealion that had been darting around us, picked up a stick and dropped it in the water in front of us.   Frankie dived down to the bottom to pick it up and gave it back to him, (well you can't really "throw" under water) and the sealion took it in his mouth then let it go so that he could trap it between his two flippers and swam around holding it there, close to his tummy.  We could scarcely believe he was doing this.

That's not grooming, it was very windy lying down on the front of the boat!

We made the most of our last couple of days on the Galapagos - a marathon one mile snorkel culminating in Frankie swimming with his first shark; and a fabulous all-day boat trip around Santa Cruz to Islas Plazas, where Kike, our first class guide, introduced us to some fascinating flora and fauna on a more remote part of the Galapagos.  The boys are working on separate blog entries for both of these, as well as more of the many animals we have seen.

Such an incredible four weeks, and we leave with many happy memories and two new but now very competent snorkellers! 

Frigate Bird

We were on a boat to Islas Plazas, and we saw these 3 Frigate birds hovering above us.  It felt like we could reach out and tickle their bellies!  We decided to lie down and get a better look at them while they were flying.  They weren't even trying to flap their wings but were going as fast as the boat. 



The males have a red throat that sometimes puffs up like a balloon to show off to the girls and the females have a white throat.   

Their wingspan is 2 metres. they are the lightest bird in the Galapagos for their size.  If they dive in the water, they don't have enough oil on their wings to make the wings dry quickly, so if they get their wings wet, they would get very heavy and sink. So they have to be very mean to the blue-footed boobies and the tropic birds.  The tropic birds and boobies catch the fish, then the frigate birds fly down to bite their tail feathers. They get them in real pain so that they are forced to drop the fish that are in their mouths, and even if swallowed they will regurgitate the fish. The fish may still be alive and the frigate bird has to catch it before it hits the water. 

By Frankie

Galapagos Brown Pelican

One of the most amazing things to see here in the Galapagos is a pelican while its flying.  It reminds me a bit of what a pterodactyl might have looked like.

When this one came by it poohed on Frankie!  Mummy said that was good luck. Splat ha ha good luck Frankie!

"It's mine, you can't have it!

We sometimes go down to the place in Pelican Bay, where the fishermen come in from fishing trips, and we see them cutting up the fish and macheteing the lobster’s bottoms off. The bits of fish and lobsters they can’t sell, they just give to the pelicans and sealions to eat for themselves. Normally they fight for every piece aggressively and noisily.

Pelicans are really greedy and even try to eat whole fish all at once!  This one had a big chunk of fish head in its mouth.

On another day, we all saw a big pelican on the side of the road and it had something in his mouth, but we could not really get a look inside. It looked like a dinosaur’s claw and it seemed as if it was going to break through his jaw pouch* because it was so wide and pointy. He was trying to swallow it at first but when he realised he couldn’t he tried to get it out by shaking his mouth around furiously and then also tried to scrape it along the ground to dislodge this claw from its jaw. Then a kind fisherman came along and held the pelican firmly on the ground and while it was flapping around he carefully pulled out what was stuck and revealed the answer. It was a gigantic crab claw!

Here is a short video of a pelican flying.

facts

Many young find it difficult to master the feeding technique and end up dying of starvation.

Brown Pelicans measure around 41 inches in length and have a wingspan of 90 inches. The Galapagos population of the Brown Pelican is said to be endemic.

*   The saggy sack under the beak is called the gular sac 

By Louis

Peace at last.......

Peace.  
Some find it in the mountains.  
Some find it in the desert.  
Some find it on a highland moor, or perhaps on a boat far out at sea. 
On a beautiful sunny day or under a cloudless night sky, far, far from any city. 

The irony is, we weren't even searching for peace particularly when we came to the Galapagos, but rather a fun and educational wildlife experience together that the boys will remember. And yet, here, 1000 kilometres away from the continental mainland, we've experienced something quite unexpected.

A movie is hardly an adequate medium to try to convey this. (Although to be fair, we haven't added any music this time).  Nevertheless, we've tried to capture the essence. Perhaps you'll even be able to hear a pin drop.