North Seymour

The sea was quite choppy for our first landing as you can see in the photo, and the rocks quite wet.

There are very few man-made landing sites in Galapagos – most are just slightly lower rocks were you have to jump out off the end of the boat and hope for the best. Our crew were fantastic however, and good at providing a hand on and off with a firm grip. They also had the most smooth, muscly, brown arms I have ever encountered – it was certainly no hardship accepting their assistance!

I also realised during the week how lucky we were to have a "panga" that was a wooden dinghy with seats along the edge with back rests - everyone else used the inflatable zodiacs which you sit on the edge of - no back support, and much wetter through choppy seas. Also harder to get off when you need to step on the edge and then on to slippery rocks - another selling point for the Sagitta as she was the only ship we saw that did not solely use the inflatables.

As soon as we landed, there were animals and reptiles everywhere. Alex had said that he would not talk that much on the first walk as we would be too busy snapping photos and getting over-excited, and he was right. We saw blue footed boobies, land iguanas

marine iguanas

sea lions and their babies

frigate birds - some puffed up to attract the ladies attention (although apparently it is the situation and quality of the nest that is the deciding factor, not the colour, size or impressiveness of the red neck bit)

and finches. I took loads of video footage as well as photos (only a small selection included in this blog!). The walk was 90 minutes along a beach

then tracking inland through dry trees (it was "spring" in the islands).

We were there for spring, so the green was yet to arrive as the garua had only just started.
Back on the panga and back to the Sagitta, which immediately set sail for Santa Cruz – quite a bumpy ride. I did a video of the boat whilst SS snoozed in the cabin, and then we had the fire drill. We snoozed a bit more and then decided to be sociable. We went upstairs to make a cup of tea and found most of the other passengers sitting in the lounge next to the bar… reading. No-one was saying a word. Hmmm. Luckily Donna (the American) and Phil and Kathy (an English couple) came up as well, and we got talking to them. Little did we know that that would pretty much be the way of it for the rest of the trip! Captains cocktails were at 7pm where we were introduced to the crew and had a couple of drinks, then downstairs to dinner. At this point the boat was rocking and bouncing around quite a bit. Dinner was a lovely vegetable soup followed by rice, white carrot bake, tuna cooked in foil and asparagus and tomatoes. There was cake to follow which SS and I skipped. It was quite warm downstairs in the dining rooms as the windows were shut. SS was thrilled however to see that there was a bottle of chilli sauce on the table. He was less thrilled to note that there were at least another 3 people including myself who were interested in the chilli sauce….
Off to bed early as we had an early start and the ride to Santa Cruz is always rough. We already had two down by dinner with seasickness, with more predicted…